5-14: Rilke & Carpe Don’t Rhyme

 

The Mysteries of Art

When I was teaching various classes in American Studies, kind of a humanities class in the history and art of the United States, I would take my students on field trips to our local Greenfield Village–a kind of Americana replica of 1800-1940, complete with cosplay pioneers in historical buildings and working Model T Fords–and our Detroit Institute of Arts. My goal was to get them to engage the art and architecture tactilely, to have some time to breathe the art, not see it in 480 pixel resolution on the projected classroom screen. I still remember the boredom I had endured when my high school English teacher would show us Renaissance art through her malfunctioning slide projector, photos she had transferred from a monstrous opaque projector scanning Encyclopedia Britannica prints she had clumsily fed to it. 

Nope. Wasn’t going to repeat that, if I could help it.

But just getting my students there wasn’t enough. I understand teenagers enough to know that field trips were enough of a change in their routine that their attentions would be scattered everywhere, and perhaps only briefly to the art. I could drag them from exhibit to exhibit, reprimanding them when they strayed–definitely the ideal attitude to assume when the goal is growing intrinsic appreciation for high culture. Or . . . or, I could trick them.

Of course. So I invented a game for the trip. I knew ahead of time the works I wanted them to concentrate on: Noah Webster’s house, the Menlo Park laboratories, the work of Bellows, Copley, and Church. Etcetera. So I created a story which connected them all, a murder mystery, which they could only solve by examining the details from the works. Once the details were gathered, they would have enough information to solve the mystery: which historical figure slew another but was witnessed by a third, and in what place and year? To assist them, I went ahead of time to enlist the docents who would be working that day to be sure they dropped the appropriate clues in their talks or answered the questions my students might put to them. They were all always very accommodating. 

And so we met, I’d give them the rules, then off they went in small clumps to explore and discover. 

It . . . kind of worked. I can say with some confidence that most students learned more about the art they encountered than the conventional museum-dragging. But did they really meet the art? Really get to know it? (*sigh*) Of course not. I would have to leave aesthetic appreciation for the art teachers. But what about reading it for meaning? It’s asking a lot of 16-year-olds, anyway, isn’t it, to ask them if Church’s “Cotopaxi” is of a volcanic eruption or is a metaphor for the moral challenges of the 1860s? The best my students might do after their field trips is be better prepared for a game of Jeopardy trivia.

I know. Exposure alone is half the battle. And I wasn’t asking too much: just that they could see how Thomas Cole’s “Man in a High Hat” was a patriotic gesture; or that at least  take a moment that they next enjoyed a Heinz pickle to remember the lab in Henry’s parent’s basement where he began his start-up business. 

We’d learn it later, wouldn’t we? We’d slow down to appreciate later, right?  Right?

Ooh boy. We didn’t really do that, did we? And now instead of a projected classroom screen we scroll through the world’s art–more often past it–on our phones or laptops, searching for more rather than stopping for what is. No, I don’t want to turn this into an old man rant on the attention spans of our youth, because mine is threatened too, you know? 

But one reason we scroll, one reason we rush through experience, is not to disrespect what we are seeing but to anticipate what the next thing is, a FOMO fear we will miss it, that the next one will be better. If I don’t swipe now, I may miss the 57th thing, and THAT is the one that might really catch my attention. And I don’t have the energy to get into all of the arguments of attention spans and screen addictions and our arguments about whether we should have them in schools. (Short answer: Denying students technology does not teach them digital literacy but does forsake our responsibility to that critical learning, all because adults in the room can’t adapt enough to manage classrooms.)

Okay, I did have a little energy for it. Where was I? Oh, attention spans, right? Here’s the thing. If I were going to do a Psych 101 analysis of FOMO and our attention spans, I might at least partly attribute it to a misguided understanding of getting the most out of life. We think that the more we “fill” our lives with “stuff,” the more we pack in experiences, whether YOLO adventures or weeklong binges of doom-scrolling and pee-bagging (um, sorry to my own sensitive listeners)–anyway, the more we do all that, the more we expose our anxiety: we have to make our lives mean something . . . before we die. 

