ABSTRACT
If the Neue Gediclite can be said to form a less heterogeneous collection than the Buch der Bilder, then this is thanks more to a unity of style than subject-matter. The standard critical notion of the 'Dinggedicht', born of this attentive humility, would seem to suggest an aesthetics of stasis, yet the poems are far more verbal than substantive, teeming with dynamic motion internalized to the point of self-sufficiency. Brigitte Bradley's statement that 'Apollo in einen Werdegang einbezogen und sozusagen vermenschlicht wird' suggests the common cause of the initial group of poems. The process of negation is part of a wider project of self-contradiction and inversion. One of Rilke's favourite techniques is to subvert conventional subjectobject expectations by inverting the relationship, so that cause and effect become conflated into 'reine Bewegung': the ball becomes the subject and 'den Wurf' the object.
