1

Rilkes The Life of the Virgin Mary

in a Process Philosophy Perspective
Robert E. Doud
In his book of poems, The Life of the Virgin Mary (Das Marienleben),1 Rainer Maria
Rilke (1875-1926) presents an imaginative elaboration of events in the life of Mary, the
mother of Jesus. These poems also illustrate the unique poetic theory of Rilke, which,
while not as systematic as philosophical thought, is shown in this article to resemble the
basic pattern of thought in the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. The Life of the
Virgin Mary also anticipates in striking ways Rilkes more highly regarded poems, the
Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus.
This article is an attempt to bring out certain aspects of Rilkes achievement by
comparing them to notions developed in the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead.
Whitehead constructs an idea of a God who interacts intimately and constantly with the
universe. While Whiteheads idea of God is not that of a creator in the usual sense,
Whiteheads God is a redeemer who rescues all achieved value from the ever perishing
universe. The aspect of God that does all the rescuing is called by Whitehead the
consequent nature of God. This article claims that, in order to understand Whiteheads
philosophy in Rilkes terms, we would also have to posit or speak of a consequent nature
of Mary.
Whiteheads process philosophy works on two levels; with the whole universe moving
forward in cosmic evolution, and with the microscopic process by which infinitesimal
items of actuality develop. Whiteheads philosophy is based on a cosmological scheme2
in which all the items of ordinary experience are composed of myriads of miniscule
actual entities,3 which are miniature processes, without duration, that involve primitive
mentality and subjectivity. These actual entities arise, perish, and are preserved in
successor actual entities, according to a metaphysical process called concrescence.4 There
are striking similarities between five focal aspects of Rilkes poetry generally and my
revised five-phased version of the structure of concrescence as found in Whitehead. The

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five focal phases in all of Rilkes poetry comprise a poetics that is exemplified in his Life
of the Virgin Mary.
The main correspondence discovered here is between Marys inner temple or Cosmic
Inner Space (Weltinnenraum)5 in Rilke, and Whiteheads process of concrescence,
especially in its second or process phase, which is characterized by the activity of
prehension. Prehension6 is the term applied by Whitehead to the way in which an earlier
actual entity is drawn into and becomes a constituent in a later actual entity. The internal
phases of concrescence, including the process phase with its multitudinous prehensions,
and the satisfaction phase, correspond to Rilkes Cosmic Inner Space. In the context of
this article and of Das Marienleben, the internal stages of concrescence, insofar as they
imply a space where concrescence takes place, comprise Marys inner temple. In
discussions of Rilkes poetry generally, there is reference to an inner maiden (inneres
Mdchen) which might be called, in the case of Mary, her inner temple.
This article contains many reflections on the nature of poetry, including Rilkes
poetics of Weltinnenraum, according to which poets are bees of the invisible,7 who give
external things an everlasting value by bringing them into themselves for preservation.
Weltinnenraum suggests that the beauty of the environment converges vector-like upon
the poet and contributes greatly to the constitution of the being of the poet when taken
within. Out of these converging elements, like bees approaching a hive, are distilled
values that blend into the pure concentrate of beauty itself. Often, Rilke condenses these
elements of value and beauty that are deposited in the male psyche into images of the
various women mentioned in his poetry. The mental space in which what is extracted
from these combined bearers of beauty is contained is the inner Maiden, or inneres
Mdchen.8
There are five themes in the Marienleben that emerge as important over the entire
career of the poet. These themes are approximately congruent with the revised fivefold
structure of the concrescing actual entitiy that I have adapted from the fourfold structure
offered by Whitehead in Process and Reality. The five themes I find as prevalent in Rilke
work together to provide an overarching poetics for all of his work. These themes are: (1)

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women as sources and symbols of beauty, (2) distilled beauty and the inneres Mdchen,
(3) the Open as exuberant existence (berzhliges Dasein), (4) death as decisive selfcompletion, and (5) praise (Rhmung) or song (Gesang). These five aspects of Rilkes
thought and poetic project, each understood in relation to the others, show the emergent
overall structure of his poetics. Other themes of the Marienleben included in this critical
appreciation are: pregnancy, angels, close relationships, giving birth, the apostles, the
temple, sorrows, heart turning to stone, missing ones beloved, transformation after death,
and enthronement.
i. Whiteheads Philosophy of Process
Before beginning critical interpretation of Rilkes The Life of the Virgin Mary, the
main metaphysical concepts of Whiteheads cosmology should be explained. These are
the elements that are used here as if they were also principles in a theory of poetry,
corresponding to, and working together as a heuristic device for elucidating the basic
ideas behind the poetry of Rilke. Indeed, each poem is treated here as a concrescence and
as having, at least implicitly, a constitution composed of the five stages of concrescence.
Whiteheads philosophy views the entire universe as a dynamic and organic process of
perpetual becoming. This is true of the universe as a whole, and it is true of every
microscopic particle of process within the universe. The most basic particle of process,
microscopic and without endurance, is called the actual entity.9 Each actual entity enjoys
an immanent satisfaction,10 with at least primitive traces of subjectivity and mentality.
The actual entity perishes immediately, but passes on a legacy or inheritance to the
universe of novel actual entities that succeed it. Each actual entitys process of becoming
is called its concrescence.
The ultimate particle of actuality is the actual entity, which is also the most basic
instance of becoming. Every present actual entity, while original in its own right, is made
up of past actual entities. In every act of concrescence a myriad of past actual entities
flow in upon a newly forming actual entity and grow together into a novel arrangement of
all that they contain. Each new actual entity or actual occasion enjoys a flash of
mentality, affectivity, and subjectivity that is all its own, before it becomes a datum to be

