ABSTRACT

Another poem entitled “Herbst” “Autumn” is among these late pieces and exemplifies by comparison to the earlier “Autumn” and “Day in Autumn” the muted melody of Rainer Maria Rilke’s late poetry: Oh, tall tree of gazing, dropping its leaves: now it is to measure up to the amplitude of heaven that breaks through its branches. Filled with summer, it seemed deep and dense almost thinking us, a trusted head. Now his entire inwardness becomes a street of heaven. And heaven does not know us. An uttermost: that we throw ourselves like bird flight through the newly open, that spurns us with the right of space that deals with worlds only. An excerpt from a short poem written in Bad Ragaz in July 1924 offers a concise gloss on the homesickness in the tree’s empty branches: There is no return. Everything lifts us away, and the late open house stays empty.