The Torso Of Apollo

ARCHAIC TORSO OF APOLLO
BY RAINER MARIA RILKE

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still fused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turning 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 the that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would 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.

Rainer Maria Rilke suffered from terrible social anxiety. A poet, artist, and writer with terrible introversion, how could such a thing be possible? His friend recommended a unique therapy to deal with his problem. He called it einsehen or in-seeing.

How it works—you sit down and feel whatever is going through you at the moment. You account for your thoughts, feelings, emotions and whatever constitutes “you.” Treat it like you are getting to know yourself for the first time. It’s like building a rapport with yourself, introducing yourself to yourself. Whatever you think or feel or whatever sound you hear—go ahead and include.

If it clicks, then go ahead and start applying that process to other objects. Apply it to a rock. What does it mean to be a rock? Don’t laugh or play it off, really try to penetrate to the core of what you think it means to be a rock.

This technique was the foundation of Rilke’s “New Poems.” The poems in his book includes Flamingos, Stone Buddhas, Panthers, Swans, Lutes and the incomplete statue of Apollo. Each is written from the perspective of the object but only after Rilke’s had applied the process of in-seeing. The viewer becomes the viewed and writes from that perspective (which is of course still a reflection of the viewer.)

Thus flamingos become Fragonard like paintings that are more seductive than Phryne herself, who stroll off into the flowerbed like the Goddesses they are. Swans are these lumbering ungainly beat that toil needlessly on land until they surrender to the water which gently receives them and allows them to glide with regal composure.

It’s a wonderful way to write poetry. And it cured Rilke’s social anxiety by taking the pressure off him and shining the spotlight of his attention on what other people and objects are feeling. It was working marvelously until he encountered the destroyed statue of Apollo which sent Rilke to the twilight zone.

At the time, he had not yet finished writing New Poems. He was spending the majority of his days with the famous French sculptor, August Rodin, and was learning how to write when there was no inspiration. Rodin taught him the value of discipline and it led to the realization that the in-seeing technique could produce poetry on demand.

Perhaps Rilke was sitting around in Rodin’s workshop and was waiting for him to meet him. He sees this dopy looking statue of Apollo just lying there. This incomplete statue, so he figures what the hell? Maybe he can get an easy poem out of this, so he sits down and begins to in-see into the marble Apollo.

And if you gaze into the abyss, the
abyss gazes also into you
-Friedrich Nietzsche

Rilke was probably expecting nothing but emptiness. He was thinking this could maybe be an easy poem about a statue yearning to be made whole. He is dead wrong. Instead he finds the statue lives. And it is over-flowing with life. Rilke is about to have a full-blown mystical experience.

We cannot know the statue’s head but this torso is enough to produce a life changing shock in Rilke. This brilliance in the statue feels more alive than Rilke. But it doesn’t only extend to the statue. He intuits “That there is no place that it does not see him.” Rilke thought he was looking at the statue but it turns out the statue was looking at him. And the statue is judging him, not the other way around. The statue knows it is complete but cannot say the same for this poor Austrian poet before him. Out of pity, it gives him a commandment, “You must change your life.”

Or Viewer and Viewed both realize at same time that is neither one that is doing the looking. The possibility exists that there is a higher unifying force that cognizes viewing and viewed. The viewer is not the view.

This moment is known as the call of the stone. It is Rilke’s deep realization that life is a series of concentric spirals. Where we go in life is based on the limits of what we think possible. Get to the next step in the mountain and a valley of possibilities open up before you. And if you ever get to the top of the mountain, then keep climbing.