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inherited, not by one or just a few, but by a countless number of new actual entities that
succeed it. Because every actual entity is freighted with intentions and influences for
future actual entities beyond itself, it is called a superject.11
In Process and Reality, according to Whitehead, the four stages of concrescence are:
datum, process, satisfaction, and decision. At different points in his considerable corpus
of writing, Whitehead considers the final stage of concrescence to be the satisfaction, the
decision,12 or the anticipation.13 I consider it helpful, and quite consistent with
Whiteheads intentions, to speak of five distinct stages of concrescence, which correlate
respectively with the five basic themes in Rilkes poetry. These five stages of
concrescence are: (1) datum, (2) process, (3) satisfaction, (4) decision, and (5)
anticipation. The datum and anticipation stages are external or public stages. The internal
and private stages are process, satisfaction, and decision.
In the datum stage, the myriad actual entities of the actual world14 of a newly forming
actual entity converge upon it as data to be prehended. In the process stage, 15 the new
entity takes possession of all of its contributors as they coalesce within it. In the process
stage, the novel occasion then arranges these data by the category Whitehead calls
prehension16 into a coordinated team of immanent self-donors. Here, each prehended
actual entity is assigned a value and a place as it enters into the real internal composition
of the new actual entity.
The third stage is one of satisfaction, self-feeling or self-enjoyment. 17 This stage
involves transcendence over the world that has coalesced to create it, as the actual entity
achieves private subjective immediacy. Whitehead treats satisfaction as a final, external,
and public stage of concrescence, whereas I treat satisfaction as a self-feeling that is
internal and private. Whitehead closely coordinates the stage of satisfaction with the
actual entity as superject,18 whereas I regard satisfaction as a stage of inwardness and
private subjectivity. The fine delight associated with poetry requires an inner stage of
satisfaction that precedes and transcends public involvement. Every actual entity enjoys
its satisfaction as an inner phase of at least minimal subjectivity and intimate privacy.

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The fourth stage is the decision stage,19 still an internal and private phase, in which the
actual entity cuts itself off from its constituents and cuts off its internal pulse of selfrealization as well. The decision stage supplies the discipline by which the actual entity
denies itself endurance. The decision stage is in this sense the death of the actual entity,
an active self-completion and consent to perishing. The fifth or anticipation stage is the
actual entitys preparation for entrance as a datum, that is, as a publicly traded ingredient,
into the constitution of successor actual entities. In my revised Whiteheadian view, it is
the anticipation stage that is to be closely coordinated with the superjective nature of the
actual entity.
A Whiteheadian framework has not been often or widely exploited for doing literary
criticism. If used as a lens through which to look while enjoying literature, it brings to
light elements that may be missed, or whose full impact may be missed, if this lens were
not used. This scheme of Whiteheads corresponds in remarkable ways with the chief
factors in the poetics and literary program of Rilke. Rilke has five poetic themes or
concerns that can be understood and interpreted by comparing them in sequence with the
five Whiteheadian phases of concrescence as suggested above.
ii. Rilkes Concerns and Whiteheads Stages
The stages of concrescence, while logically successive, are co-equally immediate and
non-temporal; the entire actual entity perishes as soon as it occurs. Working in close
association with the subjective aim,20 the satisfaction stage,21 although it is the third stage,
is present with the first two stages or phases, and has a guiding influence over them. The
satisfaction stage guides the ways in which the novel actual entity prehends and values its
data occasions. Accordingly, the subjective aim assigns the subjective forms22 to the
multifarious data. Concrescence begins when an initial aim,23 or lure for feeling, is
supplied by God.24 This inaugurates the spontaneity of the new actual entity, as this initial
aim develops into the subjective aim, thus allowing the actual entity to become at atom of
decision, determining many things about itself.
To the datum phase in concrescence corresponds Rilkes concern with the many
women25 who served as Muses and inspirations for his poetic work. These women stand

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for all the other items of beauty as well as themselves in providing data for concrescence.
These are distilled into one idealized female figure, the Madonna Lisa26 or the Inner
Maiden (inneres Mdchen), who serves as a unifying feature in the second or process
stage. Thus the various data, prehended in terms of respect for their beauty, converge and
rush in upon that in terms of which they are prehended, the Inner Maiden or inneres
Mdchen. The inner space in which this occurs is Rilkes Inner Cosmic Space or
Weltinnenraum. The Inner Maiden also entails a specific set of eternal objects,27 which
serve as a lures for feeling28 supplied by God for the attraction and organization of
relevant data.
The third great concern in Rilkes poetics is that of the Open or das Offene,29 as he
presents it in The Eighth Elegy of the Duino Elegies. The Open corresponds to an
exalted satisfaction phase, one of pure subjective immediacy, which Rilke takes to be an
undifferentiated consciousness in which the thrill of existence belongs to the subject of
experience without distinguishing itself from other objects or from the environment in
general. This aesthetic satisfaction, analogous to the contentedness of a grazing calf in a
pasture, is further explicated by Rilke as exuberant existence or superabundant being
(berzhliges Dasein), as found in his poem,The Ninth Elegy. Analogous to the
experience of an animal that is less than rational, this experience in the human domain is
irrational in the sense of being superrational, or more than rational. While all poetry
might aspire to experience the Open, it is to be assumed that such an experience is quite
rare.
Rilkes fourth stage is that of death in the sense of completion, culmination, and
consummation. For Rilke, death is in one sense an abiding reality, and indeed is ever
present seminally within each person,30 growing inwardly until it blossoms entirely and
reveals itself to be the persons true self. Permeating all of his other concerns is Rilkes
desire for an authentic death, a decisive death, a death on ones own terms (der eigne
Tod),31 which alone is the key to a genuine human existence in this world. Death is not
mere perishing for Rilke, it is also the final seal of victory and triumph. Marys death
serves as a supreme example of authentic and triumphant death. Another such glorious
death is assigned by Rilke later in his career to Orpheus in his Sonnets to Orpheus.