 

Theme

This is Literary Nomads, where we wander through literature and language, near and far.

I’m Steve Chisnell, and today I’d rather “pluck” than “seize.”

 

Merking “Seized”

The short of it: Carpe DiemSimply translated as "Pluck" or "Seize" "the Day," it is the... More is alive and unwell today. That is, as we touched upon last week, the translation for “carpe” has more to do with a simple “gathering” or “plucking” or “harvesting” than it does any “seizing.” This fits far more into the original EpicureanA philosophy of simple and sensual pleasure as a goal of lif... More ideas of ataraxia (a peace of mind) or aponia (a freedom from pain) in order to live a more fulfilling and meaningful life. But here is the critical turn: the Epicureans taught that this carpe diemSimply translated as "Pluck" or "Seize" "the Day," it is the... More “gathering” of days meant an appreciation for what life offered us, not an anxious search for pleasure. It meant a controlling of desire, not a vain quest for fulfillment through “stuff” or “events.” Slow down. Embrace and experience what we have. I went into all of this in more detail last week, what I’m calling Part 1 of this philosophical examination. (And yes, you Stoics out there, we have a huge overlap in philosophies, don’t we?) 

Now I introduced contemporary thinker/philosopher Roman Krznaric last week. His book on contemporary carpe diemSimply translated as "Pluck" or "Seize" "the Day," it is the... More approaches, Carpe DiemSimply translated as "Pluck" or "Seize" "the Day," it is the... More: Seizing the Day in a Distracted World,  offers us versions of how we have manhandled carpe diemSimply translated as "Pluck" or "Seize" "the Day," it is the... More, too, but he goes further to warn us of how our misinterpretations have created a real danger of exploitation by markets that want to profit from us. He calls these “Just plan it, just buy it, just watch it, and just breathe.”  These work well to define for us the scale of appeals we meet every day. 

• As life speeds up to demand our divided attention, we are admonished to plan better, become more efficient, and school teachers also work to inculcate the skill; when we fail, there are apps and programs to help.  
• When we realize that we aren’t “getting anywhere” (whatever that means), we are offered sales and opportunities to acquire the next thing: a new tech, a higher end luxury, a deserved vacation, avocado on toast. If we spend the money, life will be better, according to all of the smiling people in ads. Fortunately, the entire Western culture seems to work hard from schools on to put us into the mode to make more money.
• The media does its part, of course. The array of audio and video offerings seem endless, but we have algorithmic and AI-generated recommendations for what we should be doing next, and that is sitting and watching–even if it means watching other people get more stuff (Why do people like unboxing videos?) or bingeing so that we don’t think overlong about why we are watching in the first place. It’s another version of consuming more sans critical consideration, my bored students rushing from painting to painting to get their points so they can break for ice cream later.
• But then! We are admonished all over again and sold the exact opposite message: we are told to slow down, to breathe, to meditate, do yoga or tai chi, because all this rushing around is bad bad bad for us. Just start with five minutes a day, then 15, then 45, so we can re-find our centers, all for $45/hour yoga classes or $14.99/month video apps on our phones. Because, we are told, we must focus on ourselves in the present, and stop worrying about the past or future where anxiety lives. But is even this the right approach? Isn’t, um, this presentism also too often self-centered? (We’ll have to save Buddhism for another time.) So while there may be little wrong with the idea of slowing, there is danger even here in how it is appropriated by markets and ill-considered attitudes.

This is all Krznaric, these four social attitudes: Just plan it, just buy it, just watch it, just breathe. Each offers us a “just,” the promise that a single simple solution will fix it all, much like the Mediterranean diet–er, the Paleo–um, Nutrisystem, South Beach, Keto, Dukan, Zone–you know, the thing. The Diet. Just start it and quit asking questions.

