ABSTRACT
Rilke’s aversion to commitment is grounded, at least philosophically, in the impossibility of owning or keeping or knowing. Such impossibility is poignantly exemplified in the beloved, “the one/lost in advance, the one who never arrived” and whom the speaker predictably glimpses in every bend in the alley, every open window, every reflection in shop windows. Not surprisingly, in one of Rilke’s most erotic poems, composed in seven short stanzas and written in 1915, the tree arises again and begs to be poured into the lap of the beloved whom Rilke gauchely but conveniently addresses as “Schwindende”, “vanishing one.” While his gentleness is always sensuous, while he mostly invokes lovers in mutual correspondences, Rilke’s erotic allusions and on other occasions stereotype women and predicate them as conventionally objectified and disposable. What is disposable must first be a possession.