Rilkes fifth stage corresponds to the figure of Orpheus as he lingers post mortem in
the Sonnets to Orpheus. Here Orpheus remains as present after and beyond death, as a
fragrance sweetening all things. This state of being is called death in Eurydice, 32
referring to his surviving presence in his beloved after his death. Prehended by Eurydice
and by all succeeding actual entities, Orpheus has become song: Singing is his bliss
(Gesang ist Dasein).33 In Whiteheadian terms, Orpheus has become a universal, allpervading superject. Orpheus represents the anticipation of ones influence in all that
comes after, and a life of ones own as continued in beings (actual entities) which succeed
oneself. Rilkes achievement in the Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus, in terms
of content, if not in terms of equally eloquent expression, is wholly anticipated in the
Marienleben.
A final notion of Whiteheads that will be necessary to a full explication of the
Marienleben is that of the divine consequent nature.34 In Whitehead, God has two
natures, the primordial nature, and the consequent nature. In virtue of the primordial
nature, God supplies initial aims as instigations that begin the creative process of
concrescence for all non-divine actual entities. In virtue of the consequent nature, God
absorbs into the divine actual entity or living person35 all the perfections achieved by all
other entities, rendering them objectively immortal.36 In Whitehead, actual entities lose
their subjectivity when they become objectively immortal. In faithfulness to what is
contained in the Marienleben, we describe Mary beyond death as enjoying superabundant
existence and continuing subjectivity, while finding her own place in the human Christs
concrescence, which is seated in turn in the concrescence of God.
iii. How This Analysis Proceeds
The Life of the Virgin Mary contains five main themes that epitomize the five phases
in the concrescence of an actual entity. There is, first to be noted, the theme of
convergence of data, as when in one poem the heavenly host of angels gathers and
convenes over the house of Joachim and Ann, where Mary is about to be born. 37 This first
theme coincides with and exemplifies the datum stage38 of Whiteheads concrescence.
Secondly, there is a theme of coalescence of data, as when in another poem, Mary is

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presented in the temple.39 The outer trappings of the glorious temple in Jerusalem are
drawn into Mary and form in her an inner temple. What has converged from without
coalesces within in a process of incorporation, which coincides with Whiteheads
doctrine of prehension and his process phase of concrescence.
The third theme is that of inner satisfaction, an intense feeling of ones own inner
being, as in the scene of the Annunciation of the Shepherds. 40 Marys inward
satisfaction is her enjoyment of her inwardness or inner lovingness (Innigkeit), in her
inner temple, self-constructed through the process of concrescence. This satisfaction is
Marys inner experience of exuberant expansiveness, which, in the Duino Elegies will be
called berzhliges Dasein. The fourth or decision stage is not portrayed in the
Annunciation of the Shepherds; it will be illustrated in other poems. Indeed, the
satisfaction stage is barely portrayed, as Rilke hurries on to portray the fifth or
anticipation stage.
In the Annunciation of the Shepherds, the angel presents himself as the exterior
projection or manifestation of Marys inwardness. The angel represents Mary more as a
superject than as subject. In this poem, the angel reveals that he is the appearance of
Marys inwardness (Innigkeit).41 Her inwardness is private and belongs to Mary alone.
The angel is not this inwardness, but is the outer manifestation of her inwardness. The
angel represents the making public and exterior of that which is originally private and
interior. The angel, as outer manifestation or exterior projection, belongs to the fifth or
anticipation stage of concrescence.
. . . My whole being burns
and shines so strongly and is so immensely
full of light that the deep firmament
no longer suffices for me . . .
The angel, at first a projection of Marys inwardness, now experiences himself to be a
new rising star, brimming with light and being, but he still claims that he emanates from
Mary!

. . . I am the shine
of her lovingness (Innigkeit), that goes with you.42
Herter Norton translates Innigkeit, not as inwardness, as Leishman does, but instead as
lovingness. In either case, it is the inner being of Mary that superabundantly gushes out to
illumine and guide the shepherds. For Rilke, this emanating inwardness also anticipates
the mission of Orpheus, who comes in poems published ten years later in the poets
career. As the angel, Marys inwardness becomes an outward manifestation, and takes on
an independent aspect that is the subject of its own experience, which is separate from
Marys experience.
The fifth theme in Rilkes poetry generally is anticipation, one that coincides with the
fifth stage of concrescence in my revised Whiteheadian treatment of concrescence. An air
or aura of expectation suffuses the entire work, The Life of the Virgin Mary. Even after
Christs heavenly enthronement, there is an eager expectation of the arrival and
enthronement of Mary. Throughout the book, each poem anticipates the next, and, while
each poem represents a concrescence or series of tightly woven concrescences in its own
right, each poem also marks a decisive moment in a movement toward a completeness
that will follow them all.
There is a sixth major theme in Rilke that is not one of the five offered by Whitehead
in his theory of concrescence as revised here. It is, however, wholly compatible with
Whiteheadian metaphysics. This is the theme of intimacy (Vertraulichkeit),43 and it is not
wholly explained by referring to the process stage, the second stage of concrescence, in
which all the converging data coalesce internally to form a new actual entity. Intimacy
involves two stages; the process stage for prehensive inwardness, and the satisfaction
stage for mutual and simultaneous shared delight or sorrow. Intimacy implies a resonance
and affinity between the satisfaction phases of two simultaneously concrescing actual
entities.
Perhaps because of the exceptional sanctity and purity of Mary and the angel, they are
each capable of an intimacy that exceeds the capability of ordinary humans. Feeling the

