ASSIGNMENT

Course: Continental Literature (416)

Prepared for: Syeda Afsana Ferdousi

Submitted by

Name: Shayla Akter

ID: 1914 2210 31

Date: 17th June 2021

Department of English
University of Information Technology & Science
 Black Cat

Rainer Maria Rilke was a Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist. He born in 1875,
who had survived the phase of an unhappy childhood to be widely recognised as
one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets. The poetically and
artistically talented youth studied literature, art history, and philosophy in Prague
and Munich until 1896 and finally finished his survival story in 1926.

Setting

A brilliantly layered poem with intense, deeply existential theme is what makes the
poet stand out as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modern
writers. The phrases like ‘a ghost’, ‘thick black pelt’, ‘dark night howling’, throw
light upon the darkness imbued in the poem. The ‘black’ cat has been acutely
described by the master of verses in his own ‘black’ nature and inherently mystical
way by blending the cat with beautifully dark emotions that leaves the reader with
profound thoughts that how can a cat be described with such magical verses.

Alliteration
 “within this thick” (Stanza 1, Line 3)
 “pounds on the padded wall” (Stanza 2, Line 3)
 “as if awakened” (Stanza 4, Line 4)
Simile- In Stanza 1, the invisible ghost is compared to a place, rather empty space
where the sight echoes. In Stanza 2, ‘as a raving madman’ highlights the angry
lunatic trait of the cat. Then in Stanza 3, the cat is made to wear the audience’s
shoes. In the line of the poem comparing a man to a prehistoric fly, it only brought
out the contrast between the man’s assumptions and the reality of his power and
wisdom when compared to a cat.

Style

A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place (A)

your sight can knock on, echoing; but here (B)
within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze (A)
will be absorbed and utterly disappear: (B)

Critical Analysis of Black Cat

Still popular, the poem Black Cat portrays the cat as a mystical being engulfing the
insignificant man. Rilke often worked with metaphors, metonymy and
contradiction, which he has brilliantly made use of in this masterpiece. The phrase
‘the ghost’ instantly takes us to a place not relating to fear or anxiety but something
which leaves us ‘awestruck’. It is an element used here to bridge the gap between
material and spiritual world. This also brings out a contrast in the poet’s
imagination where he initially describes ghost as being invisible but still its
presence constitutes a sort of echoing and then ‘the thick black pelt’ of a cat
absorbs the strong gaze which just disappears, no echoing there.
The phrases ‘raving madman’, ‘dark night’, ‘howling’ are as daunting as the
‘BLACK Cat’ itself. It will not be wrong to assume that Rilke is merely
recommending a nice way to alleviate anger when he associates cat with pounding
on the padded wall and then being ‘pacified’. In the third stanza, Rilke represents
the cat as an audience, implying that she watches and evaluates all that is tossed
her way -the threatening looks and behaviour and eventually taking it all in.
Negating or at least re-organising some of the previous assumptions, the phrase
‘But all at once’ possibly shifts the entire dimension of the poem. When Rilke
mentions, ‘she turns her face to yours’ he makes the reader realise that the cat has
been, and is, more aware than we may know. Looking into those intense golden
amber eyes whose gaze seeps right into the soul, is what makes one feel like a
prehistoric fly or rather because there is much more to it beyond our thoughts and
wisdom.

Tone of the Black Cat

The tone of the poem shifts when the ghost, projected as an invisible element is
capable of echoing the sight while the thick black pelt of cat absorbs even the
strongest gaze. The mere absence of any ray of light or the absorption of all the
happiness from his childhood made Rilke’s imagination and the composition of the
poem to revolve around that haunting darkness which led to the birth of an
artistically talented poem by a poet as lyrical as Rilke and allowed him to use his
power of verses to see beauty and pride even in ‘black’ and dark objects therefore
lifting up the veil on the material and spiritual connection.

Central Idea of Black Cat

The central idea of the poem Black Cat is to make us realise the beauty and
uniqueness of animals. Conveying the message that beauty lies in the eyes of the
beholder, Rainer Maria Rilke has magically woven the poem to bring out the
intense dark beauty of the considered-to-be-ugly black cat in a way that nobody
has ever imagined and perhaps to awaken us to something mysterious and
ineffable.
Personal Observation

Black Cat by Rainer Maria Rilke is a poem which is a result of the out-of-box
imagination and creates magic on paper using beautifully woven verses. This poem
reflects the uniqueness of the animals and that no creature is less. It takes the
reader into a world of profound imagination that he feels too small, almost like a
fly staring into the deep dark soul of the cat. The strong gaze and golden amber
eyeballs, send chills down the spine. The intense words make the readers
experience a roller-coaster ride of emotions.
 A Walk

'A Walk' is a short poem by Rainer Maria Rilke. He was Born in Prague. Rainer
Maria Rilke became one of the finest European poets of the 20th century. He wrote
in German and French.

The poet is walking towards the hill but his vision reaches the hill far ahead of the
physical distance covered by his feet. The inner light of the hill grasps his own soul
and transforms it spiritually much before his own inner luminescence reaches it. It
is as though the hill is making a gesture of kinship with him in response to his own
gesture. All that he feels is the gentle wind touching his face.

The major symbol used in the poem "A Walk’’ is the light described by the
narrator who takes a walk along a hill. The narrator described in great detail the
way in which the light touches the ground and changes the way through which
many perceive reality. In this poem, the light is used as a symbol for hope and the
way hope can influence a person’s life.

My eyes already touch the sunny hill,

going far ahead of the road I have begun.

This is a fascinating truth that we tend to forget in the hard materiality of the
modern world-view: We do not only touch the things with which we come into
physical contact. We are often just as profoundly affected by what we see, even
when it is out of our reach or not yet within our reach in the physical sense. Sight is
a form of touch. It is contact. We touch, and are touched by, what we see.

Rilke’s insight invites us to expand our understanding further still. If what we see
with our eyes is a vital sort of contact, then, naturally, what we see, but not with
our eyes is just as vital. What we imagine, what we daydream, what we plan, what
comes to us in dreams and meditative vision, these touch us too. They affect us.
We react to them. They nurture us, feed us, or they may unsettle us and break our
hearts.

So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;

it has its inner light, even from a distance–

Real touch is not about fingertips on skin or hard metal or stacks of money. Real
touch is heart to heart, mind to mind. Real touch is a process within the awareness,
not about dense matter encountering more dense matter.

What we seek is never what we seek, but the affect it has on us. With everything
we seek, what we actually seek is self-transformation. And, of course, that
transformed self is already within us, just awaiting our own permission to be that.
That is why Rilke says–

and changes us, even if we do not reach it,

into something else, which, hardly sensing it,
we already are…
Whether we yearn for a beloved person or place or circumstance, that encounter
always awaits us within.

a gesture waves us on,

answering our own wave…
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.

We can read his final lines as suggesting something about the ephemeral nature of
reality, or it can be the dawning recognition that we are continuously receiving
communication, encouragement, contact, we have just been missing it because of
our fixed ideas about what we seek and what is real.

Rhyme scheme of the poem is XaXX bbaXX X. Stanza lengths (in strings): 4,5,1,
Closest metre is trochaic pentameter. There is no rhyme in the poem. Tercets
stanza type is used. Amount of stanzas are three. Average number of symbols per
stanza are 128. Amount of lines are 11.

In this poem, sensory impressions are used to create beautiful images. The hill is
personified attributing to it human qualities such as “charges”, “gesture”,
“grasping”. A beautiful combination of the visual and tactile elements recreates the
situation in which the poet re-experiences the intensity of the moment as “emotion
recollected in tranquility”.