Rilke and Poetic Religion

a Romantic Heritage

Abstract

Starting from the assertions of Octavio Paz in Los hijos del limo, according to which “the death of God” is a Romantic theme, we explore how this mark of profound transformations unfolds in some moments of Rainer Maria Rilke’s work, specifically as an exacerbation of a trait that, according to Paz, stems from Romanticism: the idea of poetry as the “original religion”, of the poetic discourse as a “competitor” of the religious, and therefore, of the poet as prophet and priest. Now, however, without God, some reconfiguration becomes necessary. Heir to this Romantic tone, Rilke represented a Godless world and a possible path for poetry through the search for interiority and the attempt at a poetic work that, paradoxically, starting from the finitude, would create a divinity.