„Niczym gwiazdy utkane naszymi dłońmi” – poeta jako stwórca świata i szukający Boga w utworach lirycznych Rainera Marii Rilkego i Oskara Loerkego
“Like stars that have floated out of our hands” – the poet as a Creator of the World and Seeking God in the Lyrics of Rainer Maria Rilke and Oskar Loerke

Author(s): Katrin Wellnitz
Subject(s): Sociology of Art
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Keywords: metaphysics; poetry; religion; creation; modernism; Rilke; Loerke
Summary/Abstract: Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) and Oskar Loerke (1884–1941) both tried to express their relationship to the outside world in their poems and thereby went deep into their own inner world. In order to capture reality within their poems; they incorporated the surrounding nature; people and the major philosophical and metaphysical issues and transferred them into poetical language. Both of them were conscious of the creative dimensions of their work and therefore had to deal with religious issues. The central questions were: Am I a creator or a creation and what role might God – if there is one – play in this game of poetical creation that can suddenly become an existential game of life? Their autobiographical works illustrate their efforts and the despair that comes along with such a big task.This article elucidates the correlation between creative work and religious issues that is expressed in Rainer Maria Rilke’s Stunden‑Buch (1899–1905) and in the first five books of Oskar Loerke’s Siebenbuch (1911–1936). It exemplifies the creative effect of this metaphysical conflict and demonstrates how Rilke and Loerke dealt with those questions in a poetical way; how they embedded it into their poems. The connection between the phenomena of the outside world and the inside of the author’s intellectual world is displayed. The article finally relates their metaphysical and poetical thoughts to the prevalent intellectual tendencies in the era between the turn of the century and the early 1940s.

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