Fortunately, you and I are smarter than all of that. We can see how these social forces work and we’re brave enough to say we do not fall victim to them. After all, I use a free calendar app on my phone, thank you very much, I buy only quality items from Amazon so they will last longer, and Andor, Yellowjackets, and Severance are just good television. Oh, and also Black Mirror and Handmaid’s Tale. And Yellowstone. But not 1883!  I use shows like that for my own escapist version of meditation.

More seriously, I want to mention that this “seize” the day conception of carpe diemSimply translated as "Pluck" or "Seize" "the Day," it is the... More which powers our culture right now–the same one we’ve already seen through literature that has also empowered assaultive seductions of women–creates problematic behaviors for those who “have”–that is, those who are successful at gaining money–but further complicates life when fed to those who have accepted the game but are less able to play it. In a society of poverty and racism, discriminations of all kinds, we have an added despair, of fulfilling the “seizing” not even momentarily but suffering the heavy weight of its demands nonetheless. And I should add, too, that these obstacles to carpe diemSimply translated as "Pluck" or "Seize" "the Day," it is the... More freedoms exist no matter how we interpret it. I’m not about to claim that a restoration of Epicureanism will find solutions to social ills. But I do want us, going forward, to be particularly sensitive to social and philosophical and ethical and literary claims that only support positions of power or privilege.

But somehow, and I think we can see it, the “seize the day” misinterpretation is more aggressive, suggests even a preying upon others as part of its ethic, even as we struggle ourselves desperately to fill our lives with plenty. Those who practice “seize the day” in a kind of existential anxiety against mortality are victims of the mentality, but they also rarely hesitate to step on others in the name of satisfying themselves. Didn’t I just describe Marvell’s speaker and the Cavalier poets? And Dorian Gray? 

Okay. Is it clear, too, that the themes and philosophies we live by have an ethical dimension to them? I’ve touched upon these ideas before–both in our discussions of accountabilityAccountability is a claim on our actions, but it is external... More in interpretation and our ethical attentiveness in having difficult conversations about it. Simply, what meanings we make and how we talk about them are both places of ethics, of choices about who we are to others.

Let’s look at that, but to do so, we’re going to divert to a sonnet I introduced last week: Rilke’s “Archaic Torso of Apollo.” 

 

Broken Art and Potent Readings

Let’s begin with the poem by Rilke. It’s a sonnet, though does not feel like one in a traditional form. And since it is in translation, we aren’t here to diagnose its rhythm and rhyme scheme, anyway. 

The speaker of the poem has encountered an ancient statue of the Greek god Apollo, but broken, recovered from some archaeological site likely, Its appendages and head are missing. We do not know the sculptor. All we have is the torso, displayed perhaps in a museum, and the speaker who witnesses it, meets it, reads it, writes this sonnet about it. 

It is an ekphrastic poem–and by now you all appreciate how much I enjoy ekphrastic literature–it is a poem about another object of art, that uses words to replace, supplement, or respond to the art object. It’s a poem that talks back. 

And, perhaps more than anything else, no matter how many times we read this poem, we find ourselves stunned a bit by its closing line, the turnabout. Let’s listen to it again. I’ve put the poem in the Show Notes if you’d like to follow along or read it 37 more times later.

Apollo’s Archaic Torso

We cannot know his incredible head,
where the eyes ripened like apples,
yet his torso still glows like a candelabrum,
from which his gaze, however dimmed,

still persists and gleams. If this were not so,
the curve of his breast could not blind you,
nor could a smile, steered by the gentle curve
of his loins, glide to the centre of procreation.

And this stone would seem disfigured and stunted,
the shoulders descending into nothing,
unable to glisten like a predator’s pelt,

or burst out from its confines and radiate
like a star: for there is no angle from which
it cannot see you. You have to change your life.

Geez. What is going on here?  Significantly, Apollo is the god of poetry, so this poetic homage to him is appropriate. And, historically, Rilke at the time of this poem’s writing was friend, secretary, confidante, collaborator with sculptor Auguste Rodin of “The Thinker” fame, so his head was all about sculpture, obviously. Rilke saw the connections between poetry and sculpture, what art does for its reader.

