ABSTRACT
It is not the hand that seizes or grasps but the hand that receives, touches, arranges, extends itself to another; above all, it is the hand turned up, the hand that maps the streets of heaven and whose mapping is to serve as invitation and welcoming. In one of his late poems, “Handinneres,” composed in 1924, Rilke ponders the palm of the hand: Inside of the hand. Sole that no longer walks but on feeling. That holds itself open as a mirror receiving wandering heavenly streets. That has learned to walk on water when it scoops, walking to fountains, transforms all paths. That enters other hands, turning them into landscapes: walks and arrives in them, fills them with arrival. (964) Open to spiritual intimations, transformative, communicative, erotic, sensuous, the palm of the hand holds the motifs and themes of Rilke’s work. The open gesture of the hand signals the gentleness by which Rilke’s poetry moves by feeling, walks on water, scoops, transforms, enters, arrives.