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sudden full force of this intimacy was frightening both to Mary and to the angel. This
kind of intimacy involves a resonance or attunement between the satisfaction stages of
two separate dominant occasions. The intensity of satisfaction in one of the satisfactions
in question has altogether to do with the intensity of satisfaction in the actual entity with
whom it is intimate. In the Annunciation to Mary 44 poem, her experience of shock
(erschreckte sie), a satisfaction of a sort, is a function of her encounter with the angel.
The meeting of their eyes occasions an intimacy that shocks and startles both of them.
With this said and taken account of, it is important not to miss another inner feeling of
satisfaction of Mary that takes place early in the poem, Annunciation to Mary. When
the angel first entered, Mary was not afraid of him, but she was filled with indignation
(sich zu entrsten) at the form in which the angel came. He had assumed a young mans
face, and he stared immediately into her eyes. The fright came later, but at first there was
indignation or resistance, something that affirms in the poem, not only the modesty and
purity, but also the autonomy and self-preserving dignity of Mary as a woman.
Also in this poem, Rilke uses the legendary image of the unicorn begetting itself in the
womb of the hind, as the hind gazes on Mary in her fantastic purity. It is as if something
is begetting itself in the womb of Mary, as she gazes with total rapture into the face of the
absolutely pure angelic being. Something creates itself in the circumstance of the purest
intimacy between the purest of beings, one from each of the two realms, the heavenly and
the earthly. It is to be hoped in this instance that this heightening separately of human
intimacy and angelic purity does not obscure the importance of virginity as a symbol of
Marys autonomy. As Anne Carr points out, The doctrine of the virgin-birth, for
example, indicates that a woman need not be totally defined by her relationships with
men, that virginity can be a symbol of integral female autonomy. 45 Intimacy with the
angel, while interesting, especially to the male poet, is not as important as the inviolate
autonomy of Mary.
In the Sonnets to Orpheus, the unicorn is a reference to Orpheus himself, with his
mirror-like power of drawing all things into himself, and adding to their beauty by his
mystical power. Everything beautiful is thus transformed into music or poetry, and thus

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gains everlastingness as the song (Gesang) of Orpheus. Rilke is aware that Orpheus is
indeed often an androgynous figure in mythology, one who combines both male and
female aspects, such as strength and gentleness. In ancient Christian art, such as in the
catacomb of St. Domatilla, Christ is depicted as Orpheus. Rilke was enthralled with the
depiction of the virgin and the unicorn in the Unicorn Tapestries which are now at the
Cluny Museum in Paris. To a Whiteheadian, the unicorn might suggest both prehension
and transformation.
iii. Further Analysis of The Life of the Virgin Mary
The Visitation of the Virgin 46 depicts a scene arranged like a concrescence. First,
there is the outer abundance of the surrounding land as Mary climbs in the hills of Judea.
This abundance corresponds to the data flowing in to begin the composition of an actual
entity. Second, there is her inner abundance and fullness as an expectant mother. This
resembles the inner space created by the process of prehension in the second stage of
concrescence. Third, there are satisfactory experiences of bigness (die Grsse), and of
power, which refer to her own receptive capacity and to Gods presence in her. The initial
aim is suggested by her feeling that the power within her is not originally her own.
Fourth, as she walks, she anticipates the intimate moment of touching her cousin
Elizabeth with her hands:
And she craved to lay her hand
on the other body, that was further on.
And the women swayed towards one another
and touched each others dress and hair,
The entire poem is filled with an atmosphere of expectation. The intimacy of the two
women is mirrored in the genuine encounter between the unborn babies they bear:
Ah, the Savior in her was still flower,
though the Baptist in her cousins womb
already leapt in transports of joy.

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This poem, as also the preceding one, cries out for a metaphysics of intimacy, evoking
comparison with Whiteheads doctrine of prehension. Prehension explains how one
datum enters the constitution of another datum. By prehension, the environment,
including personal encounters, enters into the constitution of a newly concrescing actual
entity. What the poem describes here are actual entities of one person as they are
incorporated into the real internal make-up of another person. This involves a general
metaphysics of internal relations, that is, of new actual entities constituting themselves by
taking into themselves the already realized actualities of their actual worlds. This entails a
metaphysics of both inwardness (Innigkeit) and intimacy (Vertrautheit).
In The Visitation of the Virgin, we also have persons absorbing internally the
influences of other persons. In process philosophy, the realized occasions of one personal
existence enter into the composition of new occasions of another persons existence. This
provides a metaphysics of intimacy in which, even the satisfaction stage of each
successive occasion, private as it is, is enjoyed entirely in function of the intimacy
achieved in the earlier process stage of its concrescence. Each of the two women, filled
with holiness (Jede, voll von ihrem Heiligtume . . .) enjoys superabundant exuberance
in virtue of her encounter with her cousin, rejoicing together, each reenacting within
herself the joy of the other. Earlier in the poem, it says of Mary: no one could exceed the
expansive power [die Grsse] that she now experienced.
Before the Passion 47 is the poem in which Mary as woman of faith challenges the
plan of God. Her questioning or resistance shows the freedom humans experience as the
initial aim supplied by God is converted into an authentic subjective aim. Mary now
realizes what her sons mission and destiny will be. Why should God have chosen this
pure and sensitive woman as mother and companion in the life of the savior, if his destiny
is to be torn apart by tigers? It seems in the poem as if God prepares us for one thing,
and then sends another thing our way; you have suddenly turned nature around. Not in
reference to this poem, but helpful in interpreting it, is Anne Carrs agreement with
Dorothy Soelle in seeing Mary as a role model of resistance and a symbol that cannot be
surrendered. Women who have loved Mary have not been blind or duped.48