The first stanza tells us what is not there, Apollo’s head, “where the eyes ripened like apples,” but significantly Apollo’s gaze, though dimmed, still gleams.  It’s the torso which remains that gazes; though a broken statue, the art still has power on us. Even the absence of the head is lit like a candelabra. 

In the second stanza, Rilke argues that if it did not, it could not blind us, nor direct our gaze to his genitals, which he in this translation calls the “centre of procreation.” Does he mean this as a symbol of fertility, as a sexual image, or as the creative utterance of art? Whatever it is, it is still a potency, an energy which is retained even here in this broken sculpture, this fragment of the complete work. 

But he turns a bit in the third stanza to suggest that the stone is “stunted,” “disfigured,” that the shoulders cannot contain the energy still here, and Rilke balances the gazing image here with the more explicit, “there is no angle from which it cannot see you.” As we move around the sculpture, without explicit eyes, its power is attuned to us everywhere.

It demands a response, doesn’t it? That powerful, watching sculpture? The god of poetry, even here in a representation and fragment, sees us, watches us, as we watch it. What could we possibly say? For our speaker, this is a moment of awakening, of realization of something through art.

And then, the surprise: the speaker seems to turn full about and talk to we readers; he moves from a long observation of the statue to tell us directly, “You have to change your life.”

Is it to us? It’s hard to imagine, as written this way, that the line is meant only to the speaker. So what does it mean? Where did this idea come from? What have we been doing wrong that we need to change our lives? 

Let’s go back a bit: The speaker has found power in this moment, this contemplation of the meaning of this broken statue. Even broken, there is a kind of immanence here–and I say this word beginning with an “i,” immanence. It means something which still inherently contains its essence. For instance, cut off a finger and we are still inherently human; our humanness is not dependent upon having ten fingers, but leave mine alone. In religious thought we might say that God is immanently in all created things, the divine miracle inherent to the world around us. In art, in this torso, there is some power still immanent here. The essence of the art is still here, still glowing, still watching. 

Is it watching us? Is the god of poetry in this thing? Is it the idea of the aesthetic here? Of beauty? Our speaker does not tell us explicitly, only that “there is no angle from which

it cannot see you.” Maybe, though, this is the speaker himself who is placing all of this meaning onto a broken stone. It’s an archaeological discovery, an historical artifact, but Rilke–a romantic and mystical thinker–has decided it means more than this. He has made an objective object a subjective experience. 

Let me say that again. He has made an objective object a subjective experience. He has, as would most thoughtful artists, valued the subjective over the objective, made a world of things a world of meaningful moments. 

“You have to change your life.” Whether or not the art has an Ideal or even divine immanence, or that the speaker has himself imposed that meaning upon the art, our speaker has changed. He has been transformed, internally. He’s been altered, affected, moved, . . . enlightened.

So much so that, “You have to change your life.” 

Whether or not the art has been born immanent or has had immanence thrust upon it, our speaker has had an experience that the 16-year-old murder mystery detective could not have, not less than the 1980 high school student Steve watching a screen image of Raphael’s “Madonna and Child” burn up in a jammed and over-heating slide projector. 

Don’t tell me to “seize the day” and rush to the next room of art on the museum tour, nor to fill my day with all the museums in the city because Travelocity taught me how to best budget my time. Don’t ask me to spend $20 at the museum shop on an artsy coffee mug or even sell me a timed walking tour with headphones.

“You have to change your life.”

The move from “seize” to “pluck” is an internal transformation, one from grabbing what we can in frenzy to facing what we have in meaning, in reading and exchange, in discovery and thoughtfulness. 

“You have to. . . “

It’s not about waiting for art or the roller coaster or the gourmet dessert or the evening date or the next Marvell film or anything else to speak to us, to lift us, to save us. It’s about us choosing to change what we ask. This is an active decision on our part (“We have to”) as opposed to a passive decision on their part (“Just buy, just watch”). 

