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Philosophy and Literature, Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 1979, pp. 3-19

(Article)
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DOI: 10.1353/phl.1979.0010

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http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/phl/summary/v003/3.1.smith.html

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P. Christopher Smith

HEIDEGGER'S MISINTERPRETATION OF RILKE

Certainly one of Heidegger's most important accomplishments is

to have reminded us of the original unity of poetry and philosophy.
The "metaphysical" philosophy which Heidegger calls into question
is characterized by its sharp separation of itself from what it calls
"unscientific" modes of discourse. But that, Heidegger shows, is a

limitation which comes from its narrowed conception of itself

as strict, methodical science, and one need only turn to Parmenides
before the tradition of metaphysics or Nietzsche at the end of that
tradition to see that in fact Heidegger is right: philosophy and poetry
are not necessarily to be dissociated. Indeed, the former can and should
grow out of the soil of the latter. The point here is one which Heidegger
might be said to have learned by experience: he found that the poetry
of Hlderlin opened a way for philosophy out of the cul de sac into
which phenomenological science had led it.
And of course not only Hlderlin: Rilke was obviously important
too. In fact to some, myself included, it seems that certainly as much
as Hlderlin and perhaps even more, Rilke is the poet who displays
the pre-metaphysical unity of poetry and philosophy. But that is not
how Heidegger views Rilke. In respect to its philosophical value, Rilke's
poetry, we are told, is inferior to Hlderlin's. There is, I suggest, a
most puzzling blend of attraction and suspicion in Heidegger's interpretation of Rilke. On the one hand, Heidegger, perhaps better than
anyone, is able to make clear the philosophical importance of Rilke's
poetry and yet, having done that and having shown thereby the greatest
sympathy for Rilke's thought, Heidegger goes on to portray Rilke as
"metaphysical" and to claim for that reason that he is not the poet
Hlderlin is. Is that assessment valid? And how did Heidegger arrive
at it? It is to these questions that the following study is addressed.

On my reading of "Wozu Dichter"1 the charge that Rilke persists

in "metaphysical" thought has three dimensions. To begin with, the
overriding consideration in the whole of the essay is that, like all
"metaphysicians," Rilke is oblivious to the Being event. There are in

Philosophy and Literature

turn two consequences which follow from that obliviousness: first, Rilke
grounds all of what is in some highest existent, namely nature taken
as will, and second, in turning inwards to consciousness he re-presents

the original presencing of existents. The theme of grounding in a

highest existent is worked out from page 256 (p. 100) to page 281

(p. 126) and that of the re-presentation in consciousness, from page

281 (p. 126) to page 294 (p. 141). It will become evident, I think,
that the discussions of two other apparently separate questions, that
of the Open and that of saying and singing, fit respectively into each
of these major sections of the essay. Let us now consider the aspects
of the charge that Rilke is "metaphysical" one by one.
Just what does obliviousness to Being mean? It means obliviousness
to the clearing or lighting {Lichtung). Heidegger, it must be kept in
mind, distinguishes between what is and the event in which what is
comes to be displayed as such. He refers to the event itself as the
lighting and it is only in the light of the lighting, he tells us, that
what is can be. Obliviousness to Being is obliviousness, not to some

highest existent or even to the whole of beings, but to the Being event,

to the lighting. "Metaphysics," in seeking the ontos on, the being which
in being most truly underlies all other existents, forgets the event in
which any being, even the highest, comes to be. Consequently, instead
of experiencing temporal presencing, arising out of non-presence, das
Nichts, "metaphysics" reduces anything which comes to be to something
which always is in steady presence. Obliviousness to Being is, if seen
in this way, obliviousness to the nicht-ist, das Nichts from which any
ist originates. That shows up in Rilke in that for him beings are not
"dissolved in void nothingness (das nichtige Nichts), but instead resolved

into the whole of the Open" (p. 262, 106), which is to say, the pure
presence of nature as a whole.
It is not hard to see that we have already been led to the next
point, namely that having lost sight of the lighting, Rilke, like all
"metaphysicians," directs his attention to some highest existent in which
he would ground everything else. Heidegger would demonstrate Rilke's
"metaphysical" fixation on a highest existent by pointing first to the
latter's idea of nature as Wagnis or wager. Where does this idea of
nature originate? What is the sense of it? It is evident, Heidegger
asserts, that Rilke's idea of nature as the reality which wagers, gives
rise to all things, belongs to a tradition going back to Leibniz's conception
of nature as vis prima activa and more recently to Nietzsche's translation
of vis prima activa into der Wille zur Macht (p. 256, 100). Insofar as
nature wagers existents, it could be said to will them and nature as

will could be said to be the ultimate reality, to onts on. In fact Rilke
himself speaks of nature as the Urgrund or first ground of what is

P. Christopher Smith5

(p. 257, 101). That means that in Rilke nature, far from being perceived
as a groundless rising up into presence out of hiddenness, i.e., as original
phuein and a-l'etheia (cf. p. 257, 101), is re-presented as a highest existent,
a subject-substance which wills things into existence. "The word, wager,"
Heidegger tells us, "names the wagering ground and the whole of
what is wagered," and "in it the language of metaphysics speaks
unmistakably" (p. 261, 105-106). That is to say that Rilke, having
forgotten the lighting event, knows only existents and a.highest existent

in which they are groundedthat which is wagered (das Gewagte) and

the wagering ground (der wagende Grund).

