Its eyes were attracted by the endless iron fence.
I'm too tired to eat anything.
It seems to have only a thousand iron railings,
There is no universe behind a thousand fences.
Strong steps and gentle steps,
Pedestrians spin in this small circle,
As if the dance of power revolves around a center,
Great will is dizzy in the center.
Only when you look up silently. ——
So there's an immersive image,
Through the tense silence of the limbs—
Go up in smoke in my heart.
(translated by Feng Zhi)
Mystery, dreaminess, sadness, loneliness and the mood at the end of the century, together with the local color of Prague and the folk accent of Bohemia, are the main features of the poet Rilke's poems.
This poem begins with the eyes of "it" (leopard), as if depicting the image of a tired leopard trapped in a cage. In fact, the poet only used leopards to express his feelings at that time. First of all, the poet connected people with leopards in the relationship between watching and being watched, brought readers into the beautiful Paris Zoo, firmly grasped the readers' emotions, and fixed their eyes on the poor leopards in that zoo. Then, with a stroke of a pen, "nothing can be done", just seven words led people's eyes from the eyes of the leopard to the poet's mood at that time. Finally, I silently looked down at my heart. This shift of eyes comes so quickly and naturally that readers have no chance to breathe and avoid, so they follow the rhythm of poetry and the poet's state of mind and enter the bottomless abyss of emptiness. The leopard's thinking is very simple, but at this time, the poet deeply lamented his situation and the situation of the whole mankind with infinite sorrow. As a poet, Rilke tried to "stay awake, read and write long letters" (autumn in Rilke) with a sense of humility to God and art, as well as heartfelt love for human beings, and in the end he was just lonely. Trying to get rid of the frequent travel life, the result is "nothing to take in." However, it is not just poets who feel empty that are really sad. People are busy in the endless stream of modern means of transportation, dazzling large machine production, strange crowds and high-rise buildings, for power, money, status, honor and love. What has all this left for people? Superior material life will make people tired, and it is still "nothing to eat." Through the things around people like iron bars, you can't see anything. "It seems that there are only 1000 iron bars" and even the universe doesn't exist. This is an empty world, an illusory world. Although you are strong, you have nowhere to exert your strength, and the iron fence surrounds you, which backfires. "The dance of power seems to revolve around a center./In this center, great will is dizzy." In this way, the poet used the leopard's perceptual ability to connect the abstract "strength" with the concrete "dance" and the abstract "will" with the concrete "dizziness", resulting in an "abstract sensuality" effect (Valery), lamenting helplessly that people are full of contradictions with the real world, the world is empty and people themselves are lonely. Just as you can't get rid of the emptiness of the world, you can't get rid of your own loneliness. Poetry shows people's difficult situation here. However, the poet did not stop at merely expressing the human situation. But in the last paragraph of the poem, it puts forward the tragedy that human beings are really doomed to: in emptiness and exhaustion, "only silently lifting their eyes", so they see another kind of hope, "so they have an immersed image". However, when you get close to it, through a burst of excitement, "through the tense silence of limbs", it "disappears into my heart", leaving a more desperate and empty world.
This poem, written in 1903, is Rilke's early masterpiece known for his "objective and faithful description". But this so-called "objective and faithful description" is not a straightforward description, but a tortuous expression of one's thoughts and feelings through objective things. Poetry profoundly reflected the social contradictions and people's mental trauma at that time, and made great achievements in art and thought. Therefore, critics have always regarded it as the masterpiece of Rilke's early poems.
(Mei Fang)