ABSTRACT
The consolatory power of things to substitute for parental, amorous, or social disappointment held fast for Rilke throughout his life. Almost two decades later, in a letter to Ilse Jahr on 2 December 1922, Rilke confirms simply, “The world begins with things”. Blanchot mentions Rilke’s “unfailing fondness for things,” for their “humble, silent, grave obedience to the pure gravity of forces”. “[I]t is perhaps nothing but attentiveness,” Rilke explains to Clara about his visit to the Louvre, “it is this that one must sometime be able to do. Not to wait (as has happened until now) for the strong things and the good days to make something like that out of one”. Neither the dead nor the angels, neither a panther nor a blue hydrangea nor an archaic torso of Apollo come to one who merely waits for the muse. For Rilke attentiveness amounts to a poetics. It is neither intrusive nor possessive nor romantic.