But Rilke's use of Wagnis is not the only evidence that Rilke, in

seeking a highest being, the being of beings, persists in "metaphysical"

obliviousness to the Being event. There are for example the other
key words which Rilke uses to characterize nature as the whole of
what is, das Offene and der Bezug, the Open and the Nexus (the draft).
The Open, Heidegger tells us, is the grand "whole of all which is
set free from its limits" (p. 262, 106). There is a hint here of that
"truth" of deconcealment or altheia in the lighting of Being, which
Heidegger seeks to uncover behind the tradition of "metaphysics."
Nonetheless, Heidegger argues, Rilke's own "metaphysical" tendencies
block that truth out. Rilke does know that the reality of delimited
existentsthe world of determined objects, one specifically differentiated from the otheris not ultimate, and his Open, so Heidegger tells
us, is to be understood accordingly as that which transcends such
delimitation, as that which is set free from limits (entschrnkt). What
is meant here is that Rilke gets beyond representational thought's concern
with eidos, the envisioned form or conceptual determination of a thing.
In seeking the conceptual determination of things, representational
thought steps out of the world, as it were. Things then emerge in

their over-there-ness and awareness is thereby severed from the world,

closed off from it. In the awareness of the Open, on the other hand,
man enters again into the space of the world and experiences the
whole of things, not as pictured from without by any "power of productive
imagination," but from within. He stands in the un-delimited pure
Nexus of the whole of what is. All of this would seem to put Rilke
very close to Heidegger, for, as we shall see, Heidegger too stresses
being-in-the-world as opposed to the re-presentation of objects in
subjective consciousness. Still, Heidegger insists, what the Open means
in Rilke is not all "openness in the sense of the deconcealment of
what is, which lets what is be present as such" (p. 263, 108). Though
there is implied in the word a transition from objectifying subjectivity
"in front of the world," as Rilke puts it (cf. letter quoted p. 263, 108),
that transition is to be taken solely as entrance into the field of "pure

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forces," which is to say, will as the highest existent. Thus Heidegger

contends that "the idea of the Open in the sense of the genuine earlier
lighting of Being lies outside of Rilke's poetry, which remains in the
shadow of a mitigated Nietzschean metaphysics" (p. 264, 108). The
"whole" of the Open and the Nexus is, if Heidegger is correct, the
whole of existence pictured as will.
Nietzsche's Willensmetaphysik is said to determine not only Rilke's understanding of the world, but also his understanding of man, and that
brings us to what in Heidegger's view is the remaining "metaphysical"
dimension of Rilke's thought: its turn inward to subjective consciousness
as that culminates in Nietzsche's will to will. The lines of Heidegger's
argument here are especially difficult to discern, for it is often hard
to tell whether Rilke is being appealed to or criticizedso close do
Heidegger and Rilke seem to be at this point. Let us trace Heidegger's
reasoning as best we can. Rilke, Heidegger tells us, "thinks man as
the being (Wesen) which is wagered in a willing, as the being which
without knowing it, is willed in the will to will. Willing in this way,
man can go along with the wager so that as the one who gets his
will (sich durchsetzt), he places himself in the fore (sich selbst vorsetzt)
of all his doing and letting be. Thus he is more wagering than plant
or animal" (p. 270, 115). But man's more wagering wager, Heidegger
continues, is not just more than the wager of animals; it is qualitatively
different too. The animals remain protected by nature while man's
getting his own will puts him outside of nature's protection (Schutz)
thereby necessitating another protection. It is this second protection
to which Rilke's word "security" (Sichersein) refers. Now it might at
first appear that the security spoken of here is achieved through that
Sich-durchsetzen and Sich-vorsetzen which was said to characterize the

"more wagering" of man and that it is the same as Sicherheit and securitas
in the double sense of the certainty and security sought by "metaphysical"
epistemology and technology respectively. But Heidegger sees that the
security or lack of worry that Rilke's new man wins is precisely not
the product of a "metaphysical" or technological will to power. Indeed
the devastating effect of that will upon both man and the things of
his world is seen as clearly by Rilke as it is by Heidegger. (Cf. p.
265 ff., 110 ff., where Heidegger follows Rilke in developing perhaps
the most acrid of his critiques of technological man.) On the contrary,
the security Rilke speaks of here is a being sustained in resting upon
the connectedness of the whole Nexus (Gezge des ganzen Bezuges) (p.
275, 120). Significantly, there is no "metaphysical" Vor-stellen and no
technological Herstellen here, no putting the world in front of oneself
and no making things over in the production of an ersatz world. Thus,
like his vision of the world, Rilke's vision of man does not emerge

