Rilke, Rome, and the Poetics of Fountains (original) (raw)
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HcP Ottawa, 2023
In part through critical biography, in part through a close reading of almost all of the poems Rilke wrote, including many poems from his Diaries, this large book challenges new ideas about what went into the making of Rilke over twenty years of production, from his early beginnings under the tutelage of Lou Salomé, right through, to his famous final works, the Sonnets to Orpheus and the Duino Elegies. Volume 1 focuses largely on The Book of Hours; Volume 2 on The Book of Images, the two parts of New Poems, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, and the first Elegies written while at Duino; Volume 3 on those all-crucial, self-transforming ten years beyond Duino that lead up to the Sonnets to Orpheus and Rilke’s eventual completion of the Elegies. Two major theses are put forward in this book, the first touching on Rilke’s well-known relationship to his former lover and mentor, Lou Salomé, who is understood to have been a far more problematic influence on him than we had supposed, the second touching on an equally crucial and at some point saving influence on Rilke from the literary sphere, which is shown to be that of the great visionary poet who went by the name of Novalis. Behind the grand story of Rilke’s poetic emergence lies the fundamental and long-standing reality of his repression by Lou and what that would sow, paradoxically, by way of a sublimated achievement as sublimely poignant as it is finally tragic. “My admiration for O’Meara’s close textual reading and analytical abilities in this Rilke text knows no bounds.” { Gary Geddes, editor of "20th-Century Poetry and Poetics", Oxford University Press, and author of "Active Trading: Selected Poems 1970-1995." } Visit the author's website at johnomeara.squarespace.com
Rilke's Semiotic Potential: Iconicity and Performance
American Journal of Semiotics 18, 2006
This article demonstrates how a new reading of Rilke's poetry can provide a basis for comparing and contrasting the aesthetic approach to text to art and the language-based approach that foregrounds the role of metaphor ad materiality in language production. Lessing's 'Laocoon' is discussed in terms of an implied contrast between painting and poetry which, however, acquires a different valence when the Fifth Elegy of Rilke's 'Duino Elegies' suggests that poetry itself functions as a 'metaphorical hypoicon' allowing for shared meanings. My concluding remarks emphasize the importance of the performing self to a complete understanding of Rilke's semiotic potential.
The Cambridge Companion to Rilke
2010
The Cambridge companion to Rilke / edited by Karen Leeder and Robert Vilain. p. cm.-(Cambridge companions to literature) Includes index.
RILKE AND THE FRAGMENTARY APOLLO
• ‘Rilke and the fragmentary Apollo‘, South Asian Ensemble, Vol. 9, No.1-2, pp 107-118, 2017
It is well known that Rilke’s poetry and prose contain numerous references, overt and subtle, to Greek myths and motifs that go beyond cursory interest.This article highlights Rilke’s interaction with a sculpture from Greek antiquity based on the analysis of one of his well-known poems "Archaic Torso of Apollo" from the New Poems. The first section is a textual analysis of the sonnet. The second section draws on the binary opposition of the whole and the part. Catapulted into the modern world of museums, the “heterotopias of indefinitely accumulating time” (Foucault 1986: 26), Apollo’s truncated statue maintains and magnifies its aesthetic appeal and aura. In fact its damaged, fragmentary nature may become the very reason for its extraordinary appeal and attraction. The fragmentary nature of the artifact triggers imagination and adds mystery to its aesthetics.