(4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926 / Prague / Czech Republic)

poet Rainer Maria Rilke
#36 on top 500 poets
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Archaic Torso of Apollo

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

Submitted: Friday, January 03, 2003


Read poems about / on: change, star, power, smile, dark, life, running

Comments about this poem (Archaic Torso of Apollo by Rainer Maria Rilke )

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  • Christopher Manuel Garc�a Vega (12/31/2009 12:34:00 AM)

    the poem seems to be suffused with the idea that a piece of art is a whole in itself. Rilke turns the beheaded Apollo into a living statue that at the end of the poem appears to be looking back at the admirer. there is this sensation that each part of the incomplete sculpture has a life of its own as the poet posits his eyes on them; and after a while this life that the poet communicates to the immobile statue is stolen by it to make a part of itself...

    18 person liked.
    		8 person did not like.
  • Jeremy Trabue (6/9/2008 2:39:00 PM)

    This translation is by Stephen Mitchell. It should be credited here.

    21 person liked.
    		7 person did not like.
  • Tony Best (10/9/2007 7:13:00 AM)

    Rilke wrote in german. One of my favorite poems, I love the last line 'you must change your life.' Rilke was a master. His years with Rodin certainly paid off, I love how he describes the torso. Also, the inner brillance, and how when looking at a masterpiece it reminds one of greek gods.

    11 person liked.
    		7 person did not like.
  • Frank Lekens (9/19/2007 9:31:00 AM)

    Rilke wrote in English?

    Or did Babelfish translate this?

    5 person liked.
    		14 person did not like.
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