It’s carpe diemSimply translated as "Pluck" or "Seize" "the Day," it is the... More. Writer Corey Latta describes the speaker’s choice as an “artistically-derived, theologically-animated morality,” a “demand for moral change.” Wow. But imperatives do that. This is not a recommendation for which flavor yogurt to choose: Rilke makes the significance of the final line critical in its turn and immediacy: a “must” and a conversion. Carpe diemSimply translated as "Pluck" or "Seize" "the Day," it is the... More.

 

Ethics Tests

Okay, by now I suspect you’ve plucked or gathered my drift. I must surely be a “pluck the day” sort of guy, and you’d be entirely wrong.

It’s true, I’m not a fan of Marvell’s speaker, Dorian Gray, and most of present society’s dull desires. It’s true that I reject the phrase “seize the day” as being an accurate portrayal of the EpicureanA philosophy of simple and sensual pleasure as a goal of lif... More philosophy. And it’s definitely true that I’ve seen lots of parallels and arguments across the literature we’ve touched upon. More, it’s true that I’ve carried this “What do we do with life?” question with me for ten episodes now, and I’d like some direction.

None of this means that I’m a wholesale EpicureanA philosophy of simple and sensual pleasure as a goal of lif... More or that the carpe diemSimply translated as "Pluck" or "Seize" "the Day," it is the... More philosophy is one that I am ready to embrace. There are . . . complications.

As I’ve already suggested, some of these are ethical. (How could they not be?) One general guideline seems clear enough to me, presuming that I value my fellow human beings at all. And that is, let’s not make choices that harm others or their ability to make choices, too. Sounds a bit like the Golden Rule, and if it worked for me at age six–it was one of the first things on the classroom wall I learned to read–I’m ready to stick to it.

 I’ll go further than that, while we’re here talking about it. More than not getting in the way of others, I suspect that if I care for my fellow humans (and I know three of you out there who don’t, so . .. )–if I care for my fellow humans, it seems pretty ethical to actually help them find the opportunities and wherewithal to make choices themselves. That way we can all take better steps to making more meaningful lives. Hence you have one reason why I spent so much time as a teacher. 

Still, we’re a long way from an easy route to walk. Is my method for liberating people to free choice Mahatma Gandhi’s or Frantz Fanon’s? How does this work in complement to someone’s faith in an afterlife of lack of one? 

And why do I keep drawing a line between a meaningful life and a happy one? Am I suspicious of happiness? In a word, yes. I think we too often make it a synonym with “pleasure,” for one, and that definitely has some ethical traps in it. More, I’m not at all certain, based on what we’ve read so far, that happiness is what we want, especially in the world we’ve been dealt. Heck, dogs are happy so long as we don’t neglect them. But dogs are also largely reactive creatures, responding to what is done to them rather than make thoughtful and proactive choices for their own futures. And in a world where I have too too often seen people manipulated and ruined because they’ve waited for happiness to be delivered, I’m not ready to put my money on the transient and coy subjectivity of happiness. And I can’t predict that all of my choices will always lead me to happiness, anyway. 

So right now I’m settling, the word I’ll use for the moment. I’m settling on us making meaningful choices. In making choices about how we live and what we think about time and death, all of Marvell’s big ideas. And the choices we make that lead us away from dependency upon the “stuff” others sell us—those seem best.

Rilke? He seems to want the same. Pause. Slow the f– down. Discover the meaning in the art before us; that’s where the greatness of idea resides, the vitality of the aesthetic, of beauty, the truth that is immanent, whether it is in the art, in us, or in the exchanges between us. 

