Book 1, The Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke : Chapter 9, More Sonnets to Orpheus Summary

"Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were behind you, like the winter that has just gone by," (p. 243). This is the first line is II-13. Later, he suggest that the invisible you towards whom the poem is directed remains "dead in Eurydice." Here, readers are advised to not take the death as literal. However, there is a reason why they might be inclined to do so. Eurydice is dead, after all, and to that extent, this is about participating in the Otherworld and the realms therein. This sonnet relies upon the same structure as the others.

In this next selection, taken for discussion here in the summary, the quotation comes from the middle realm of the...