Portrait of My Father as a Young Man
Portrait of My Father as a Young Man - meaning Summary
Memory Framed by a Photograph
Rilke’s short portrait addresses a faded photograph of his father, tracing the young man’s distant, composed presence in military dress. The speaker notes the striking features—the eyes, brow, hands on a saber—and registers how the figure recedes into background and time. The poem links visual detail to the feeling of loss: the photograph vanishes quickly while the speaker’s own grasp on memory and mortality ebbs more slowly.
Read Complete AnalysesIn the eyes: dream. The brow as if it could feel something far off. Around the lips, a great freshness--seductive, though there is no smile. Under the rows of ornamental braid on the slim Imperial officer's uniform: the saber's basket-hilt. Both hands stay folded upon it, going nowhere, calm and now almost invisible, as if they were the first to grasp the distance and dissolve. And all the rest so curtained within itself, so cloudy, that I cannot understand this figure as it fades into the background--. Oh quickly disappearing photograph in my more slowly disappearing hand.
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