P. Christopher Smith7

as unequivocally "metaphysical." Here too there is a hint, at least, of

something beyond "metaphysics."
But does this mean that Rilke has escaped from "metaphysics"? To
be sure Rilke's man is beyond the vorstzliches Sich-durchsetzen, the
programed willfulness which characterizes modern technology, but he
is in fact not beyond "metaphysics," for, Heidegger tells us, the sphere
in which he experiences remains consciousness, the subjective correlate
of "metaphysics' " objectified world. The transformation of awareness
which Rilke suggests is "a reversal of consciousness and that, within
the sphere of consciousness" (p. 282, 127). Rilke's post-technological
man, the poet, would move from the experience of the objectified
world to das Innige, the inner realm, the realm of the heart, the realm
of feeling. But in modern "metaphysics" the inner realm in which
Rilke seeks the alternative experience has always been the correlate
of the calculated, objectified world. It is precisely in consciousness where
the re-presentation of what is occurs, i.e., the transformation of the
temporal arising of what is into pure, steady presence. Thus the
inner realm is not an alternative to objectivity at all. That is amply
demonstrated, Heidegger argues, by the coincidence of Descartes's
methodological considerations and Pascal's "opposed" logic of the heart.
Far from being something different, the heart is precisely the sphere
of consciousness, the quintessence of the ego cogito upon which Descartes
founds science. Thus the turn to the heart away from objects implies
no transformation of consciousness whatever, but only a potentiation
of it: just as Decartes seeks in consciousness the invisible mathematical
essences behind the flux of the visible world, Rilke seeks the "invisible"

thing in' the inner space of the heart. And like Descartes, what he

finds is a presence in which nothing is turned away, which is to say,

where there is no longer any absence. The dead, the past, the future,
the out of view, are now all "there" in consciousness (p. 283 ff., 128
ff.), and the experience of altheia, emergence from what is not present,
is thereby precluded.
It would seem, then, that at best Rilke might be thought of as a
partial indication of that which lies beyond "metaphysics." And at
worstand Heidegger would appear to take this positionhe would
be the perpetrator of a dangerous illusion: that in fact there is now
such an alternative to "metaphysics" available to us. The whole project
of the Duino Elegies, namely the saving of things by poetic transformation
of them into the inner realm, reveals itself to be "metaphysics" in disguise.

Such inwardizing, Heidegger tells us, is actually the epitomization of

subjective consciousness, which in the final analysis knows only itself

and its representations (cf. pp. 286-87, 132). Thus Heidegger can make
the astonishing assertion that Rilke's symbol for the consummate

Philosophy and Literature

representation of what is to consciousness, the angel, is "metaphysically

the same" as Nietzsche's symbol for itZarathustra (p. 288, 134).

My task now is to show that Heidegger was mistaken in his assessment

?? Rilke and that in fact Rilke is much closer to Heidegger than Heidegger
realized. To this end I wish to defend Rilke against Heidegger's three
criticisms enumerated above, but I shall change the order in which
I deal with them, in order to save for last the overriding consideration
of Rilke's supposed obliviousness to Being. Let us then turn first to
the matter of nature or will as a ground or substance; second, to the

"inner" as consciousness; and then finally to the question of Rilke's

obliviousness to Being or the lighting event. In so doing, let us suspend
any presupposition that like any modern thinker Rilke is somehow
fated to be "metaphysical," and let us follow instead Husserl's admonition
to let the things speak for themselves, the things in this case being
Rilke's poems.
Can it be said that Rilke grounds what is in some highest existent,
i.e., that he seeks the ontds on in "nature" taken as will? What is meant

by saying that he does? Will, Heidegger tells us, is the final substance
idea: like Plato's ousia, Descartes's substantia or Hegel's Geist, it is a
steady presence which is held to underlie process. Will thus emerges
as the truly real; it is that which really is in all that appears to be.
And though will as Leibniz's vis activa or Nietzsche's Wille zur Macht
hardly provides the certain and unshakable foundation for systematic
scientific inquiry which other conceptions of substance have provided,
it nevertheless functions as the ultimate explanatory factor (aitia, ratio,
Grund): it is the cause and principle of which the transient world is
but a manifestation. Now in the pre-metaphysical understanding of

nature, Heidegger maintains, there was no substantive ground. Nature,

physis, was understood as manifestation (phainesthai) which was not

the manifestation of something. It was merely "a child playing," ho pais
paizon (Heracleitos, fr. 52, cf. p. 258, 102), and the play occurs here
for no reason, independently of any cause. It is pure dis-play sine
ratione. But as in all of "metaphysics," in the metaphysics of will, this
original insight is lost. The question, then, is whether Rilke does in
fact make will as ground or substance the basis of his understanding
of nature. Does he remain overshadowed by Nietzsche's Willensmetaphysik
as Heidegger contends, or does he provide us with a premetaphysical
understanding of what is?
Heidegger's interpretation here, I would argue, is a misinterpretation

which results at least in part from a misunderstanding of the word

Wagnis (wager), as it occurs in Rilke's poetry. Wagnis, as we have seen,

is taken by Heidegger to imply will as the ground, but that, I think,
is wrong. The wager, I submit, does not imply some subject, some

