Analysis of Fear of the Inexplicable
Rainer Maria Rilke 1875 (Prague) – 1926 (Montreux)
But fear of the inexplicable has not alone impoverished
the existence of the individual; the relationship between
one human being and another has also been cramped by it,
as though it had been lifted out of the riverbed of
endless possibilities and set down in a fallow spot on the
bank, to which nothing happens. For it is not inertia alone
that is responsible for human relationships repeating
themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and
unrenewed: it is shyness before any sort of new,unforeseeable
experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope.
But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes
nothing, not even the most enigmatical, will live the relation
to another as something alive and will himself draw exhaustively
from his own existence. For if we think of this existence of
the individual as a larger or smaller room, it appears evident
that most people learn to know only a corner of their room, a
place by the window, a strip of floor on which they walk up and
down. Thus they have a certain security. And yet that dangerous
insecurity is so much more human which drives the prisoners in
Poe's stories to feel out the shapes of their horrible dungeons
and not be strangers to the unspeakable terror of their abode.
We, however, are not prisoners. No traps or snares are set about
us, and there is nothing which should intimidate or worry us.
We are set down in life as in the element to which we best
correspond, and over and above this we have through thousands of
years of accommodation become so like this life, that when we
hold still we are, through a happy mimicry,scarcely to be
distinguished from all that surrounds us. We have no reason to
mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors,
they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abuses belong to us;
are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if only we
arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us
that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now
still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust
and find most faithful. How should we be able to forget those
ancient myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into
princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses
who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps
everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless
that wants help from us.
Scheme | XXXABXXCDX XXDAXBCEXXX XEXAFFGXEFEXXXGXXEE |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 111001001101010 0010100100001001 1101000101101111 1111110110101 100100011001110 1111010111101001 110100110010010 011111101000 111100110111 010011111111011 11011110110101 10110011110010 101011001010110100 1110101111110101 0010010101101101100 1110111100101110 110100111111110 11110100100011100 01001111101101000 110111011110010 01110100100101101 1101110011111101 101110110101101 1111011001001111 010100011111101 110010011111111 11111010111 010111011111101 0110111110111110 11101011110100111 1101111111101101 01101010111001101 11111101001111 1111011001011111 011101111101011 1010110110110101 10001101011011100 11101011111000101 1010010110101010 11111 |
Closest metre | Iambic octameter |
Characters | 2,411 |
Words | 436 |
Sentences | 15 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 10, 11, 19 |
Lines Amount | 40 |
Letters per line (avg) | 49 |
Words per line (avg) | 11 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 650 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 144 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 11, 2023
- 2:11 min read
- 384 Views
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"Fear of the Inexplicable" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 20 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/29668/fear-of-the-inexplicable>.
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