Going Blind

Rilke, Rainer Maria

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Annotated by:
Coulehan, Jack
  • Date of entry: May-09-1995

Summary

This 16 line poem describes a nearly-blind woman sitting at a table at a party: "she seemed to hold her cup / a little differently . . . . " Afterward, she gets up slowly and follows the others "through many rooms (they talked and laughed)," but she moves far behind the others, "absorbed, like someone who will soon / have to sing before a large assembly . . . . "

Commentary

This early poem was originally published in New Poems (1908). It is a fine evocation of the pensiveness and movement of a person who has lost most functional vision and has not yet really adapted to sightlessness.

Miscellaneous

First published: 1908. Translated by Stephen Mitchell.

Primary Source

The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke

Publisher

Vintage

Place Published

New York

Edition

1989

Editor

Stephen Mitchell