P. Christopher Smith9

highest existent which does the wagering. On the contrary, Wagnis

is subjectless verbality. That can best be seen in Rilke's line quoted
by Heidegger (p. 255, 99), "es wagt uns" [it wagers us] . On the surface
that appears to be a transitive active sentence, but the deep structure
is rather more like that of the call of conscience in Sein und Zeit, of

which it is said ( 57), "es ruft" or "it calls," and of the "es gibt"
in the later Heidegger. One cannot be misled by the grammatical function
of the "es" in these utterances into thinking that there is something
which underlies the process of which they speak. Indeed, just as the
call of conscience is subjectless rufen or calling, so too is the wager
subjectless wagering. The "it" of "it wagers us" functions as does the
"it" of "it is raining." The verbal process alone is what is meant and
no actual subject is implied.
I think it can be shown that what I have said in regard to Wagnis
holds for the whole of nature in Rilke. Nature as Rilke understands

it is "der reine Raum ... in den die Blumen aufgehen" [the pure
space into which the flowers rise up] (DE VIII 15), and the rising up,

I submit, is precisely the same subjectless substanceless Aufgehen which

Heidegger finds in the pre-Socratic understanding of nature (cf. p.
257, 101). Rilke's image for this Aufgehen is the self-enclosed circulation
of the fountain: " . . .so gehts in Ewigkeit, so wie die Brunnen gehen"
[thus it goes on into eternity as the fountains go on] (DE VIII 12-13).
In one of his letters he speaks of the fountain, "qui vivait de sa vie
impalpable, se jetant dans l'espace et retombant dans son propre

sein, enrichie de quoi?: d'elle mme."2 That is the model of the

universe: all that is is in rising up and falling back. Now it would

be quite wrong to conceive of the fountaining here as the fountaining
of something, as manifestation of a substance. In Elegy VII, for instance,

the fountain image for Aufgehen is complemented with that of the

European Lark, a bird whose sudden upward spurt into the air and
plunge back to the earth is indeed like the fountain's "drngender

Strahl" [surging jet] (p. 16). And significantly, if one looks for the
agent cause here, that which "wills" the bird's flight, nothing can be
found. Only "die Jahreszeit, die steigende" [the time of year, rising]
is given as that which casts it up, and that is not a thing, a substance,
but an event. The bird's rising has no cause. It is not the manifestation

of a substance, and if one asks what casts it, the only answer which
can be given is "it casts," the "it" here again being like the "it" of
"it rains." For the casting, like raining, is a "versprechliches Spiel"
[promiseful play] (p. 17) which is not to be understood in reference
to anything other than the display itself. For Rilke, what is is self-contained play with no substance behind it; it is precisely ho pais paizon.
As he himself puts it,

10Philosophy and Literature

Die Erde ist wie ein Kind,
Das Gedichte weiss.

Erde die frei hat, du glckliche,

Spiel nun mit deinen Kindern.
(SO I 21)
[The earth is like a child

Reciting poems.
Earth which has the day off, you fortunate one,
Play now with your children.]

It follows that, more basic than Wagnis for understanding nature

in Rilke, is Sckoss or womb, a word which figures prominently in Rilke's
poetry, but which Heidegger neglects. Indeed Rilke tells us that "Schoss
ist alles" [womb is everything] (DE VII 55). How that might be
understood in respect to nature and human existence within the latter
is shown in Rilke's wonderful elegiac fragment on the experience of
childhood, where he writes,
. . . Abende, o, des Vertrauens, wir regneten beide, still und aprilen,
die Erde und ich, in den Schooss (sie) uns.
(WIl 131)
[. . . evenings, oh, of trust, we rained ourselves, both of us, quietly
and Aprilly, the earth and I, into the womb.]

Note that the "uns" here belongs to the "regneten": wir regneten uns.
That reflexive construction reveals again the verbal structure of the
event. We, earth and I, are as raining and that raining is not "done"
by some subject, be that nature or will. Nature here is only the pure

space (der reine Raum) where the raining occurs or, with Heidegger,
the Ort (place). Nature is the mater-matrix, the womb.
Let us turn now to the question of Rilke's supposed retreat into
the inner realm of consciousness. Can it be argued that though Rilke
may, have gotten beyond the metaphysics of will, the sphere of the
"Innenraum" (inner space) to which he would return remains "metaphysical" in that it is nothing more than the subjective pole of "metaphysics"' re-presented reality? Prima facie this argument of Heidegger
seems quite plausible.
In the Elegies Rilke sets himself the task of saving valid things from
technology through a transformation of them into the "inward" or
"inner." More and more each of the real things, "house, bridge, fountain,
gate, pitcher, fruit tree, window" (DE IX 32), each of those things

