Du Sprache Wo Sprachen Enden

`Du Sprache wo Sprachen enden':
Rilke's Poem Àn die ûsik'

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The role of the visual arts in Rilke's poetic development has been the
subject of frequent and copious critical examination – justifiably so,
since Rilke is a poet of whom it might be said that his most decisive
artistic influences came from non-literary artists such as Rodin, Cé-
zanne, and the painters and sculptors of Worpswede. Far less attention
has been given to the role of music in Rilke's artistic development,
and what has been written on the subject has either tended to the
biographical,' or has focused on such abstractions as 'Das Harmoni-
kale in der Musikauffassung Rainer Maria Rilkes.' This gap in the
voluminous Rilke secondary literature is to be regretted for two rea-
sons: first, the poet's relationship to music is, in its ambivalence, far
more complex and interesting than is his almost exclusively positive
and admiring attitude toward the visual arts, and second, the poet's
attitude is reflected and given artistic form in a remarkable series of
poems, spanning most of his poetic career, in which music occupies
a central or at least an important place. These poems have never been
interpreted as a whole, and several have never been examined in any
depths
One work to suffer such neglect is the poem Àn die Musik' 4 ; this
1(R1CVaieln9rM:A6m0dáuksg),;i
Christoph Petzsch, 'Musik: Verführung und Gesetz. Aus Briefen und Dichtun-
gen Rilkes,' Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift, N.S. ^ o (196o), 65-85.
2 Leopold Spitzer, Das Harmonikale in der Musikauffassung Rainer Maria Rilkes, Bei-
träge zur harmonikalen Grundlagenforschung, No. 6 (Vienna: Hans-Kayser In-
stitut für harmonikale Grundlagenforschung, 1974).
The most significant treatment to date of music as theme and/or image in Rilke's
poetry is the brief chapter entitled `Musik' in Beda Allemann, Zeit und Figur beim
späten Rilke. Ein Betrag zur Poetik des modernen Geistes (Pfullingen: Verlag Günther
Neske, 1961), pp. 162-8.
4 The poem is examined briefly in three major critical works on Rilke: Beda Alle-
Rilke's Àn die Musik' 207
critical neglect, however, stands in sharp contrast to the implicit rec-

ognition of three poet-translators who have included the poem in
their recent collections of selected Rilke poems in English translation.5
Perhaps the critical neglect is due to the poem's apparently ìncidental'

nature; it was written on January 11 and 12 of the year 1918 and
inscribed as a dedication in the guest-book of Hanna Wolff in Munich
on the occasion of a concert which Rilke heard in her home. 6 Never-
theless, it need hardly be pointed out that the circumstances under
which a work of art comes into being are no index of its quality. A
close analysis of this poem will reveal that it is one of the finest in this
period of Rilke's work (the ten years from 1912 to 1922 separating
the beginning and the completion of the Duineser Elegien), one which
points ahead to the language of the late poems as it summarizes in
its brief form several of the central images and ideas that can be found
throughout Rilke's music poems.
mann, Zeit und Figur, cited above; Jacob Steiner, Rilkes Duineser Elegien, 2nd ed.
(Berne/Munich: Francke Verlag, 1969), p. 179; Judith Ryan, Umschlag und Ver-
wandlung. Poetische Struktur und Dichtungstheorie in R.M. Rilkes Lyrik der mittleren
Periode (1907-1914) (Munich: Winkler Verlag, 1972), pp. 97-8. Allemann relates
it to the general theme of temporality in Rilke's work, and singles out the idea of
landscape as a goal of artistic transformation. Steiner correctly emphasizes that
the poem summarizes most of the ideas associated with music in other poems.
However, he equates the Àbschied' of line ^ o with death, an interpretation I
would dispute. Ryan examines the poem in the context of others which depict a
confrontation with one's own inner landscape. This context is in itself potentially
misleading with respect to the poem, for this landscape,' as Ryan herself points
out, has separated itself from us and become something autonomous and even
alien to us. I would also dispute her assertion that music here is èine Chiffre für
die Dichtung' (as well as Allemann's similar observation in another context: `was
Rilke Musik nennt, ist ... eine Metapher für das verborgene Wesen des Gedichts').
Clearly, when Rilke refers to music in his poetry he is sensitive to its parallels
with the art of poetry, and often he makes this parallelism explicit; clearly, too,
the `Gesang' of the Sonette an Orpheus subsumes both poetry and music. But sim-
ply to assume that music is nothing but a metaphor or poetic figure for poetry is
to ignore the distinctive images and ideas associated with music in this poem and
elsewhere, which are not characteristic of the poet's views on poetry per se.
5 Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. and commentary by Robert Bly (New
York: Harper & Row, 1981), pp. 168-9; An Unofficial Rilke, selected, introd. and
trans. Michael Hamburger (London: Anvil Press, 1981), pp. 68-9; The Selected
Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, ed. and trans. Stephen Mitchell, introd. Robert Hass
(New York: Random House, 1982), pp. 146-7.
6 August Stahl, Rilke Kommentar zum lyrischen Werk, collab. Werner Jost and Reiner
Marx (Munich: Winkler Verlag, 1978), p. 289.
208 THOMAS A. KOVACH
AN DIE MUSIK
Musik: Atem der Statuen. Vielleicht:

