R. M. Rilkes „Alkestis“ (English shop)

Dichterische Sprache als sich selbst bewahrheitendes „Versprechen“ von Seinshaftigkeit

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This study characterises Rilke, early on apostrophised as the “poet of Being”, as a ‘poet of poetry’, in that he celebrates poetry as a force that founds Being and the unity of existence—in the poem “Alkestis” as in all his poetic texts—and shows it in its existential effect.

His starting point is the dualism that shapes Western intellectual history: on the one hand a rational consciousness with its unambiguous conceptuality, which posits and distinguishes things positively, and the language of practical communication; on the other a holistic consciousness that manifests itself in the imagery of poetic speech.

Since in the latter things appear as images, the one within the other, its elements acquire determinacy only within the context of a text or of an author’s oeuvre as a whole. For the method of the study, consistent and extensive textual comparison follows from this.

The individual poem, here “Alkestis”, thus placed in relation to texts from the most diverse phases of Rilke’s creative work, appears interpreted out of the breadth of his oeuvre as a whole and of its unity.