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Saviors should by right be quarried from mountains. If they are to have such harsh
treatment, they should be made of tougher stuff, and so, a fortiori, should their mothers.
These lines anticipate the Pieta49 scene in a later poem, one in which Mary is depicted
as turned to stone. It also reaches back brilliantly to the Presentation of Mary in the
Temple poem and scene, where Marys inner space was filled with stone, as the temple
of Jerusalem became the inner temple of her heart. Her heart is ever being built into a
temple, but, in the process, it seems that, and feels like, she is being changed to stone. A
Whiteheadian thinks here that even a stone, in its very obduracy, is made of actual
entities with minimal traces of mentality and subjectivity. A temple may indeed be built
of stone, but it is beautiful and it encloses a sacred inner space.
Previously, in the Presentation scene, Rilke spoke of the huge curtain covering the
Holy of Holies, behind which Mary catches a glimpse. Here, in Before the Passion, she
is presented as weaving the seamless garment Jesus will wear to his death. According to
this poem, she was brought up in the womans room in order to weave this garment. The
womans room is another reference to her inner space, and to the ruminating and
memory-building that goes on within her. It is suggested that there is a parallel or striking
comparison between the great veil of the temple and the seamless cloak of Jesus.
There is also a close analogy here between the holy of holies in the temple of
Jerusalem and the inner space of Mary. This is an inner cosmic space in which all the
beauty and holiness of the universe is gathered into unity. Here is a kind of pregnancy or
increasing fullness that was not finished with the birth of her son; the knitting within her
of the flesh and tissue of the incarnation goes on within her all of her life. If we can think
now, as we do later, of a consequent nature of Mary, we can conceive of her as lovingly
incorporating aspects of our own lives and experiences into her most authentic and
intimate constitution.
Anticipation, indeed, suspense, has been building through all of the poems so far.
Suddenly, in the Pieta poem it comes to a climax. Perhaps Rilke is thinking of a block
of marble, or of Michelangelos sculpture when he writes: Rigid am I, as stone at the
stones core. In any case, Mary has suffered so much that it seems she cannot suffer any

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more. The absolute in grief has been reached; her heart feels as if it had been turned to
stone. It is as if in her process phase she were prehending the hardness of all of her bitter
experiences, and distilling out of all of them the accumulated hardness or numbness of
her own heart. The birthing process is over: now you lie right across my womb, / now I
can nevermore / give birth to you. Any joy she had has been for the moment transformed
into sorrow: into a grief so large, it is beyond my heart to grasp . . .
The poem Consolation of Mary with Christ Arisen 50 builds upon the solidarity, even
unto death, which was built up between Mary and Jesus in the previous poem. Because
she shares most intensely in his death, she shares ever so intensely in his resurrection. He
goes to her first, the poet insists. She is, and must be, to Rilke, the first witness of the
resurrection. Accordingly, she is the first to know about her redemption, and is, in this
sense, the first Christian. What happened between them is presented as the sweetest of
secrets. Whatever it was, it is not reported in the gospels, and is not a matter of public
revelation. The gospel leaves this beautiful secret to the imaginations of poets and other
Christians in later times. This poem is an exquisite testimony to the unique and privileged
intimacy obtaining between this mother and this son.
When Mary becomes a rock or stone, hardened through suffering in the Pieta scene,
we might think of her as the primal mother of all, even of the earth itself. Ancient
peoples, and some modern pagans and aboriginals as well, worship the earth as mother. If
Mary is in some sense identical with the earth, then Jesus, when entombed, returns to her
body. Easter then becomes a second birthing event. Interpreted in another way, Easter is
an event of the communing of Jesus and Mary, with the themes of reunion and
consolation ascendant over everything else:
And they began,
still as the trees in Spring,
infinitely together,
this season
of their ultimate communing.

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Of the Death of Mary 51 is the thirteenth and last poem of the cycle or sequence. It
has three parts. Marys death epitomizes for Rilke the ideal of an authentic death (der
eigene Tod), which is arguably the central theme in all of his work, and perhaps the main
reason for the interest of the philosopher Martin Heidegger 52 in Rilkes poetry. Marys
death follows the pattern of her life. Concrescence itself best expresses what this pattern
is. In the poem, the occasion of her dying gathers the disciples together. They converge
and coalesce into the space of the Upper Room, which is another cipher for Marys inner
temple, which is in turn a cipher for Rilkes cherished Weltinnenraum, or again, the inner
Maiden who is the distillation of beauty and purity in all its sources.
The angel of the Annunciation comes again before Marys death, and sends for the
disciples who are scattered far and wide to climb once more together that sloped way /
to the Last Supper House. The room of the Last Supper and of Pentecost is her Inner
Cosmic Space: All stepped inside. The intimacy of the connection between Mary and
the church has not been more strongly expressed in all of literature. Another gathering
has also been going on: the angels are present singing, and they are holding candles.
She departs, the poem says, from both of these gatherings: and gave away / both of
her dresses, gave them with all her heart . . . Her death is one of decisive self-giving.
The giving away of the two dresses refer, not only to her simple poverty and generosity,
but also to the two groups, the apostles and the angels, from which she departs. As the
poem has it, she does not depart from one to the other; she leaves both behind. Her selffeeling or satisfaction involves her willingness to accept death as private, unique,
decisive, and authentic.
Then she lay back in weakness on her bed
and drew Jerusalem and Heaven so close,
that, when her spirit came to separate,
it had only to stretch a tiny distance.53
Part two of On the Death of Mary is an enthronement scene. It evokes comparison
with Whiteheads notion of the consequent nature of God.54 God has several functions in

16
the metaphysical system of Whitehead, and one of them is to absorb into Gods own
constitution all of the realized perfection of the universe, that is, all actual entities
whatsoever. Nothing is lost to the inner constitution of God, and all events achieve
everlasting relevance and importance in God. The divine consequent nature is the
ultimate inner temple, the supreme ultimate inner space or Weltinnenraum. Gods inner
temple is the place in which Mary is enthroned.
iv. Enthronement, Intimacy, Inner Space
The metaphysics of the relationship between Mary and Jesus in the enthronement
scene is not different from their intimacy in Consolation of Mary with Christ Arisen, or
in any other poem. Their intimacy is a matter of mutual prehension. Moment by moment,
he becomes immanent in her, and she becomes immanent in him. The loving valuations
each gives the other in their second or process stages of concrescence are very high. The
prehensions they have of one another are not the kind of prehensions by which individual
persons prehend the successive actual entities or dominant occasions of their own past
personal life. The valuation she gives to him is that of both mothers love and adoration;
the valuation he affords her is a sons love and veneration that surpasses any given to any
other creature or to all the rest of creation taken together.
Two concrescences are described in Rilkes enthronement scene. The heavenly scene
is first of all the concrescence of Christ. All is arranged about him and within him. Even
so, the seat next to him is empty. Brightness streams from him; these rays represent the
anticipation stages of Christs actual entities, -- his superjects -- given over to be
prehended by the blessed beholders. Mary is introduced as a datum or set of data
prehended by him, along with all the other new souls entering heaven. Once this scene of
Christs heavenly concrescence is established, a new concrescence, that of Mary, is
established and described:
From ambush in her burst out rays so bright,
the angel caught and blinded by them trembled
and cried out in a loud voice: Who is she?55

