ABSTRACT
The gradual development of Rilke's poetry from its youthful mediocrity to the virtuoso craftmanship of the Netie Gedichte is testament to his instinct for improvement. This is more than mere banality: that the young Rilke intuited his artistic limitations becomes apparent again and again in all the early imagery of 'Sehnsucht', of self-conscious 'Anfängertum' and the constant oscillation between patience and impatience that attends his gradual growth. In formulating some conclusions to this study of Rilke s formative interest in processes of 'Werden', it will be useful to contrast what changes over the course of his development with what does not. His style in the Neue Gedichte is so obviously different to that of the earliest collections, from Leben und Lieder and Larenopfer onwards, that is it at times hard to consider them as deriving from the same pen — and yet it is precisely these differences that highlight the latent continuities. The two parts of this book have thus aimed to juxtapose Rilke's own ' Werden' with its manifestations in his poetry, for it is this comparison that shows how his development is determined by this preoccupation with becoming. As the aesthetic settles, so the patterns of process persist and develop.
