ABSTRACT
COMPARISON of the two parts of New Poems brings to light a strong shift. The ingenuous-intuitive poems are nearly all to be found in the first part, the self-portraits in the second. The number of poems treating problems is larger in the second part, and the unsuccessful attempts to approximate definite parts of reality are also more numerous in that half; for instance, the poems in which mysterious groups appear as representing the unapprehended community of human beings: The Strange Family (Fremde Familie), The Group (Die Gruppe), The Balcony (Der Balkon), The Sisters (Die Schwestern); Meeting in the Chestnut Avenue (Begegnung in der Kastaniencdleé) also have this same atmosphere. In the first part, this type of poem does not occur. The hardness of tone, typical of New Poems as a whole, is more evident in the second part. Rilke himself realized the difference between the two parts, but obviously in another light.
