The Sonnets to Orpheus: Book 2: 1
The Sonnets to Orpheus: Book 2: 1 - context Summary
Composed After Bereavement
This sonnet, part of The Sonnets to Orpheus (written 1922, published 1923), emerges from Rilke's intense creative phase after his daughter's death. It treats breath and air as an invisible, living poem that mediates between self and world, enabling memory, transformation, and continuity. The speaker seeks recognition from this elemental presence that holds past places and wandering voices, presenting poetic creation as an intimate interchange with being.
Read Complete AnalysesBreathing: you invisible poem! Complete interchange of our own essence with world-space. You counterweight in which I rythmically happen. Single wave-motion whose gradual sea I am: you, most inclusive of all our possible seas- space has grown warm. How many regions in space have already been inside me. There are winds that seem like my wandering son. Do you recognize me, air, full of places I once absorbed? You who were the smooth bark, roundness, and leaf of my words.
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