ABSTRACT
Formative spiritual or aesthetic experiences are to be acquired gently, Rilke insists, “admitted and loved rather than interrogated and used”. The power and persistence of the secret, Rilke implies, is accomplished not in its revelation but in the internalizing and the ongoing bodily and mental communication with it. But the most secretive aspect of Rilke’s poetry is that the secret presents itself in the form precisely of a visible thing: a panther, a swan, a flower, a beggar. A panther is a secret kept in a poem of that title. A swan is a secret kept in a poem of that title. A flower is a secret on a garden table, gently handled by girls. A beggar is a secret behind his hands. In Rilke’s poems, the visible thing is converted into the invisible in that it is waiting to be known, found, seen, heard, written, read, spoken.
