Poetically Man Persists: Searching for Fullness of Being in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens and Rainer Maria Rilke
Poetically Man Persists: Searching for Fullness of Being in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens and Rainer Maria Rilke
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Abstract
This article examines the quest for wholeness of being amidst an alienated and disenchanted world, and how this search unfolds in the poetry of Wallace Stevens and Rainer Maria Rilke. It situates both writers within a shared concern for the question of being and humanity’s inclination toward a fullness of existence, an existence wherein the poet apprehends life as an aesthetic phenomenon, or as a fundamentally immanent experience which is replete with a superabundant being, in the Rilkean sense. Yet, the stately impoverished condition of man is what often denies him any vestige of fullness. The article extends this through concepts advanced by literary critics and philosophers, such as Max Weber’s Disenchantment and Nietzsche’s “life as an aesthetic phenomenon”. It also reveals how the topos of disenchantment unfolds in their poetry, and how the search is sought through the visible reality as well as the invisible space of the spirit.
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This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non–Commercial No Derivatives License which permits noncommercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of the Publisher must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