And still there’s that set of other questions which complicate the ethics of carpe diemSimply translated as "Pluck" or "Seize" "the Day," it is the... More still more: the inequalities in our current lives, the forces which work to enforce and increase them. It should be obvious, but I’ll say it, anyway: keeping your boot on someone’s face is not living a life of compassion and it is antithetical to what we’ve been talking about here. It’s the worst incarnation of the “seize” of carpe diemSimply translated as "Pluck" or "Seize" "the Day," it is the... More: it’s what Roman Krznaric talks about in business and politics in the pursuit of power, of wealth, of stuff that we deny others. One of my former students on LinkedIn has adopted the phrase “quality people” to describe high-end clients who network through the company to build wealth and opportunity; I cringe at the phrase, what it implies about those who code their prejudices in this way.

But what do I do about it? This is an ethical choice, too. And will the consequences of my active resistance, my qualified resistance, or my non-resistance–my inaction–make my life more or less meaningful? Will it do more harm to others than good? Too many “mindfulness” programs, says Krznaric, argue for a separation from the world, a kind of self-centeredness that foregoes compassion for others, abandons the world so that we, at least, can meditate peacefully.

So yes, there is an ethical component to our choices which is implicit in each, perhaps immanent in each. And yet Rilke says “You have to…”  Carpe diemSimply translated as "Pluck" or "Seize" "the Day," it is the... More.

So no, I am absolutely not ready to attach myself to this philosophy, just yet. 

 

So What Do We Carpe?

Does it surprise anyone that we are still in a place of uncertainty? Some time ago, we talked about the importance of that idea in our meaning-making. Let’s see if we can connect a few dots.

Reading, of course, what we’re all here for, is about meaning-making, about interpreting texts. This is an act of careful thinking–and now I will add that this thinking is, at the least, both analytical and subjective, considering Rilke’s approach to art. But also, it is therefore fraught with uncertainty, in questions and meanings that cannot be brought down to a multiple choice test. Thinking about literature in these platitudes (Romeo & Juliet is about “tragic love;” “To His Coy Mistress” is about seduction) is a simplificationHere, Waywords most often uses this term as a form of false ... More which misrepresents the literature and limits our concept of thought to comprehension and perhaps a bit of analysis; it denies the subjective and creative experience of interpretation as valid.

Even so, engaging in critical literacy, in asking hard and nuanced questions of texts, often leaves us deadlocked without answers, in unresolved contradictions or paradoxes, that we cannot seem to unlock. This is the state of aporia, that sense of the un-resolvable. It is discomfiting, unnerving even, but it is unavoidable and necessary. It is in these uncertain spaces where we are asked to discover, create, question, propose, challenge, engage, or harvest meaning. 

It is here, in these spaces, which we must dedicate our time. This is where the best texts keep giving us more to find. And we want to close the door so badly. We have to move to the next thing, swipe it away, scroll on, “Squirrel!” (for those who remember Doug from the movie Up!). Resisting that closure, embracing ambiguity and uncertainty, keeps us in the most powerful spaces of art and literature. And it takes time, our internal choice to commit to the questions we find. Says Rilke: “You have to change your life.”

And we’ve said this before, too: Grappling this way with literary uncertainty puts us in practice when approaching our broader life’s uncertainties. There’s nothing better in conversation about that literary idea, than the “Yes, but–” or even better, the “Yes, and. . . “  Cordoning literature off from life doesn’t do anyone any good when art speaks so directly to it for us.

But this makes reading and interpreting more scary. I mean, at least with multiple choice, I can be right–at worst–25% of the time. Or maybe 20%.  And if I don’t answer at all, I can’t be wrong. And if I don’t read it in the first place . . . 

And there we are. That line of reasoning only gets us to ignorance. And ignorance is not, despite the platitude, bliss. Ignorance is the place for victimization, for the incapacity to choose. In this way, taking a stake in our interpretations, speaking from considered uncertainty, is an act of bravery. Of self confidence.

But it’s true: we may be held accountable for our interpretations. Just as we’re held accountable for all of our choices. But Horace tells us, “carpe diemSimply translated as "Pluck" or "Seize" "the Day," it is the... More, quam minimum crēdula posterō.”  Pluck the day, place no trust in the future. As responsible thinkers and readers–as readers with ethics, in other words–we do the best that we can, examining and turning over texts at length, in discovery. 