17
In a glorious concrescence of her own, Mary enters her sons concrescence. Hers fills
up something lacking in his, as symbolized by the empty seat next to him. She is datum,
yet she is fully and personally concrescent, enjoying subjective immediacy:
All watched her. As if feeling: I must be
his longest pain, she leant round anxiously
and gazed: -- and then rushed forward . . .
The empty seat next to Christ might allow of further explanation along Whiteheadian
lines. It might represent the Cosmic Inner Space of Christ, his inneres Mdchen. But,
until Mary arrives to fill it, the prehension in Christ of all the other saints cannot be
complete. She is not only another datum, she is the inneres Mdchen itself. In the Sonnets
to Orpheus, Eurydice56 serves the same function for Orpheus. She is the distillation of the
goodness and purity, the holiness and beauty, of everything else. She is the inner space
and its contents belong to her. She shows purity and beauty to be, not only values
achieved by actual entities and by the things they compose in the world, but also to be the
final distillation of value accumulated from all worldly actualities.
The enthronement of Mary brings about the ultimate togetherness of heaven and earth.
For all of its glory, heaven contains an empty place, as long as it is not one with earth.
The empty tomb below, as in the story of Easter, is matched by the empty seat above.
the empty place showed like a bit of sorrow
a trace of loneliness, like something
he was still enduring, a residue
of earthly time, a dried up canker .57
Where Mary is concerned, however, the emptiness she leaves behind is only apparent,
because she herself represents the earth taken up as earth into heaven. Her motherhood is
the same as the motherhood of the earth. Her suffering heart turned to stone is the stone
that marks the way to glorification, like the stone rolled back beside the empty tomb. The
stone is a sign of contradiction, indicating, on one level, present emptiness, and, on
another level, the anticipation of future fulfillment.

18

Part three of On the Death of Mary conflates the death-resurrection of Mary with
the death-resurrection of Christ, by placing Thomas the Doubter, who is also Thomas the
Twin, at the tomb of Mary. The angel tells Thomas to push the stone at Marys tomb
aside, suggesting that the stone pushed aside gives access to the Doubters heart. The
resurrection scene is one that accents openness, not emptiness. The angels question to
Thomas is: Does your heart wonder / where she is . . .[?] The answer or response is:
Look, she was a little while thereunder
buried like a bag of lavender,
that the earth might have such a fragrance stealing
from each fold as finest cloths are lent.
All thats dead, decayed, (you cant help feeling)
has been stupefied by her sweet scent.58
The answer quoted here is much the same as the one Rilke will give later in his career
to the question of the whereabouts of Orpheus after his death. In one of the Sonnets to
Orpheus, Rilke suggests that Orpheus lingers like the redolence of roses left in a bowl
after the roses themselves have been discarded and gone for several days. 59 Marys
resurrection scene is one in which her yet unrisen body is like a lavender sachet,
sweetening the entire earth. This is extended by Rilke, beyond the putting of the body of
Christ in the earth, to the body of Mary, and to the bodies, by further extension, of all the
just and beloved who are placed in the earths interior. The scent, like the song of
Orpheus, and whatever the scent represents, survives. This poem is a celebration of
belief, and belief is the key to an authentic death. The evidence supporting the belief is
the scent and the song as indication of survival. In the poem, the question spoken by the
angel meets the wonder already in the heart of Thomas, and the result is exuberant faith.

Abstract
Rilkes Life of the Virgin Mary:

19
in a Process Philosophy Perspective
Robert E. Doud
In his book of poems, The Life of the Virgin Mary (Das Marienleben), Rainer Maria
Rilke (1875-1926) presents an imaginative elaboration of events in the life of Mary, the
mother of Jesus. This article is an attempt to bring out certain aspects of Rilkes
achievement by comparing them to notions developed in the philosophy of Alfred North
Whitehead. While Whiteheads idea of God is not that of a creator in the usual sense,
Whiteheads God is a redeemer who rescues all achieved value from the ever perishing
universe. The aspect of God that does all the rescuing is called by Whitehead the
consequent nature of God. This article claims that, in order to understand Whiteheads
philosophy in Rilkes terms, we would also have to posit or speak of a consequent nature
of Mary.
The ideas derived from Rilkes poetry and general poetics that are used in this article
are: women as sources and symbols of beauty, the Inner Maiden in the mind of the poet,
the superabundant existence or inner satisfaction of the poet, authentic death as decisive
self-completion, and the lasting gifts of the poet as praise or song. The Life of the Virgin
Mary anticipates in striking ways Rilkes more highly regarded poems, the Duino Elegies
and the Sonnets to Orpheus. Whiteheads notion of concrescence is explored as a model
for understanding the synthetic connection of key elements in Rilkes theory of poetry.
The notion of mutual prehension is used to explain extraordinary states of intimacy.

20

Rainer Maria Rilke, Translations from the Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. M. D. (Mary

Dow) Herter Norton (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1938) 193-231. Or, see, Rilke, The Life of the
Virgin Mary, trans. C. F. MacIntyre (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1947). Or, Rilke, The
Life of the Virgin Mary, trans. Christine Mc Neill (Dublin, IR: The Dedalus Press, 2003). Or, Rilke, The
Life of the Virgin Mary, trans. Stephen Spender (New York: Philosophical Library, 1951). Or, Rilke,
Pictures of God: Rilkes Religious Poetry Including The Life of the Virgin Mary, trans. Annemarie S.
Kidder (Livonia, MI: First Page Publications, 2005), 27-58.
2

Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, ed. David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne

(New York: The Free Press, 1978), xiv; . . . all constructive thought . . . is dominated by some such
scheme, unacknowledged [perhaps], but no less influential in guiding the imagination.
3

Ibid., 18; Actual entities also termed actual occasions are the final real things of which

the world is made up. There is no going behind actual entities to find anything more real.
4

Ibid., 21; Thus the production of novel togetherness is the ultimate notion embodied in the

term concrescence.
5

Willem Laurens Graff, Rainer Maria Rilke: Creative Anguish of a Modern Poet (Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University, 1956) 32. See also, Alex. Preminger, ed., Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and
Poetics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1965), 319.
6

Whitehead, Process and Reality, 20; Actual entities involve each other by reason of their

prehensions of each other.