Stille der Bilder. Du Sprache wo Sprachen
enden. Du Zeit,
die senkrecht steht auf der Richtung vergehender Herzen.
Gefühle zu wem? ^ du der Gefühle

Wandlung in was? —: in hörbare Landschaft.
Du Fremde: Musik. Du uns entwachsener
Herzraum. Innigstes unser,
das, uns übersteigend, hinausdrängt, —
heiliger Abschied:
da uns das Innre umsteht
als geübteste Ferne, als andere
Seite der Luft:
rein,
riesig,
nicht mehr bewohnbar.7
The title, together with the second-person familiar forms of address

in lines 2, 3, 5, and 7, suggest an ode. In fact, this is the only one of
Rilke's music poems in which music is addressed in the second person
throughout. In the 1925 poem `Musik' (`Die, welche schläft ...'), for
instance, music is spoken of in the third person until the final stanza,
in which there is a shift to second person: `Musik: du Wasser unsres
Brunnenbeckens ...' (II, 266-67). To be sure, our poem shows no sign
of the strophic, strictly metrical form associated with the classical Ger-
man ode of Klopstock and ^ ölderlin. 8 Quite the contrary: few of
Rilke's poems, even those of the last years, display such a determined
avoidance of rhythmic pattern, 9 such a deliberate thwarting of rhythmic
flow as this (note, for instance, the three caesurae of line ^ ).
7 Rainer Marie Rilke, Sämtliche Werke, 6 vols., ed. Rilke-Archiv with Ruth Sieber-
Rilke and Ernst Zinn (Frankfurt: Insel Verlag, 1955-66), vol. 2, p. 111 . Subse-
quent references to this edition will be given in the text with a Roman numeral
indicating the volume number and Arabic numerals the pages.
8 Cf. Theodore Ziolkowski's discovery of elegiac distichs in the apparently free
verse of the Duineser Elegien in his The Classical German Elegy, 1795-1950 (Prince-
ton: Princeton University Press, 1980).
9 The only significant exception to this is the repetition of the same rhythmic pat-
tern in lines 5 and 6, apart from the unaccented opening syllable of line 5.
The title, however, contains also a more specific reference to the

poem of the same name by Franz von Schober, immortalized by Franz
Schubert in one of his most famous Lieder (op. 88, no.4).
Du holde Kunst, in wieviel grauen Stunden,

wo mich des Lebens wilder Kreis umstrickt,
hast du rein Herz zu warmer Lieb entzunden,
hast mich in eine bessre Welt entrückt!
Oft hat ein Seufzer, deiner Harf entflossen,