P. Christopher Smith1 1

amongst which and within which we might dwell (Heidegger: wohnen),

yields to the insubstantial non-thing which technology would put in

its place. Where there was once a valid thing, we now have an "erdachtes
Gebild ... zu Erdenklichem vllig gehrig" [a construct thought up
. . . belonging completely to the thinkable] (DE VII 53). We are left
with the subject's superimpositions of its thought-constructs on a world
that has been reduced to the stuff for technological manipulation. Given
these circumstances, circumstances to which Rilke, just as Heidegger,
is acutely sensitive, Rilke proposes that we save any remaining thing
by transforming it into the "inner""es innen verwandeln" (DE VII
49). That does indeed sound like a flight from the objective realm
into subjective consciousness. And one might well contend, or so it
seems, that the "space of the heart" in which this transformation occurs
in Rilke is nothing other than the Pascalian subjective counterpart to
Cartesian objectivity.
To get clear about this we must come to grips with some of Rilke's
most difficult and obscure ideas. What does he mean when he calls

this transformation into the "inner" a transformation into the "invisible"

(Unsichtbare)! What is the invisible form (unsichtbare Gestalt) in which

such transformation ends? And how do we know that form? Rilke

says inwardly and with the heart, but what does that mean? I would
like to approach these matters by means of a brief comparison with
Plotinus, for an understanding of the similarities and distinctions between
what Rilke and Plotinus say will, if I can point them out correctly,
aid us in comprehending Rilke's undertaking. Rilke, I shall argue, is
a modified Neo-Platonist, and the inner form of which he speaks is
not unlike Plotinus' endon eidos. Both Plotinus and Rilke seek another

level of reality behind the material appearance of things first given

to our sight. Both transcend the external world, which Plotinus calls

the exo and Rilke, the Aussen, and arrive at what Plotinus calls the

eiso and Rilke, the Innen, i.e., the "inward" or "inner."

In Plotinus just as in Rilke there are levels of awareness. The lowest

of these is what might be called hyletic: it knows things as these present
themselves to our sense perceptions. Plotinus, of course, lies far before
the Cartesian disjunction of res cogitans and res extensa, yet it is fair
to say that his understanding of hyletic awareness involves something
of the Cartesian dualism: the thing known at this level is external,
"out there," as it were, and the knower's knowing of it, internal, "in
here." Thus one who knows in this way is a "stranger in something
strange," as Plotinus so aptly puts it. There is, however, a higher
knowledge in which this separateness is overcome. In that higher
knowing, knowing of the beautiful, I see the inner ideal reality, to
endon eidos, shining through in the external thing. Importantly, "inner,"

12Philosophy and Literature

endon, here has a double significance. In the first place, I see the interior
of the thing and thereby penetrate the facade of materiality with which
I was first confronted. But "inner" also means "of the inner realm,"
the eiso to which my awareness belongs. Thus what I know "out there"
reveals itself now as identical with what I know "in here." There is

no longer any difference. Now it is this experience, I think, which

underlies Rilke's understanding of the "inner." He tells us that on

one occasion in the garden at Duino he felt as if he had gotten to

the "other side" of natureto the inner reality behind the visible
material crust and he tells us as well of the unity which is established
between his awareness and that of which he is aware: for the "while"

of higher awareness no distinction between inner and outer obtains:

"He thought of the hour in that other southern garden (Capri) when
a bird call outside and within him was there in complete accord since
it did not break on the borders of the body, as it were, but gathered
both inside and outside together into an uninterrupted space in which,
mysteriously protected, only a single place of purest, deepest awareness
remained" (W III 525). Or, as it is put in Rilke's "Der Lesende" ("the
reader"),
Dort draussen ist, was ich hier drinnen lebe,
und hier und dort ist alles grenzenlos

(Wl 214)
[Out there is what I live within,
and here and there all is without boundary.]

The external, the ex or Aussen, vanishes, revealing that all is eis,

Innen: "Durch alle Wesen reicht der eine Raum: Weltinnenraum"

[Through all beings extends the one space: world inner space] (W
II93).

There are, however, important distinctions in how this reality is

experienced in Plotinus and Rilke. For Plotinus the experience is a
thea, a vision, and hence his account of it is modeled on the optical.
For Rilke the phenomenon is auditory and tactile. The form (Plotinus:
eidos, Rilke: Gestalt) which I perceive is in Rilke not so much seen
as it is felt; it is the gefhlte Gestalt. The key here is Rilke's word
Schwingungen, or vibrations (DE I 95). We become aware of the space
where all is "within," as vibration or waves, which could be said to

pass uninterruptedly from "out there" to "in here" were it not the
case that in the experience of vibration these spatial determinations
cease to mean anything. Rilke's reliance on the paradigm of the auditory
and tactile here seems to indicate perhaps more clearly than Plotinus
the distinction between Gestalt and Gebild as "erdachtes Gebild" ("the

P. Christopher Smith13

imagined construct"). The latter does exist wholly within the subject.
It is a Vorstellung, or what Heidegger terms a re-presentation to
consciousness. But the endon eidos is seen to be something quite different
from that when the felt, vibratory aspect of it is brought out: it is
neither subjective nor objective, for in vibration neither one of these
applies. Thus in Rilke the visual thea is replaced with the auditory
experience of Musik in which the transformation of the external takes
place: "Wandlung in was?in hrbare Landschaft" [Transformation
into what?into audible landscape] (W II 111).
We are now in a better position to say just what the Innen is, into
which Rilke wishes to bring things. It is certainly not subjective space;
rather, it is Weltinnenraum: world inner space. The "inner" is the "other
side" of things which lies behind their visible materiality, and when
I experience it as musical vibration, the world is not drawn into my
subjectivity; rather, I am drawn out into the felt continuum of awareness

and world. Thus, when Rilke tells us, "Nirgends, Geliebte, wird Welt
sein als innen" [Nowhere, beloved, will there be world save within]

