ABSTRACT
There is a rich poetic tradition of granting agency to sculptural works. One of the most celebrated examples comes from early in the twentieth century with the sonnet 'Archaic Torso of Apollo' by the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke. At Meudon, the prosopopoeia articulates the remarkable communication between ancient and modern sculpture across a temporal and cultural chasm. In the sonnet, that communicative force has been directed over the same gulf but this time towards a viewer. In the sonnet, the agency of an object transcends its historical origins. Rilke is suggesting that the modern viewer can still be provoked by the powerful agency possessed by this torso even though it is now dislocated in time and space from the cultural environment that gave it birth. There are many routes through the issues but Rilke offers one possible point of departure if people follow him to the source of his imagery.