ein süßer, heiliger Akkord von dir
den Himmel beßrer Zeiten mir erschlossen,
du holde Kunst, ich danke dir dafür!
We know that Rilke was acquainted with this work; in a diary entry
recorded during his stay in Worpswede, he relates how he heard this
song `mit schauerlichem Text' sung repeatedly by Milly Becker (sister
of Rilke's close friend the painter Paula Modersohn-Becker) at the
request of Karl Hauptmann (brother of Gerhart).11 Rilke's negative
reaction to this text is explicable in several ways. It is, first of all, an
example of a mediocre poem whose shortcomings are compensated
for (for the average music-lover) by the beauty of the music; for Rilke,
though, no such `compensation' was possible, and he was most likely
offended at the thought of ènnobling' a poor poetic text through
music. 12
But Rilke was probably offended not only by the mediocre quality
of the verse, but also by its content. The idea of being `transported
into a better world' by music is not only a cliché, it represents a notion
which was highly suspect to the poet. In his 1899 poem `Musik' from
10 Quoted from Franz Schubert, Gesänge für eine Singstimme mit Klavierbegleitung, vol.
1, ed. Max Friedlaender (New York: C.F. Peters Corp., n.d.), pp. 248-9.
11 Tagebücher aus der Frühzeit 1899 bis 1902, ed. Ruth Sieber-Rilke and Carl Sieber
(Leipzig: Insel-Verlag, 1931), p. 289.
12 The reasons for this aversion are of course largely biographical in nature, and
can be traced in many passages of his correspondence, particularly that with
Magda von Hattingberg. The previously cited works by Petzsch and Mágr bring
together much pertinent material on this subject. Suffice it to say that at no time
in his life did Rilke share the average concertgoer's naive pleasure in music; his
attitude toward music ranged from violent antagonism (especially around 1900)
to respect for music as a force divine, powerful, but ultimately incomprehensible.
It should also be pointed out that the poet, by his own admission, was incapable
of reproducing the simplest tune, even if he had heard it many times. Finally, it
is well known that Rilke had an aversion to musical settings of his own poetry.
Das Buch der Bilder (I, 379-80), a youth plays on the syrinx, and the
effect of this music is portrayed in extremely negative terms: music
is a prison which confines his soul (`Der Klang ist wie ein Kerker'),
and the `wings' of his soul are described as `vom Gesang zersägt,' an
image of surprising violence. This negative attitude toward music also

finds expression in Rilke's correspondence, and in the following pas-
sage from the partly autobiographical novel Die Aufzeichnungen des
Malte Laurids Brigge of the year 1910.
Ich, der ich schon als Kind der Musik gegenüber so mißtrauisch war,
(nicht, weil síe mich stärker als alles forthob aus mir, sondern weil ich
gemerkt hatte, daß sie mich nicht wieder dort ablegte, wo síe mich ge-
funden hatte, sonden defer, irgendwo ganz ins Unfertige hinein) ...
(vi, 824)
In both cases, the power of music to `transport' the listener is never

questioned, but this transport is seen as potentially dangerous to one's
creative powers. After Brigge, to be sure, Rilke seldom if ever ex-
pressed such negative sentiments about music. And yet even in later
years the poet retained an awe for the power of music, one which
finds expression in the 1917 poem.
But if Rilke's Àn die Musik' makes reference in its title to Schober's
poem, one must ask why this is so. It is clear from what has been said
that this is in no sense a tribute to the earlier work; there is no reason
to assume the poet had changed his mind about this poem's quality,
or about the naiveté of its faith that music transports us into a better
world. One may surmise that Rilke's poem is written almost in refu-
tation of Schober's. The latter writes flowing verse which is clearly
intended to be set to music, thus suggesting the compatibility of poetry
and music, and the subordination of poetry to music. The mode of
his poem is one of confident assertion. By contrast, Rilke's poem is
rhythmically fragmented, thus making a musical setting difficult. Such
a setting would seem inappropriate in any event, since what is em-
phasized here is the otherness of music, its incommensurability with
other categories of human experience. And where Schober makes
assertions, Rilke seems to grope for a way expressing something which
by its very nature transcends human expression.
Musik: Atem der Statuen. Vielleicht:

Stille der Bilder.
After noting the contrast pointed out earlier between Rilke's atti-
tudes toward music and toward the visual arts, one may find it strange
that Rilke should begin his poem to music with references to the visual
arts. Music is here called the breath of statues. A similar motif occurs
in the third of the Sonette an Orpheus, where it is said:
In Wahrheit singen, ist ein andrer Hauch.

