Rilke's sister: mother, sister, and encounters with the feminine in the work of Rainer Maria Rilke

Abstract

As a very young child, Rainer Maria Rilke was dressed and treated as a girl by his mother, who wanted a substitute for a daughter who had died before Rilke's birth. As an adult poet, Rilke retained a sense of the continuing presence within him of this alternative sister-self. The relationship which developed between Rilke and both his mother and sister had a direct influence on poetic encounters with women, and the feminine, in his work. The study shows the ongoing importance of this early mother-sister experience in the development of the poet of the Duineser Elegien and the Sonette an Orpheus, by evaluating poetic encounters with the feminine in the context of this earliest encounter with significant female figures. It appraises Rilke's development of a poetic theory about the spiritual and creative superiority of women in spheres important to the poet, and traces Rilke's growing desire to access women's spiritual gifts for himself Finally, it considers Rilke's formulation of the figure of an "internal beloved", and the transformation of his relationship with his sister into a positive and creative union of masculine and feminine identities. Over the course of the Elegies and the Sonnets, the demons created by Rilke's very early relationship with his mother and sister were resolved, to the extent that they no longer crippled him and were turned to productive use. In his final whole-hearted celebration of human existence in all its contradictions, its joys and its sorrows, it can be seen that Rilke turned deep personal difficulties into a poetry of triumphant objectivity.