ABSTRACT
“Autumn” opens with an exemplary expression of gentle regret in the very muted lament, “The leaves are falling”. That final realization would not have come without the initial utterance, “the leaves are falling,” a phrase that presents itself like the gesture of an open hand awaiting what would fall into them. What falls into them is a veritable phenomenology of falling. The space into which the leaves are falling is immense, it originates in the heavens—or, which amounts to the same, in the destiny of seeds to rise eternally into leaves and blossoms and from there eternally to fade and to wilt and to rot. Falling in Rilke’s poem is cosmic. There is a faint, one might say Stevensian, note of fictional projection in the phrase “as if from distant gardens,” perhaps to signal that there is no heavenly exemption from this universal law of falling and wilting, otherwise the poem is replete with simple observation.