7

Rilke, The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. Stephen Mitchell (New York: Vintage

Books, 1984), 316; We are bees of the invisible. We wildly collect the honey of the visible, to store it
in the great golden hive of the invisible.
8

Graff, Rainer Maria Rilke: Creative Anguish of a Modern Poet, 228; In this inner space,

cosmic by its absence of boundaries between life and death, . . . it (death) could go in endless
metamorphoses, side by side with the inner girl [inneres Mdchen] and all the other singulars
distilled out of countless plurals.
9

Whitehead, Process and Reality, 22; That the actual world is a process, and that the process is

the becoming of actual entities. Thus actual entities are creatures; they are also termed actual
occasions.
10

Ibid., 26; the term satisfaction means the one complex fully determinate feeling which is the

completed phase in the process. It seems to me that the idea of satisfaction as fully determinate
feeling should refer to the internal delight in poetry that is intensely private and subjective, and that
the final, superjective, or completed phase in the process should be called the anticipation.

11

Ibid., 289; An actual entity considered in reference to the publicity [objectivity] of things is a

superject; namely, it arises from the publicity which it finds, and it adds itself to the publicity which it
transmits.
12

Ibid., 149-50; The four stages constitutive of an actual entity . . . can be named datum,

process, satisfaction, decision. The decision adds a determinate condition to the settlement for the
future beyond itself.
13

Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas 192; This process [concrescence] can be shortly characterized

as a passage from reenaction to anticipation. In reference to anticipation, Whitehead says: This final
phase [anticipation] is otherwise termed the satisfaction, .

. Revising this identification of

anticipation with satisfaction, I consider the two as separate stages.

14

Whitehead, Process and Reality, 23; The nexus of actual entities in the universe correlate to a

concrescence is termed the actual world correlate to that concrescence.

15

Ibid., 212; The second [process] stage is governed by the private ideal, gradually shaped in the

process itself; whereby the many feelings [prehensions], derivatively felt as alien, are transformed into
a unity of aesthetic appreciation immediately felt as private.
16

Ibid., 19; A prehension reproduces in itself the general characteristics of an [antecedent] actual

entity: it is referent to an external world, and in this sense will be said to have a vector
character; . . .
17

Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, 193; Thus the self-enjoyment of an occasion of experience

[actual entity] is initiated by an enjoyment of the past as alive in itself and is terminated by an
enjoyment of itself as alive in the future. To me, the satisfaction is the present, internal, intrinsic,
aspect of self-enjoyment.
18

Whitehead, Process and Reality, 84; But the satisfaction is the superject, rather than the

substance or the subject.

19

Ibid., 43; The word [decision] is used in its root sense of a cutting off. And, It [decision]

represents stubborn fact that cannot be evaded. Decision cuts off what is actual from what is potential;
it is the same as givenness or determinateness.
20

Ibid., 25; The subjective aim, which controls the becoming of a subject [actual entity], is that

subject feeling a proposition [a lure for feeling] with the subjective form [affective tone] of purpose.
21
22

Ibid., 19; This subjective form is determined by the subjective aim . . .

Ibid., 23; That every prehension consists of three factors: (a) the subject which is

prehending, namely, the actual entity in which that prehension is a concrete element; (b) the datum
which is prehended; (c) the subjective form which is how that subject prehends that datum.

23

Ibid., 67; This initial phase [initial aim] is a direct derivate from Gods primordial nature.

24

Ibid., 108; . . . an initial aim supplied by the ground of all order and of all originality [God].

25

Graff, Rainer Maria Rilke: Creative Anguish of a Modern Poet, passim. Graff provides

references to Lou Andreas Salome, Princess Marie of Thurn and Taxis, Benvenuta, Clara Westhoff
Rilke, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Katharina Kippenberg, Erika Mitterer, Lotte Pritzel, Gasparra Stampa,
Merline, Vera Ouckama Knoop, and Marianne Alcoforado. Graff comments: . . . all living women
must eventually be transformed into the one Madonna Lisa, and all the living girls into the one inner
girl, and all the passing things of this world into Inner Cosmic Space (273).
26

Ibid., 250; To that end Rilke devised his Inner Cosmic Space, where all women were

metamorphosed into the one Madonna Lisa . . .

27

Whitehead, Process and Reality, 23; It [the eternal object] is a pure potential . . . an eternal

object is realized in a particular actual entity, contributing to the definiteness of that actual entity.
28

Ibid., 25; . . . the primary function of a proposition [set of possible relationships between

actual entities and eternal objects] is to be relevant as a lure for feeling. And, This subjective aim
is . . . the lure for feeling (85).
29

Rilke, Duino Elegies, trans. C. F. MacIntyre (Los Angeles: University of California, 1968) 60-

1. See also, Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Alfred Hofstadter (New York: Harper
& Row, 1971) 134-42; . . . man [or woman] who is outside all protection can procure a safety by
turning unshieldedness as such into the Open and transmuting it into the hearts space of the invisible
(136).
30

Rilke, The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, 331; It is conceivable that it [death] is

infinitely closer to us than life itself . . .

