In the Beginning
In the Beginning - meaning Summary
God as Cosmic Sleeper
Rilke imagines God as a sleeping creator whose slumber contains and endures human history. Human deeds have dulled His response, making Him passive or numbed; occasional convulsions suggest moments of divine pain or disturbance. Those brief appearances are transient, however, against the vast scale of His innumerable other worlds. The poem frames humanity’s impact as limited and interprets divine distance as both resignation and cosmic indifference.
Read Complete AnalysesEver since those wondrous days of Creation our Lord God sleeps: we are His sleep. And He accepted this in His indulgence, resigned to rest among the distant stars. Our actions stopped Him from reacting, for His fist-tight hand is numbed by sleep, and the times brought in the age of heroes during which our dark hearts plundered Him. Sometimes He appears as if tormented, and His body jerks as if plagued by pain; but these spells are always outweighed by the number of His countless other worlds.
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