Ein Hauch um nichts. Ein Wehn im Gott. Em Wind. ( τ, 732)
But here, the breath is not disembodied, as in the sonnet, but rather
it is attributed to statues, suggesting that music is their life force.
Knowing as we do of Rilke's feelings for the art of Rodin, we may
take as a given that Rilke intends no denigration of sculpture in favour
of music; it is not that statues would be lifeless without music, but
rather that that force which gives them life is called music. Lest we
take this as a definitive statement, however, the 'Vielleicht' which ends
the first line and introduces the second reminds us of its provisional
nature. The next words not only continue the paradoxical suggestion
of a connection between music and the visual arts, they introduce a
new paradox: music as silence. Immediately one asks: How can an art
form consisting of sounds be described as silence? In the 1899 poem
`Musik,' the `Schweigen' of the third stanza is clearly intended as the
antithesis of music, in fact, as the antidote to its destructive effects.
And yet in the first of the Sonette an Orpheus, Rilke's evocation of
Orphic song is dominated by the idea of silence, a silence actually
created by Orpheus singing: 'alles schwieg,' ìn der Verschweigung,'
'Tiere aus Stille' (τ, 731). As paradoxical as it may sound, the more
positive attitude of the poet toward music which evolved in the years
following Brigge is closely connected to the idea of silence as an es-
sential component of music. Rilke's idea may be illustrated by a quote
from John Cage, the composer and theoretician of modern music,
whose 1961 collection of lectures and articles bears the title Silence.
For it is the space and emptiness that is finally urgently necessary at this
point in history (not the sounds that happen in it – or their relation-
ships). ... [A student] was attached to sounds and because of his attach-
ment could not let sounds be just sounds. He needed to attach himself
to the emptiness, to the silence.
13 John Cage, Silence. Lectures and Writings by John Cage (Cambridge, Ma.: MIT
Press, 1966), p. 70. See also Janine Wolfram, Essai sur le silence dans les poèmes
français de R.M. Rilke, Histoires des idées et des littératures: Nouveautés 4 (Paris:
Revue des lettres modernes, 1959); Linda S. Pickle, The Balance of Sound and
Cage's words are useful in that they reflect the mystical element which
is very much a part of Rilke's musings on music. But if Rilke suggests
in this poem that music is connected with silence, this is accomplished
not only through direct statement, but also through the sound and
structure of the poem. Consider these first two sentences. Neither

contains a verb; in fact, the only verb forms in the whole poem are
either participial (`vergehender,' èntwachsener,' `übersteigend') or
consigned to subordinate clauses (ènden,' `steht,' `hinausdrängt,' ùm-
steht'). By thus minimizing the element of motion, Rilke eliminates
any sense of rhythmic flow and thus creates a series of groping at-
tempts to name the unnameable, set against a background of silence
or empty space. This silence is made palpable in the two colons of
line 1, which compel the reader to pause each time; the same effect
is achieved by colons in lines 6, 7, 10, and 13, and by periods and
commas elsewhere. By these means Rilke himself creates a verbal
`music of silence.'
Du Sprache wo Sprachen
enden.
If music in the first one-and-a-half lines is related to the visual arts,

here it is related to poetry, the art of language. Music too is a language,
one `where languages end.' The enjambement between the second and
third lines serves to emphasize the absoluteness and finality of this
limit. I have taken this phrase as the title of this interpretation because
it conveys in encapsulated form the two central ideas of the poem.
For this phrase can be interpreted in two ways. A language where
languages end can mean one which begins where other languages
lapse into silence, thus a language of silence. This accords with the
preceding discussion. But this can also mean a language beyond the
limits of ordinary language, one which inhabits a realm beyond other
language and thus has the power of expressing what other languages
cannot; it is this notion which is emphasized in the rest of the poem.
Du Zeit,
die senkrecht steht auf der Richtung vergehender Herzen.
Silence in the Duineser Elegien and Sonette an Orpheus,' journal of English and Ger-
manic Philology, 70 (1971), 583-99.
Music is obviously a temporal art, more akin to the Nacheinander

