the barriers between the states of life and death should be removed. The other was that love must find new roles within this wider whole that no longer simply excludes death as “the other.”10 Love enters the Sonnets in the form of praise and joyful affirmation of everything they touch—gardens, dancers, flowers, flavors, unicorns, the sense of hearing—whatever it might be. Even Rilke’s machine sonnets (I:18, 22, 24 and II:10) are beautiful and show mechanization—of which he was deeply suspicious—as an opportunity for growth: we must remain the masters of the machines we have created. The most striking example of the power of love is found in Sonnet II:4, in which the mythical unicorn is “loved” into reality by those who believe in it.
The world of the sonnets is that of Orpheus himself, to whom they are addressed, in which song, beauty, and harmony reign eternally; his music charms even wild beasts. These are examples of a few of the many references to this ideal, ageless world in the Sonnets:
• Orpheus, the supreme poet and singer, dies many times, yet remains alive and present among us (I:5).
• We must keep in mind a lasting, crucial image—arguably the memory of this ideal world—even though it may be blurred from day to day (I:16).
• We are nourished by the lives of those who came before us (I:14).
• What is of lasting value comes from the elements of our world not subject to time (I:22)
• Orpheus, the ultimate poet/singer, survives physical destruction (I:26).
• Love is the power that creates lasting reality (II:4).
• Flavor, fragrance, and music transcend everyday reality (I:15, II:6, II:10).
• Blissful, unblemished gardens exist in an ideal realm, but for us to claim as our own (II:17, 21).
• There is a place where even mute creatures, like fishes, have their language (II:20).
For Rilke, this ideal world is not isolated up above, but found all throughout our beautiful earth, which the Ninth Duino Elegy urges us to love with all our might just as it is—and thus lift up and transform. It is a unified world Rilke is envisioning, without the dualities of life and death, heaven and earth, good and evil, body and spirit; in fact, he moved away from traditional Christianity largely because it tends to emphasize these dualities. He tells us that the angels of the Elegies are not Christian angels, but more like Islamic ones, and of course Orpheus is a pre-Christian figure.11
In order to unite dualities—to bring light and dark, earth and heaven, good and bad, body and soul together—the poet praises. He simply praises everything. That is his calling. A few months before the sonnets came to him, Rilke wrote a poetic dedication for a friend into the pages of his novel Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge (The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge) which began, “Oh, tell me, poet, what you do. I praise” (O sage, Dichter, was du tust. Ich rühme). It was the inspired sonnets that restored to him the power to praise, and that made the completion of the Elegies possible. “Praise” (das Rühmen, die Rühmung) and “praiseworthy” (rühmlich) are key words in the Sonnets, especially in I:7, 8, 9. Here and there lament is mixed with the praise, as in the machine sonnets (I:18, 24 and II:10, 22, for example) and in at least one sonnet dealing with Wera’s illness and death (I:15). Entirely untempered praise would not be believable. Sonnet I:8 clearly sets forth, however, that praise must always go along with lament: Nur im Raum der Rühmung darf die Klage /gehn (“ Only where there’s praise may lamentation / sound”)—a mixture of emotions reminiscent of the Old Testament Psalms.
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