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Rilke thought that the point of poetry was to immortalize that which is transitory. Peter Rickman explains.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/39/The ... sical_Role

Philosophy Now wrote:Rilke thought that the point of poetry was to immortalize that which is transitory. Peter Rickman explains.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/39/The ... sical_Role

So, what's the point of history, and historians, then. Real deep thinking, here...

Philosophy Now wrote:Rilke thought that the point of poetry was to immortalize that which is transitory.

Well, I can't read the whole article, since I haven't subscribed, but here's one of my favorites:

This is the creature there has never been.
They never knew it, and yet, none the less,
They loved the way it moved, its suppleness,
Its neck, its very gaze, mild and serene.

Not there, because they loved it,
It behaved as though it were.
They always left some space.

And in that clear unpeopled space they saved
It lightly reared its head,
With scarce a trace of not being there.

They fed it, not with corn,
But only with the possibility of being.
And that was able to confer such strength,
Its brow put forth a horn. One horn.
Whitely it stole up to a maid —
To be within the silver mirror and in her.

(from Sonnets To Orpheus Second Part,
R. M. Rilke 1923)

My own point of poetry is mainly to immortalize universal truths, whether of the Cosmos or the human condition, although I love to do the ethereal, to, such as portraying imaginary beings somewhere between man and angel, as Rilke did above.

PoeticUniverse wrote:

Philosophy Now wrote:Rilke thought that the point of poetry was to immortalize that which is transitory.

My own point of poetry is mainly to immortalize universal truths, whether of the Cosmos or the human condition, although I love to do the ethereal, to, such as portraying imaginary beings somewhere between man and angel, as Rilke did above.

Poetry is generally expressed as metaphor, an expression of that which brands and binds a moment into a single compressed sentiment. It really has nothing to do with immortalizing universal truths since there really aren't any except those we experience solely through the simulacrum of feeling and the verbal talent to project it.

Of all the great arts that once were, poetry is now the most defunct. Being expressed in our most common medium of expression, too many attempt to augment it into verse which invariably results in short structures of cliched and Hyperbolized prose of no value except as a personal manifesto of emotions ... which all amount to mere remnants of what used to be the art of poetry.

...like Nietzsche wrote:
Another century of readers--and spirit itself will stink.
Every one being allowed to learn to read, ruineth in the long run not only writing but also thinking.