of poetry than to the Nebeneinander of the visual arts; thus there is
nothing particularly shocking in Rilke addressing music as a form of
time. But the poet is concerned here to point out another paradox
connected with music. We tend to visualize the passing of time as a
horizontal line; thus history books present important dates along a
`time line,' or several parallel lines to indicate different countries or
different aspects of historical development. In such a scheme, a ver-
tical line can serve only to represent synchronicity, the simultaneous
occurrence of two events. Yet music is a kind of time which `stands
vertical,' thus implying a kind of stasis or suspension of time. The
meaning becomes clearer when we see what the horizontal is which
is crossed by the vertical of music: it is the `Richtung vergehender
Herzen.' `Richtung' is translated by Mitchell as `motion' and by Ham-
burger as `course,' but it is precisely the notion of direction, or (to put
it more precisely) directedness which is crucial. Consider the following
lines from the third of the Sonette an Orpheus.
Gesang, wie du ihn lehrst, ist nicht Begehr,

nicht Werbung um ein endlich noch Erreichtes;
Gesang ist Dasein. Für den Gott ein Leichtes. (I, 732)
Our everyday life is always goal-oriented, a striving in the direction

of an end we hope to achieve. What distinguishes Orphic song – which
embraces both poetry and music – from this is that it lacks this ori-
entation; it is, simply put, pure being. And much the same is said of
music in our poem. For the 'Richtung' here is one of 'vergehender
Herzen.' `Herzen' is of course a reminder of our emotionality, our
tendency to desire and attach ourselves to objects or goals and thus
indulge in that Werbung which the poet rejects, not only in the Sonette,
but also most memorably at the beginning of the seventh of the Dui-
neser Elegien.
Werbung nicht mehr, nicht Werbung, entwachsene Stimme

sei deines Schreies Natur ... (i, 709)
And of course the word 'vergehend' suggests the `directedness' which

is the inevitable lot of all mortal creatures, our course towards the
limit placed by death. Thus music, as `vertical time,' transcends the
directedness of human time in all its aspects – toward practical aims,
toward a love object, and toward death. 14 It is in this sense comparable

to the `pure being' of the Sonette.
Gefühle zu wem? 0 du der Gefühle

Wandlung in was? —: in hörbare Landschaft.
The second of the two stanzas of the poem opens with a question
which implicitly contradicts the previous lines, and thus unfolds an-
other paradox concerning music. Previously it was suggested that
music stands in opposition to the course of human feeling and thereby
transcends this feeling. But in opening the second stanza as he does,
the poet concedes that this formulation is not entirely adequate either.
For everyone acknowledges that music has to do with human feeling;
some would even assert that it, of all the arts, is the most immediate
expression of human feelIng. 15 And thus the question arises: What
sort of feeling does music involve? The first question posed by Rilke
– For whom are these feelings felt? – is never answered explicitly. But
the second, which refocuses the inquiry, suggests that the first is per-
haps misdirected, as it implies the directedness which music does not
share in. `Music is feeling,' Rilke says in agreement with Wallace Ste-
vens, 16 but not in the normal human sense. Rather, it is a transfor-
mation of feeling. But this insight immediately provokes another
question: a transformation into what? The question is answered in
the same sentence, although in a sense the whole remainder of the
poem describes this process of transformation. The answer here is:
into audible landscape. This phrase in itself suggests a transformation,
for something visible (landscape) has been made audible – or, to put
it another way, invisible. Those who know their Rilke will recognize
this as the task of the poet as proclaimed in the ninth of the Duineser
Elegien – the poet, as a transient being, must so identify himself with
the realm of the visible, the element which surrounds him, that he
can transform it into the invisible, the element of the angel. In our
poem, to be sure, it is the feelings rather than the landscape which
are transformed, but the conception is clearly similar.
14 For some other perspectives on music as vertical time,' see Allemann, p. 318
(footnote 28), and Steiner, p. 179 (' ... die Musik ist Zeit, Zeit jedoch, die kein
Vergehen bedeutet, weil sie unmeßbare Gestalt gewonnen hat').
15 Cf. Adrian Leverkühn's complaint about the `Kuhwärme' of music in Thomas
Mann's Doktor Faustus (Frankfurt: Fischer Verlag, 1967), p. 94.
16 From Peter Quince at the Clavier,' The Palm at the End of the Mind, ed. Holly
Stevens (New York: Random House, 1971), pp. 8—10.
Du Fremde: Musik. Du uns entwachsener

