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This chapter examines Rainer Maria Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus, which centers on the human inhabitation of finitude. The work showed Rilke's struggles to acknowledge and inhabit finitude as he repeatedly recast human relationships to death. This recasting directed attention away from a metaphysical or religious “beyond,” and toward earthly existence. The work also demonstrated that subjectivity is defined by being embodied: sexuality, pain, and sensory particularity form vital components of human existence—all of which require responsiveness to and of the body, the world, other minds, and one's own finitude. In addition, this responsiveness acknowledged the impossibility of certainty, and the costs of defenses of avoidance.

This coauthored introduction to the volume Rilke’s “Sonnets to Orpheus”: Philosophical and Critical Perspectives discusses the philosophical character and reception of Rilke’s poetry and both the importance and the challenges of interpreting Rilke’s work philosophically. A claim is made for the general significance of dialogue between poetry and philosophy and for the distinctive way in which Rilke’s poetry addresses philosophical concerns. This introduction also situates The Sonnets to Orpheus—the focus of the volume—in the context of Rilke’s oeuvre (with special attention to their connections to the Duino Elegies), discusses their scholarly reception, and provides a synopsis of the essays featured in the volume and of how they unite philosophical, critical, and poetic perspectives.

Rilke claims that the poet’s task is to reveal the qualitative valences of existence, thus enabling his readers to become emotionally aware of its meaning—in spite of all that might threaten our sense that life is significant and worth living. Insofar as Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus enact this mode of vision, they embody an antinihilistic way of seeing. One who does not view the world in this manner must remain unaware of its axiologically rich features, because poetic vision brings tangible value to light for both poet and reader. This chapter discusses how this outlook is articulated in the musical aspects of the Sonnets—which heighten the affective impact of Rilke’s words, and often register powerfully felt shocks of recognition. The formal patterns of Rilke’s sonnets bring intense feeling and insight to voice: furthermore, the poet’s formal techniques contribute to his way of articulating a poetic vision of the world.

This essay illustrates the limitations of predominant existentialist readings of death, mortality, and authenticity in Rilke and the presence of spiritual and esoteric dimensions that also need to be taken into account. Rilke’s distinctive conception of the unity of the realm of the living and the realm of the dead involves a marriage of existentialist and spiritual perspectives, and is part and parcel of his monistic conception of the unity of the visible and the invisible. The Sonnets to Orpheus build on Rilke’s treatment of these themes in his earlier major works (the New Poems, Malte, Duino Elegies). Rilke draws on the legend of Orpheus entering the realm of the dead (in his attempt to bring back Eurydice) through the power of his poetry/music, in order to articulate the role of poetry in facilitating an expanded awareness of the ultimate unity of existence.

This chapter discusses Paterson’s fifth collection, Orpheus, translated versions after the German of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Die Sonette an Orpheus (1923). It argues that the book’s hallmark lies in its attempts to fully uncover the poetic utility of the sonnet – Paterson translates Rilke as a means of evincing his sense of the form as an inevitable necessity. This is discussed in relation to the book’s central themes: the existential concept of ‘the double realm’ of human consciousness, and how this manifests itself in what Paterson views as the ‘uniquely human business’ of song. The chapter argues that Orpheus finds Paterson granting himself licence to be both prophetic and more explicitly philosophical, developing his sense of poetry as a means of intellectual inquiry. It also draws on Stephen Mitchell’s translations of Rilke’s Sonnets by way of illuminating contrast.