(DE VII 50), the "innen" must be understood, not in relationship to

subjective space, but to cosmic space, "die innigen Himmel" [the inward
heavens] (DE VII 5) into which the lark spurts, "der reine Raum,
in den die Blumen unendlich aufgehen" [the pure space into which
the flowers rise up unendingly] (DEVlIl 15-16).
Thus, contrary to Heidegger's understanding, the exhortation to
transform within and to build inwardly does not imply a retreat into
the subjective sphere. The saving of things from annihilation in the
technological world implies the transcendence of both the subjective
and objective. It implies that the duality between the visible world
and subjectivity gives way to the heard continuum of world inner space,
where self and other merge in the identical vibration.

It is the task of poets to evoke this transformation of experience

by their poetic saying,

. . . aber zu sagen, verstehs,

oh zu sagen so, wie selber die Dinge niemals
innig meinten zu sein.
(DE IX 34-36)

[. . . but to say, you understand,

in such a way that the things be
innerly as even they never intended.]

The poet says the inner reality of world inner space. Contrary to what
Heidegger maintains, such saying is not an intensification of consciousness' re-presentation of what is to itself; rather, it is conversion

14Philosophy and Literature

to the audible in the word which is song. At that point where all things
threaten to be drowned in the world of technology, where complaint
(Klage) would be most likely, the poet turns to exaltation (Rhmung).
For that is the point where "das klagende Leid rein zur Gestalt sich
entschliesst" [complaint and suffering decide purely for form] (DE
IX 61). Since form (Gestalt) is audible vibration, the ultimate experience
of it is musical, not linguistic" . . . und Musik reichte noch weiter
hinan und berstieg uns" [. . . and music reached even further and
transcended us] (DE VII 81-82). Accordingly, the poetic word must
be a word in transition from the visible facade of the objectified world
to the audible experience of the "inner" reality of what is. Suffering
(Leid) is transformed into the poet's song (Lied), a saying which
ultimately is singing: "Einzig das Lied berm Land /heiligt und feiert"
[Only the song over the countryside /makes holy and celebrates] (SO
I 19). Vanishing things are rescued in the poet's exaltation of them
to their invisible, audible "inner" form.

We come now to the last and most important of Heidegger's criticisms

of Rilke: namely that, like any "metaphysician," he knows only beings
which are in the light, but not the event of Being, the "lighting" itself,
in which these beings come to be. In our investigation of the problem
of will in Rilke we have seen that there is no reduction of what is

to a highest existent which always is in steady presence, but though

no such "ground" of what is can be found in Rilke, the question whether
Rilke acknowledges the ultimacy of coming into presence, of appearance
out of hiddenness (leth) and disappearance back into it, remains an
open one. Does he see that all that is comes to be in the clear, out
of no-thing-ness which remains inaccessible to us? Or is he caught
in the habitude of "insisting" on what is? Heidegger argues that he

is thus caught, and that accordingly he does not know the lighting.
Heidegger makes this point specifically in regard to Rilke's phrase,
"im weitsten Umkreis" [on the furthest periphery] (p. 277 ff., 122
ff.), his argument being that Rilke thinks of the "spherical" character
of reality, not as does Parmenides in terms of "the deconcealing center
which in growing light shelters what is presencing" (p. 228, 123) but
in terms of the periphery which circumscribes all existents and gathers
them together in the Nexus. Heidegger sees this totality, which Rilke
also names the Open, as a reality open to view (das Offenbare). As

such it is all in the clear. Consequently, Heidegger contends that, like

any "metaphysician," Rilke is closed off to hiddenness: his Open is
closed, closed to the Being event.

It seems to me that Rilke can be defended from this final objection

at least in part if a distinction is made between the role of the Open
in Rilke's poetry and that of deathone must not expect the first

P. Christopher Smith15

to serve functions reserved for the latter. Heidegger's understanding

of the Open is correct insofar as he says that it has no explicit relationship
with what Heidegger calls das Freie, i.e., the free and clear of the lighting
in which the event of altheia or deconcealment occurs. For when

Rilke speaks, of the Open, his concern is only to characterize a dimension

of experience which precedes and exceeds objectification and the
juxtaposition (Gegenbersein) of man and the signified world (die gedeutete
Welt) (DE I 13). For the most part we are onlookers (Zuschauer) (DE
VII 65) and we experience not the Opennot the "Nirgends ohne