We’re not unarmed in our ventures in reading, either. We know how ironyA "deflection of expectation," where words, situation, or pe... More can power meaning. We know to trust what we first Notice, to question the possible Significances of it, and to seek Patterns between those significances. To follow this process in interpretation, even as we do so in making choices about our larger lives. And next week, too, I’ll give you the fourth and final step in this beginning process. 

And once we have our questions and ideas, we proceed to engage others, having difficult conversations with ethical attentiveness to their positions. Notice how different this might be from a “seize the day” mentality which might seek to manipulate conversations to an advantage. We have these good conversations both in a self-serving way (to better learn and clarify where we stand and build communities where these conversations are normalized) and because we value others and want them to have the opportunity to talk about something beyond the “next thing” or lists of their likes and don’t likes. We want to model communities where broader and richer dialogue can occur. Where art and libraries are valued for providing these provocations.

Okay. Some dots connected. Across the last 15 episodes so far, this is where we are. I’m finding myself tempted to renew my art museum membership and spend one afternoon at a time looking at a single display, but I don’t dare. Besides, I’m talking to you right now. But it’s tempting–just sayin’. How else will I know if there is something immanent in art?

How about you? Next week, we’re going to look at a novella by Saul Bellow which goes after what we talked about as directly as it could. It’s his classic, Seize the Day. It comes in at about 100 pages, so you might want to knock it out here before next episode, but if you don’t, no worries: I’ll provide a spoiler-filled summary and some details.

But, you know how it goes, whether you read Bellow or not for next week, do go read something.

 

Outro

Follow me and find me along with supplements, bonus episodes, resources, newsletters, and still more at Waywords Studio dot com.  That’s Waywords Studio (two s’s in the middle) dot com. Thanks for listening! 

Music for Literary Nomads is by Randon Myles

Chapter headings by Natalie Harrison and Sarah Skaleski

Literary Nomads is a production of Waywords Studio. Find me at Waywords Studio on most social media and at Waywords Studio .com.

 

Bibliography Part 2

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Dergisi, Uluslararası Sosyal Araştırmalar. “”Rilke and the Modernist Tradition - A Brief Look at ‘Archaic Torso of Apollo.’” The Journal of International Social Research, vol. 6, no. 24, Winter 2013, https://www.sosyalarastirmalar.com/articles/rilke-and-the-modernist-tradition-a-brief-look-at-archaic-torso-of-apollo.pdf.

Jager, Bernd. “Rilke’s ‘Archaic Torso of Apollo.’” Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, vol. 34, no. 1, 2003, pp. 79–98. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1163/156916203322484833.

“James Pollock on Rainer Maria Rilke’s ‘Archaic Torso of Apollo.’” Voltage Poetry, 24 Feb. 2014, https://voltagepoetry.com/2014/02/24/1311/.

Krznaric, Roman. Carpe DiemSimply translated as "Pluck" or "Seize" "the Day," it is the... More Regained: The Vanishing Art of Seizing the Day. 1st ed, Unbound, 2017.

“Rainer Maria Rilke.” The Poetry Foundation, n.d., https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/rainer-maria-rilke.

“Rainer Maria Rilke’s ‘Archaic Torso of Apollo’: Translation and Commentary.” Los Angeles Review of Books, 22 June 2019, https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/poetry/rainer-maria-rilkes-archaic-torso-apollo-translation-commentary.

Rumens, Carol. “Poem of the Week: Apollo’s Archaic Torso Translated by Sarah Stutt.” The Guardian, 15 Nov. 2010. The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2010/nov/15/apollos-archaic-torso-sarah-stutt.

Weber, Katie. “‘Archaic Torso of Apollo’ by Rainer Maria Rilke.” Gathering., 11 Mar. 2025, https://gatheringpoetry.substack.com/p/archaic-torso-of-apollo-by-rainer.