As I read these elegies I determined that Rilke is
talking to the angels. Although he is
terrified of them, he is willing to address them because I believe his fear is
one of ignorance. He does not understand
the angels, they are a mystery to him, and so he is afraid of the unknown. However, he also wants to understand the
angels and wants them to understand him.
I see the Duino Elegies as his
attempt to explain to the angels who we, as humans are and communicate with
them.
Rilke seems to keep coming back to the question of what
our purpose as humans is in our state of existence. It seems like throughout all ten elegies,
Rilke asks the question or addresses the concept of purpose in many different ways
both directly and indirectly. As he
talks about the innocence of a child before he is introduced to the level of
consciousness, he is addressing the mother who protects the child from the
inevitable fate of adulthood and asks the question “he seemed protected…But inside: who could ward off, who could divert,
the floods of origin inside him?” This
sends the clear message that our purpose as humans cannot be held back and
avoided. We have a task to fulfill as we
progress through our existence.
In reading Rilke’s words, I felt like the purpose for us
was the building up of our own existence and our own lives. We are here to create our own world. We are born in innocence. As we are exposed to the realities of the
world around us, we are compelled to erect a resemblance of who we are, for
others to see and understand. We are
constantly building, creating, and perfecting who we are, what we represent,
and what we want our lives to be. The
sense of being, and the environment that encompasses our being, becomes vital
to our existence. Therefore, our lives
are a monument, a statue in a sense, of who we are and the life we have lived. As Rilke so profoundly stated in the Eighth
Elegy, “It fills us. We arrange it. It breaks down. We rearrange it, then break down ourselves.” This is what life is all about for us as
humans. We are continually building our
lives and who we are, our very existence.
We see the things we have worked so hard for, crumble in front of
us. We love and then lose that
love. We dream and watch our dreams
fall. We strive to succeed only to
fail. Yet every day we get up. We rise out of bed. We stand up and start over again. Still daring to love, dream, and strive to
succeed. We do this, despite the falling
that we have experienced, because that is our way of survival and being. We do this, because we are built to stand
erect, not to lie down and surrender. However,
in the end, after we spent our lives standing up and trying again, we will
ultimately fall as we die and in the end, after all the building, we will “break
down ourselves”.
Throughout our lives, we leave our mark and influence
others around us. As the Second Elegy
asks, “Does the infinite space we dissolve into, taste of us then?” I say yes, because everywhere we go, and
everything we do, leaves a reminder that we have lived and stood as an
individual in our existence. Even after
we leave this world, others will know we were here and stood where we stood.
Rilke seems to address life with the metaphor of seasons. When we enter existence, “the springtime
needed you” [First Elegy] and when we leave our existence, “when does your
winter come? We are not in harmony, our blood does not forewarn us like
migratory birds’. Late, overtaken, we
force ourselves abruptly onto the wind and fall to earth as some iced-over
lake.” [Fourth Elegy]. I felt his line in the Tenth Elegy, “Alone, he
climbs on, up the mountain of primal grief.
And not once do his footsteps echo from the soundless path” was very
profound and summed it up for me quite well.
We are on our journey through life and are here to fulfill our purpose
of creating and building our own existence, and it is a journey that we must
ultimately make alone. Although we will
have help along the way, what we build is ours and ours alone. My life is my life, and I have to take responsibility
for the monument that I erect in representation of myself, that will last after
I leave my existence.
I am still trying to wrap my head around these Duino Elegies because I feel like there
is so much more to them that I am missing. There are emotions such as love, loss, death,
joy, and so many other experiences that Rilke touches on in here. There is so much more to be learned and
understood.