Herzraum.
If there may be said to be one consistent feature in Rilke's shifting

attitude toward music, it is that music appears to him as something
alien. Whether he regards it as a threat (as in `Musik' of 1899) or with
an awe approaching reverence (as in this and much of his later work),
music never has for him the relative familiarity of poetry or the visual
arts. 17 And yet, in still another paradox, this `stranger' is part of our
own innermost self. The word `Herzraum' suggests both the feeling
in which, we have seen, music originates, and the potential transfor-
mation of this time element into space. This `Herzraum' is 'uns ent-
wachsen' – this phrase is ambiguous, and both meanings reinforce
the paradox just suggested. It has grown from us – that is, it is human
in origin, it comes from us. But it is also grown out of us, thus no
longer a part of us. In this sense it is also a `stranger.'
Innigstes unser,
das, uns übersteigend, hinausdrängt, —
The dialectic of familiarity and strangeness, introduced in the pre-

vious lines, is extended here and in the following lines. This `stranger,'
music, is what belongs most intimately to us, is innermost in us. And
yet it tends inevitably to transcend us, literally to `climb over' us and
force its way outside of us. A similar conception can be seen in the
seventh of the Duineser Elegien.
.... und Musik

reichte noch weiter hinan und überstieg uns — (I, 712)
What was once an intimate part of us thus separates itself from us.
17 Cf. the following passage from a letter to Magda von Hattingberg of February 1,
1914, in which Rilke expresses amazement at the idea of a familiar relationship
with music: Ùnd Sie haben sich schon als Kind zu diesem vertraulich gefühlt
und gingen zwischen den Löwen und Engeln dieses Elements herum, sicher, daß
es Ihnen nichts thue?' Rainer Maria Rilke, Briefwechsel mit Benvenuta, ed. Magda
von Hattingberg, introd. and notes Kurt Leonhard (Esslingen: Bechtle Verlag,
1954), p. 25. See also footnote 11.
heiliger Abschied:
da uns das Innre umsteht
als geübteste Ferne, als andere
Seite der Luft:
rein,
riesig,
nicht mehr bewohnbar.
What is this `departure' the poet speaks of in these closing lines of

the poem? It is precisely the moment of separation just spoken of,
the moment when music ceases to be a part of the musician and
becomes independent, part of the cosmos rather than the individual.'
This is the essence of the myth of the dismemberment of Orpheus,
of which the poet speaks in the last sonnet of the first part of the
Sonette an Orpheus.
Schließlich zerschlugen sie dich, von der Rache gehetzt,

während dein Kiang noch in Löwen and Felsen verweilte
und in den Bäumen und Vögeln. Dort singst du noch jetzt. (1, 748)
But in our poem the musician is not dismembered; instead, he remains

to confront the `stranger' he has produced. What was within him now
surrounds him. It is now a `most practiced distance' – having been
practiced and thereby mastered, it now inhabits a different, distant
space.
To return to a previous line: this departure or separation is `holy'
because it is the moment of creation, the moment when a new work
of art is born. And indeed, these lines – the second half of line 8 and
lines 9 and 10 – could be applied to the creation of poetry or other
art as well as music. But the next phrase introduces an image more
specifically connected with music: 'als andere / Seite der Luft.' The
`Luft' here in a sense recapitulates the 'Atem' of the first line. It also
points once again to the paradox that this temporal art form creates
its own space: `hörbare Landschaft,' `Herzraum.' Of course in speak-
ing of music as `Luft,' Rilke, as he was surely aware, comes close to
the scientific definition of sound as vibrating air.19 But the phrase
àndere Seite der Luft' suggests a conception more mystical than sci-
18 Cf. the final two lines of the tenth sonnet from the second cycle of Sonette an
Orpheus (I, 757).
19 Cf. the reference at the end of the first elegy to music as jene Schwingung ... die
uns jetzt hinreißt und tröstet und hilft' (I, 688), and the reference to music as
`gekrönte Luft' in Oft in dem Glasdach,' the concluding poem of the second se-
ries of the cycle Aus dem Nachl^j^ des Grafen C.W. (Ii, 129).
entific. In a letter to the Princess of Thurn and Taxis of November

