MODERN EVIDENCE
Rudolf Kassner
RAINER MARIA RILKE : A RE MINISCENCE *
June,
1914-
We were both guests at Duino, the castle on the
Adriatic Sea where Rilke had written the first of his
Duino Elegies
three years earlier. (Since then the castle has been destroyed by
Italian shells and rebuilt by its owner.) One afternoon, in the so–
called "game-park," a walled-in reseIVation of very old oak trees
and laurel bushes from whose branches a wild dove rose now and
then, we came to speak of Christ-of Christ the god-man and me–
diator rather than the anguished heroic figure of the gospel. What
Rilke told me then seemed to me characteristic of him. He said he
did not want a mediator between himself and God; he was unable
to understand such a mediator, who would only prevent him from
acknowledging God and from a pproaching Him. Christ, he felt, was
in
his way....
One of his poems deals with J esus Christ: "The Garden of
Olives" (in the "New Poems") :
Ich bi:n allein mit aller M enschen Gram,
den Ich durch Dich zu lindern un ternahm,
der Du nicht bist.
0
namenlose Scham.
. . .
(I am alone with all the sorrow of mankind,
That 1 set out to soothe through Thee,
Thou who art not; 0 bitter, wordless shame. ... )
Yes, he could love this disillusioned and doubting Jesus whose "fore–
head was covered with dust"; but not the one whom the apostle calls
the king of life, not Him who became lord and master through His
sacrifice.
Rilke wanted only the Father. Rilke's world was in every respect
*
This is an excerpt from
Narciss, oder M ythos und Einbildungskraft.
The
author is well known to German readers for his writing dealing in a poetical–
mystical manner with problems of art and metaphysics.
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