The poet questions what drives the traveling acrobats to work so tirelessly for the benefit of superficial audiences. There, she had a print of the Picasso masterpiece, 'Family of Saltimbanques,' which depicts a group of itinerant circus performers amid a harsh, empty landscape.

The fifth elegy is dedicated to Frau Hertha Koenig, a woman who owned a house where Rilke lived for several months. To explain this, Rilke uses the example of a child who dies knowing nothing but purity and innocence. However, when our lives do not follow this predictable course, it is a tragedy. Only when controlled by an Angel can our mind and body be as one.

He prefers to be a puppet controlled by an Angel as opposed to a dancer who is desperate in his need to fill the stage of his life with ostentatious movement. The poet draws on the metaphor of puppetry in the fourth elegy to describe the ways in which our thoughts and actions are not in accord. Neither can save him, but perhaps the love of a good woman can busy a man and bring balance to his life, containing his basest urges. As boys grow into men, they leave the protective love of their mother for the arms of the gentle lover. Humans die and, in doing so, leave something behind, symbolized by the gravestone and the twin ideas of 'Love' and 'Parting' that gravestones signify.īoth the power and limitations of the female embrace are examined the third elegy. Despite the fact that Angels possess a sense of grandeur and beauty humans can never aspire to, man does possess something Angels do not: transience. Rilke continues to probe the mysteries of Angels in the second elegy. In the end, the only thing capable of consoling him is perhaps music, but only if the songs are born out of grief. The poet seeks consolation in more earthly things, such as his fellow man, animals, and lovers, but finds that none of these consoles him. In this way, Angels are actually terrible, their beauty beyond our grasp. Reconsidering this appeal, he concludes that the power and beauty of Angels are so beyond human comprehension that encountering one would result in his annihilation. In the first elegy, the poet, amid great suffering, calls out to the Angels for help. Many critics consider Duino Elegies to be Rilke's most important work. Though the poems are described as elegies and, indeed, contain quite a bit of torment and melancholy, the works cover a wide range of human emotions, including love and elation.

Duino Elegies is a collection of ten poems published in German in 1923 by the Bohemian-Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke.

Rilke duino elegies