17, 1912, Rilke writes with approval of the idea that it is not what is
audible in music that is decisive, and speaks in this connection of a
mystical initiation `ín die Rückseite der Musik, in die selige Zahl, die
sich dort teilt und wieder zusammennimmt und aus unendlich Viel-
fachem in die Einheit zurückfällt.' 20Thismageoft`rd'in
both cases suggests the transcendent aspect of music, transcending not
only the subject which produces it but also the very notion of audible
sound. Thus the idea of music as silence is also recapitulated here.
In this transcendence music achieves purity – it purifies itself of
the subjectivity of its creator and even of the physicality of audible
sound. It is immense, since it surpasses all limitations of physical space
and surrounds us, having become one with the cosmos. But this `mus-
ical space,' in its purity and immensity, can no longer be ìnhabited'
by us. This final image reflects a deliberate reversal: where music
previously had its habitation within us as our `Herzraum,' it has now
gone outside us and surrounds us, but in its otherness – 'als andere
Seite der Luft' – we cannot ìnhabit' it, thus we cannot make of it
something familiar or comprehensible. It must remain eternally a
stranger.
On this sombre note, Rilke ends his poem Àn die Musik.' Clearly
the poet has paid a tribute, albeit a less fawning one than Schober's,
to that art which was for him the most difficult of all. Four years later,
in the Sonette an Orpheus, he was to apotheosize the poet in his most
inspired state as musician, as creator of cosmic order. And we have
seen several motifs in this poem which suggest the worlds of the Elegien
and the Sonette: music as silence, music as the force which transforms
the visible into the invisible, the physical into the spiritual, music as
the purest of the arts. And yet the poem also contains reminders of
the darker view of music expressed in the 1899 `Musik' and in Brigge:
music as a stranger, inaccessible to us, a power we must respect but
one with which we can never feel àt home.' The poem is thus a
transitional work, one which reflects the complexity and ambivalence
of the poet's attitude in full measure. It achieves its purpose not
through assertions, but through a series of paradoxes, each qualifying
and expanding on the preceding. And in its carefully modulated
`verbal music,' Rilke has left us one of the richest poems of this most
difficult decade of his life.
20 Rainer Maria Rilke, Briefe, ed. Rilke - Archiv in Weimar with Ruth Sieber -Rilke
and Karl Altheim (Frankfurt: Insel Verlag, 1980), p. 376.

Du Sprache Wo Sprachen Enden

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Du Sprache Wo Sprachen Enden

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`Du Sprache wo Sprachen enden':

Rilke's Poem `An die ^usik'

^^ o ^As ^ . ^ ovAC^ University of Utah

critical neglect, however, stands in sharp contrast to the implicit rec-

Perhaps the critical neglect is due to the poem's apparently `incidental'

Musik: Atem der Statuen. Vielleicht:

Gefühle zu wem? ^ du der Gefühle

The title, together with the second-person familiar forms of address

The title, however, contains also a more specific reference to the

Du holde Kunst, in wieviel grauen Stunden,

Oft hat ein Seufzer, deiner Harf entflossen,

image of surprising violence. This negative attitude toward music also

In both cases, the power of music to `transport' the listener is never

Musik: Atem der Statuen. Vielleicht:

in the third of the Sonette an Orpheus, where it is said:

In Wahrheit singen, ist ein andrer Hauch.

structure of the poem. Consider these first two sentences. Neither

If music in the first one-and-a-half lines is related to the visual arts,

Music is obviously a temporal art, more akin to the Nacheinander

Gesang, wie du ihn lehrst, ist nicht Begehr,

Our everyday life is always goal-oriented, a striving in the direction

Werbung nicht mehr, nicht Werbung, entwachsene Stimme

And of course the word 'vergehend' suggests the `directedness' which

toward a love object, and toward death. 14 It is in this sense comparable

Gefühle zu wem? 0 du der Gefühle

Wandlung in was? —: in hörbare Landschaft.

Du Fremde: Musik. Du uns entwachsener

If there may be said to be one consistent feature in Rilke's shifting

The dialectic of familiarity and strangeness, introduced in the pre-

.... und Musik

What is this `departure' the poet speaks of in these closing lines of

Schließlich zerschlugen sie dich, von der Rache gehetzt,

But in our poem the musician is not dismembered; instead, he remains

entific. In a letter to the Princess of Thurn and Taxis of November

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