31

Graff, Rainer Maria Rilke: Creative Anguish of a Modern Poet, 230; . . . the distinction was

made between our own authentic death (der eigne Tod), and the unauthentic, counterfeit death (der
uneigne Tod) which has become so common in our modern, urbanized society.
32

Rilke, The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, 245. Mitchell translates from Sonnets to

Orpheus thus: Be forever dead in Eurydice more gladly arise / into the seamless life produced in
your song. The Life of Mary was first published in 1913; the Sonnets to Orpheus was published in
1922.
33

Rilke, Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. Robert Bly (New York: Harper & Row,

Publishers, 1981), 187. Bly renders Gesang ist Dasein as To write poetry is to be alive. Singing is
his bliss is my own translation.

34

Whitehead, Process and Reality, 346; The consequent nature of God is his judgment on the

world. He saves the world as it passes into the immediacy of his own life.
35

Ibid., 107; . . . a thread of personal order along some historical route of its members. Such an

enduring entity is a living person.

36

Ibid., 215; It [each actual entity] really experiences a future which must be actual, although

the completed actualities of that future are undetermined. In this sense, each actual occasion
experiences its own objective immortality.
37

Rilke, The Birth of Mary (Geburt Mariae), Translations from the Poetry of Rainer Maria

Rilke, 195.
38

Ibid., 153; . . . the datum [an objectified actual entity], which involves the actual world,

becomes a component in the one [novel] actual entity.

39

Rilke, The Presentation of the Virgin Mary in the Temple (Die Darstellung Mariae im

Tempel), Translations from the Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, 197-8. In this poem, Marys heart or
inner being is described as if it were the inside of a temple. See also, Rilke, The Life of the Virgin Mary,
trans. Christine Mc Neill, 10-11.
40

Rilke, Annunciation of the Shepherds (Verkndigung ber den Hirten), Translations from the

Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, 207-8, or Rilke, The Life of the Virgin Mary, trans. Christine Mc Neill,
15.
41

On inwardness (Innigkeit), see comment by Robert Bly, in Rilke, Selected Poems of Rainer

Maria Rilke, 3; Innigkeit is the German word associated with such poetry, which becomes
inwardness in English; . . . Erich Heller makes an absolute for Rilke out of the ideal of inwardness,
and thus distorts Rilke greatly when he writes: Now external reality has no claims any more to being
real. The only real world [for Rilke] is the world of human inwardness. See, Erich Heller, The Artists
Journey into the Interior and Other Essays (New York: Harcourt Brace, Jovanovitch, Publishers, 1976),
98. Rilke is better interpreted as achieving a dialectic between a grounded Orphic poetics and an
escapist Hermetic poetics.
42

Rilke, Annunciation over the Shepherds, Rainer Maria Rilke: Translations from the Poetry

of Rainer Maria Rilke, 208-9. See also, Rilke, Annunciation of the Shepherds, Selected Works of
Rainer Maria Rilke, volume 2, trans. J. B. Leishman (New York: New Directions, 1960), 216.
43

Rilke, New Poems [1907], trans. Edward Snow (New York: North Point, 1994), 174. In the

poem, Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes, Rilke uses the word Vertraulichkeit for intimacy. Innigkeit is
usually translated, according to context, either as inwardness or intimacy.

44

Rilke, Annunciation to Mary (Mariae Verkndigung), Translations from the Poetry of Rainer

Maria Rilke, 200-1, or Rilke, The Life of the Virgin Mary, trans. C. F. MacIntyre (Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1947), 9, or Rilke, The Life of the Virgin Mary, trans. Christine Mc
Neill, 12.
45

Anne E. Carr, Transforming Grace (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 190. Feminist thinkers

may wish to criticize Requiem, a poem by Rilke for Paula-Modersohn Becker, complaining of her
taking up domestic life rather that pursuing fully her career in art. See, Rilke, Requiem, in The
Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, 304-5.
46

Rilke, The Visitation of the Virgin (Mariae Heimsuchung), Translations from the Poetry of

Rainer Maria Rilke, 203, or Rilke, The Life of the Virgin Mary, trans. Christine Mc Neill, 13.
47

Rilke, Before the Passion (Vor der Passion), Translations from the Poetry of Rainer Maria

Rilke, 218-19. Or, Rilke, The Life of the Virgin Mary, trans. Stephen Spender, 36-7.
48
49

Carr, Transforming Grace, 193.

Rilke, Pieta (Pieta), The Life of the Virgin Mary, trans. Stephen Spender, 28-9. Also, Rilke,

The Life of the Virgin Mary, trans. Christine Mc Neill, 23.

50

Rilke, Consolation of Mary with Christ Arisen (Stillung Mariae mit dem Auferstandenen),

Translations from the Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, 222-3.

51

Ibid., Of the Death of Mary (Vom Tode Mariae), 224-31. Also, Rilke, The Life of the Virgin

Mary, trans. Christine Mc Neill, 25-9.

52

Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, 96. In explaining how Rilke is a poet for a destitute

time, Heidegger writes: The time remains destitute not only because God is dead, but because mortals
are hardly aware and capable even of their own mortality.
53

Rilke, Of the Death of Mary, Selected Works of Rainer Maria Rilke, 221. Or, Rilke,

Translations from the Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, 224-31.

54

Whitehead, Process and Reality, 88; The consequent nature of God is the physical

prehension by God of the actualities of the evolving universe.

55

Rilke, Selected Works of Rainer Maria Rilke, 221. Or, Rilke, The Life of the Virgin Mary, trans.

Christine Mc Neill, 25-9.

56

Rilke, The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, 245. Stephen Mitchell comments on

Eurydice and Ovids account of her (302).

57

Rilke, On the Death of Mary, Translations from the Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, 229. Or,

Rilke, The Life of the Virgin Mary, trans. Christine Mc Neill, 27.

58

Rilke, On the Death of Mary, Selected Works of Rainer Maria Rilke, 222. Or, Rilke, The Life

of the Virgin Mary, trans. Christine Mc Neill, 29.

59

Rilke, Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, 203. Or, Rilke, The Selected Poetry of Rainer

Maria Rilke, 233.