Rilke uses this literary technique to allude to the fact that the Open is closer to God while the World is separate from it.

” The capitalization of the words “World” and “Open” is reminiscent of how we capitalize the word God in the Bible and in other religious literature. Lovers are also placed in this category of people who “are close to it, and marvel” at the “Open, ” yet who stop due to the presence of the “World. ” Rilke asserts that although our mortality hinders us, those nearing death no longer see their own fear. “For, nearing death, one doesn’t see death but stares / beyond, perhaps with an animal’s vast gaze. ” People on their deathbeds are another example. ” The phrase “shaken back” reveals the stark difference between the “Open” and the “World. “A child may wander there for hours… and be shaken back. Rilke uses children as one example of those who are not yet afraid. The only times we can reach back to our true nature, and brush the freedom of the “Open, ” is when we are near birth, death, or love.

In contrast to this, humans live in the “World” which acts as a representation of modern materialism. In the first stanza, Rilke’s use of unusual capitalization emphasizes this point: Animals exist in the “Open” this almost mythological place where there are no constructs or limitations. Rilke accentuates this emptiness with his comparisons between humans and animals. ” We are constantly suffering from an emptiness that runs rampant in the material world. Rilke begins and ends his poem with the idea that there has been a loss when it comes to humans and humanity: “Never, not for a single day, do we have / before us that pure space into which flowers / endlessly open.

Rilke 9th elegy