Tags: ekphrastic, loving of art, art as experience, surprising last line, imagery
This poem is wildly famous and for good reason. I was reading echoes of it before I read the actual original, which I find ridiculous. This reminds me a little of Don Quixote, which is widely considered the first “novel” and is so foundational that when you read it, you realize you’ve read it hundreds of times over in all sorts of books, and that this is where it started. It also made it a bit boring in my opinion, but luckily this poem is far from that.
Archaic Torso of Apollo
Ranier Maria Rilke
We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,
gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.
Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:
would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.
This poem has been analyzed all over the internet and in much more depth than I can afford, so I’ll keep it short. I want to mainly draw attention to how Rilke makes the experience of the poem akin to the experience of viewing this statue. This is, in my mind, the epitome of the ekphrastic poem. Rather than mince words, Rilke just creates the feeling of seeing this headless statue in all its power and magnificence, and delivers a stunning final line out of left field, like good art often does to us. What makes this poem particularly special is that the reaction to Apollo’s torso applies more generally to other art that hits you hard, and I will admit to having an experience similar to the one Rilke describes upon reading and comprehending this poem, but with respect to the poem and not the statue. I think it’s really interesting how a piece can do that. Here’s potentially the statue in question.
