Rainer Maria Rilke was the poet who used sadness as a creative mechanism, as the muse of his verses, his art, and above all his lyrics, contain the magic of transformation, taught us to find light in the dark, encouraged us to overcome losses, be patient and curious about our inner values and accept the solitary nature of man.
Biographers say that Rilke was a craftsman of love and an expert in the field of chosen solitude; he used to fall in love with many princesses, counties and duchesses of the Austro-Hungarian empire; He was a wandering poet, a tireless traveler, who stayed in mansions and palaces and delighted everyone with his art, to leave it empty.
- He became the transhuman classic who sought benefactors to take him out of his poverty and also from the eternal disease that always afflicted him: loneliness; however.
- Despite the existential helplessness and emotional discontent she left behind.
- Rainer Maria Rilke explored the sense of loss like no one else.
He is said to have found his greatest inspiration and stability in Lou Andreas-Salomé, this Russian writer, philosopher and psychoanalyst shared with him a liberal spirit, for Rilke and for her the most important thing was art, with culture and knowledge. It was an inspiration and a way to nurture writing and poetry, but in the long run it was something that over-dominated.
“Be patient with everything that is not resolved in your heart and try to love the questions in you. ” – Rainer Maria Rilke-
René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke was born on 4 December 1875 in Prague, his father was a railwayman and his mother, Sophie Entz, daughter of a well-located bank clerk, was the one who instilled in him a taste for writing and poetry; thus, from a very young age, he showed remarkable artistic talent, encouraged by a cultured and refined mother.
However, this delicate and cultured world collapsed at the end of the marriage, it was then that his father took over his education and sent him to a military academy, fortunately, due to his health problems, he was able to leave this world and enroll in college in 1895. Rainer studied literature, art history and philosophy in Prague and Munich.
It was during her stay in Munich that she met the woman of her life: Lou Andreas-Salomé, a Russian writer fifteen years older than Rilke, lover of the most eminent intellectuals of the time and that inspired young Rainer. even more so. She was his counselor and confidante, taught him languages and was his lifelong muse.
This alliance allowed Rainer Maria Rilke to meet notable writers such as Leon Tolstoy; later, at the beginning of the new century, he met the sculptor Clara Westhoff in a colony of artists in Worpswede, married her and the following year, after having his first daughter, decided to leave them and go to Paris.
In Paris, Rainer Maria Rilke met Auguste Rodin and worked as his secretary, the famous sculptor taught him the technique of objective observation as a form of creation, befriended the Spanish painter Ignacio Zuloaga, both artists reinforce his creative impulse and the strength with whose subjectivity he has already underlined most of his verses.
In this Parisian period, he wrote Neue Gedichte (New Poems, 1907), Requiém (1909) and the novel Os Cadernos de Malta Laurids Brigge ?, a semi-autobiographical book in which he describes very intimate and spiritual confessions about his experiences.
In 1912, Rilke stayed at Duino Castle, near Trieste, spent a few months with Countess Marie de Thurn und Taxis, who inspired Elegias de Duino, a period of calm and pleasure that ended hastily with the start of World War I.
Rainer Maria Rilke spent most of the war alone in Munich until she finally had to join the army. That marked it. His open, romantic and rebellious character has become taciturn, from that moment on he embarked on a journey in which he found inspiration and calm for his mind after the chaos of war.
Reiner’s protector, Maria Rilke, gave him an apartment in Switzerland to have some personal stability, so between 1922 and 1926 a period of intense and almost unbridled creativity opened up before him, his health was not good, he suffered from leukemia and he knew that his life was withering.
However, the safety of a loved one has given a greater boost to his mind and his desire to steal more time from life. And he took advantage of it: he wrote a huge series of poems and also letters. His lyrical heritage is as delicate, as deep, as symbolic as it is intimate and inspiring.
? I feel how far I get away, how do I lose the old man, leaf after leaf, only your smile has so many stars left in you, and soon in me too?-Rainer Maria Rilke-
During the last four years of his life, he had a two-year relationship with artist Elisabeth Dorothea Spiro, whose son would later become the famous painter Balthus.
Reiner Maria Rilke died on 29 December 1926 at the Swiss hospital in Val-Mont at the age of 51.
“I think almost all of our pains are moments of tension that prepare us for something. We find ourselves alone, face to face with this so strange that life has perpetrated us.
It is true that Rilke’s life was defined by an existential transhumance that led him to move from town to town, from woman to woman, yet there was an irresistible desire to flee something, and that something was perhaps himself, sadness was his truth and more faithful lover. For this reason, he defined the impregnation of this emotion in life as a person.
Rilke compared emotions to the architecture of a house. He said that when melancholy and sadness penetrate us, we stand still, become buildings, walls and walls, rigid constructions. However, according to him, we also have the power to transform ourselves.
A letter she wrote to Sidonie Nedherna von Boruton, wife of writer Karl Kraus, became famous after learning of her brother’s suicide. “His life must now continue in yours,” he writes, “loss is not a separation. Seeking harmony, seeking meaning and creating something new with memory and affection ?.
Rilke has never pointed out in his texts that time heals or erases the pain of death, in his poetry he teaches us that facing the difficulties of life is fundamental and that we must not avoid them, because adversity leads us to conquests and transformations.
Rainer Maria Rilke was a poet who wrote as a David before Goliath, his words seem, at first glance, light and insignificant, yet they have a huge impact. It teaches us that losses, sorrows, and regrets are the other half of life, it is the shadow, and we are the light.