What Birds Plunge Through Is Not the Intimate Space
What Birds Plunge Through Is Not the Intimate Space - meaning Summary
Perception Shapes External Reality
Rilke contrasts two kinds of space: the intimate inner space where forms are intensified and an open, overwhelming outer space. The poem argues that things become fully themselves only when the observer’s inner space surrounds them with disciplined restraint. By renouncing an all-encompassing openness, the self gives form to objects—making a tree achieve its essence through the shaping power of human inwardness.
Read Complete AnalysesWhat birds plunge through is not the intimate space, in which you see all Forms intensified. (In the Open, denied, you would lose yourself, would disappear into that vastness.) Space reaches from us and translates Things: to become the very essence of a tree, throw inner space around it, from that space that lives in you. Encircle it with restraint. It has no limits. For the first time, shaped in your renouncing, it becomes fully tree.
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