Rainer Maria Rilke

The Future

The Future - meaning Summary

Facing the Intimidating Future

Rilke’s poem presents the future as an intimidating abstraction that outstrips human capacity. It describes the future as a vast, frightening project that the heart cannot assimilate. Rather than offering hope, the future’s inevitable pull heightens human absence and separateness. The poem compresses resignation and existential observation into a brief address, suggesting that impending time deepens the sense of loss already present in people’s lives.

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The future: time's excuse to frighten us; too vast a project, too large a morsel for the heart's mouth. Future, who won't wait for you? Everyone is going there. It suffices you to deepen the absence that we are.

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