Nicht: /das Reine, Unberwachte, das man atmet" [nowhere without

not: the pure, unwatched-over which one breathes] (DEWlIl 17-18)

but a schematized reality opposite us which is crisscrossed with dualities:

each thing is closed off from what it is not, every A defined by not-A.
And in that it is opposite us, it is closed off from us as well. The
experience of the Open, though, unifies us with the world and all
opposites with each other. In it, all is present as the all in its connectedness,
present as the Nexus. But this unitive experience of all that is does

not specifically involve any awareness of the origination and embeddedness of what is in what is not. On that Heidegger seems to be right:
in his consideration of the Open, Rilke is thinking not of Parmenides'
"lightening, unifying presencing," but of a totality of what is as the
"boundaryless flowing of one thing into another" (p. 278, 123). Still,
that does not mean that Rilke is oblivious to the lighting event. One
must simply look for the emergence of things out of hiddenness
elsewhere in Rilke: specifically in the mention he makes of death.
To be sure, Heidegger is well aware of Rilke's references to death.
Heidegger quotes Rilke's letter to Witold Hulewicz (p. 279, 124), in
which he writes that "death is the side of life turned away from us
and unilluminated by us." Heidegger reads that in terms of "the furthest
periphery," his argument being that Rilke, far from experiencing the
Parmenidean sphere as the "deconcealing center," experiences it as
the whole of being: "Death and the realm of the dead belong to the
whole of what is as its other side" (p. 2 79, 1 24) . However, the introduction

of "the whole" (das Ganze) here is a superimposition on what Rilke

actually says. Heidegger, of course, has in mind the "metaphysical"
sense of that word, especially as it is used by Hegel, and he reads
Rilke as if he were somehow restating the Hegelian position. It is well
known that in Hegel, death, which for him is negation, must be included
within the "whole" given to systematic thought. For Hegel any A must
be grasped together with not-A, meaning that life must be grasped
together with death. That sounds like something Rilke might be saying,
and Heidegger argues rightly that in seeing death and negation in
this way we have only the nihil of the nihil negativum in view, i.e.,

16Philosophy and Literature

only the negative opposite of a particular existence and not das Nichts,
the void which embraces and an-nihilates all beings. Hegel's idea of
the whole which includes death and negation is thus "metaphysical"
re-presentation: all, death included, is present there in front of consciousness and there is no longer any absence. But Rilke himself does
not speak of death as included within the whole of what is present.
On the contrary, he speaks of it as turned away from us and unilluminated
by us; death is precisely not brought into view. It remains an unilluminated "other" surrounding all that is illumined for us. And Rilke goes
on in that letter to emphasize, much as does Heidegger, the insufficien-

cy of a consciousness which evades the equifundamentality (Gleichur-

sprnglichkeil) of life and death and which holds to what is while excluding what is not. As Rilke explains in a letter, "Affirmation of life and
of death prove to be one in the Elegies. To acknowledge one without
the other would be, as is experienced and celebrated here, a limitation
which ultimately excludes all infinity." The infinity given to Hegel's
absolute knowledge of the whole is not at all what is meant, but rather
the dimension of the in-definite which exceeds any finite area of knowing
given to usin other words, exactly what Hegel rejects as the "bad
infinity." Such a consciousness as Hegel's absolute self-consciousness
is denied, not affirmed, in Rilke's acknowledgement of the life-death
"circle." Far from having incorporated death within what is present,

Rilke knows what is as presencing out of what is not, namely death.

So on one level at least, Rilke does experience the lighting. As he
puts it in the Sonnets to Orpheus:
Wir gehen um mit Blume, Weinblatt, Frucht.
Sie sprechen nicht die Sprache nur des Jahres.
A us Dunkel steigt ein buntes Offenbares
und hat vielleicht den Glanz der Eifersucht

der Toten an sich, die die Erde strken.

Was wissen wir von ihrem Teil an dem?

(SO 114, emphasis added)

[We get on comfortably with flower, grape leaf, fruit.

They speak not only the language of the year.

From darkness rises a multicolored revelation

and has perhaps the glint of the dead's jealousy

about it, who strengthen the earth.
What do we know of their part in this?]

Our mistake in Rilke's eyes is precisely that which Heidegger would

call the mistake of "metaphysics": we cling to what is in the clearflower,

grape leaf, fruitthereby blocking from our awareness its origin and

P. Christopher Smith1 7

reabsorption in what is not, in the inexpressible infinitude which bears

and recovers the things we know.
Still it would be precipitate to say that Heidegger and Rilke are
thinking the same thing in regard to the ultimacy of hiddenness and
the experience of death. In Rilke there is something else besides the

"human" experience which must acknowledge the embeddedness of

life in death: there is the angel's awareness which knows life and death
as a "grand unity." The angel knows presence and absence as eternally
one. We might imagine the matter as follows: on the level of human
experience there is awareness which is on this, the "life" side of the
boundary with death, and towards which things present themselves
in time as they arise out of the inaccessible beyond (death). But the
angels' awareness is "above" this ordinary human condition; they view
the realms of death and life together. Thus the angels are indeed
above the experience of de-concealment in the lighting. Does that make
them "metaphysical"? The question is a difficult one, and I can only
suggest how it might be resolved.

As a starting point here I would propose Rilke's poem, "Vergnglichkeit" ("Transience"), which begins as follows:
Flugsand der Stunden. Leise fortwhrende Schwindung
auch noch des glcklich gesegneten Baus.
Leben weht immer. Schon ragen ohne Verbindung
die nicht mehr tragenden Sulen heraus.
Aber Verfall: ist er trauriger, als der Fontane
Rckkehr zum Spiegel, den sie mit Schimmer bestaubt?
Halten wir uns dem Wandel zwischen die Zhne,

dass er uns vllig begreift in sein schauendes Haupt.

(WII 159)

[Fleeting sand of hours. Quietly continuing disappearance

of even the building fortunately blessed.
Life goes on blowing. Already there protrude without bond
columns bearing nothing any longer.
But falling apartis it sadder than the fountain's
return to the mirror surface, which it dusts with shimmers?

Let us keep ourselves in the teeth of change

so that it fully grips us in its scowling head.]

The poem makes two things evident. The first is Rilke's clear (Heideg-

gerian) identification of time and being: there is nothing which with-

stands the vicissitudes of time, nothing which is not eventually claimed

by the void "according to the assessment of time" (Anaximander). There
is, in other words, no substance which endures through change. But

18Philosophy and Literature

then comes the "aber" which introduces the elevation of the vision of

transience into the vision of falling apart as "the fountain's return to

the mirror surface." Change is not denied in this higher perspective:

"Let us keep ourselves in the teeth of change," says Rilke. The difference
is that here growth and decay, life and death, are seen as one. The
temporal alternation of the two displays itself as an eternal unity, or
what Rilke calls elsewhere "die wandelnde Ewigkeit" [the changing
eternity] (W II 251). He who knows the world as the fountain knows

its eternal aspect in transience, knows that the "way up" and the "way
down" are eternally one (Heracleitos). Thus Rilke can say of the arising
(Aufgehen) of creatures: "So it goes on into eternity as the fountains
go on."
How are we to understand this final transformation of awareness?

There is a Zen dialogue which portrays the essence of the matter in

quick and precise strokes:
One day as Hyakujo stepped out of the house with his master, Baso,
they saw a flight of wild geese. Baso asked: "Where are they flying?"
"They have already flown away, Master." Suddenly Baso seized Hyakujo
by the nose and twisted it. Overcome by pain, Hyakujo cried out: "Oh,
oh!" "You say they have flown away," said Baso, "but they have all been
here from the beginning." Then Hyakujo's back ran with sweat, and
he had satori.4

For Hyakujo's lower awareness temporal transience appears as discrete

stages: the geese are not yet there, they are there, they have flown
away. Each stage cancels the previous one. But for the master all of
that is only one level of experience. The student, Hyakujo, lacks the
master's vision which would reveal to him the eternal dimension of

change in which temporal transition from will be to is to was is preserved

yet sublimated. For the master the geese "have all been there from
the beginning."

Must this transcendent vision convert what is into "metaphysics' "

steady presence? Note that Rilke speaks of "the changing eternity,"
and surprisingly, it is Heidegger who explains what that might be!
Heidegger tells us that genuine, i.e., non-metaphysical, eternity must
be taken as simultaneity (Gleichzeitigkeit):
. . . original Gleich-Zeitigkeit consists in being past and being future
asserting themselves and, equifundamentally with the present, converting
into each other (ineinanderschlageri) as the essential fullness of time. And
this turn (Schlag) of genuine temporality is the essential eternity and
not, in contrast, the present which has merely stopped and remains
standing, the nunc stans.

P. Christopher Smith19

Is this not Rilke's "changing eternity"? If, as I believe, it is, then Rilke
does not become "metaphysical," even though he passes beyond the
initial awareness of the lighting.
University of Lowell

1.Heidegger's treatment of Rilke, upon which this article is based, is found in his
essay, "Wozu Dichter?", in Holzwege (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1963), pp. 248-95. A
fine English translation, "What Are Poets For?", is provided by Albert Hofstadter in
his collection of Heidegger essays, Poetry, Language, Thought (New York: Harper & Row,
1975), pp. 91-142. The two sets of page numbers given refer to the German and English
texts respectively. I have provided my own translations so that English readers may
have available as wide a range of translation as possible. Hofstadter should also be
consulted.

The following abbreviations for citations from Rilke will be used throughout: Werke
(3 vols.) (Frankfurt: Insel, 1966): WI, II, III and page numbers; Duineser Elegien (ten
elegies contained in the Werke, I, pp. 438-82): DE I-X and line numbers; Die Sonette

an Orpheus (in two parts contained in the Werke, I, pp. 483-527): SO I, II and sonnet
number. The translations are designed to assist in the reading of the German, which
alone could give a sense of Rilke's eloquence and musicality.
2.Quoted by Jacob Steiner in Rilkes duineser Elegien (Bern: Francke, 1969), p. 192.
3.Rainer Maria Rilke, Briefe (Wiesbaden: Insel, 1950), p. 896.
4.Eugen Herrigel, The Method of Zen (New York: Vintage, 1974), pp. 47-48.
5.Martin Heidegger, Schellings Abhandlung ber das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit
(Tbingen: Niemeyer, 1971), p. 136.