Throughout Rilke's lifetime poetry was always a way to express himself. He had a rather short and troubled life. Many of his experiences and believes can be found in his poems. For this analysis of his work I will focus on three poems, one from his early stage of writing (Die Kinder 1897) and two from later writings (Das Lied der Bettler 1906, Der Panther 1907).
The earliest poems by Rilke mainly featured two topics, religion and nationalism. While the very first poems show strong adherence to canon of Christian stories, later poems take Christianity on a whole different journey. This is very visible in the poem Die Kinder. The story describes a group of children meeting the personification of death. This grouping of youth and the inevitable end of life is very uncommon for Christian writings, especially with such a truly joyful feel to it. The end of the poem describes a young child who seeks to die, and is only accepted as it already had suffered enough. This reflects a truly early Christian believe that life needs to be lived and that suffering is part of it, before eternity can be enjoyed in heaven.
Later on in his career, Rilke moved ever further away from his Christian roots, starting to bring Greek mythological characters into his stories. Transformed into Christian symbology, these Greek characters offered a whole new world for Rilke, in which he dove willingly. However, true to the romantic spirit of his time, religion and mythology did not stay the only topics he focussed on.
A type of poetry that followed him from the middle of his career till his death was mainly focussed on the emotive description of true events. Two main areas of interest are evident within this period. The first is nature and the will of nature to survive, found, for example, in the poem Der Panther. This poem is probably the best known of all Rilke poems and it expertly describes the death of a soul in captivity. Based on the real life struggles of wildlife in 19th century zoological gardens, the poem focusses on the suffering of a single panther, which cannot escape and loses all hope for life. This has often been described as a metaphor of the struggles of Rilke's homeland, Bohemia, to obtain certain freedoms from the iron grip of the empire of Austria. Within Der Panther Rilke's style of introspective poetry, looking at the emotions of individuals, is treated as masterfully as rarely anywhere else.
The second area of interest is human struggle. Again, Rilke put his focus mainly on individuals, expressing his points of view through the eyes of fictitious individuals. Das Lied der Bettler is an example of this phase. Within this poem, Rilke describes a beggar’s thirst to keep his pride within a world that is keen on taking it all away. It focusses on the internal conflict of not letting the outer world see, of appearance. This is done in an almost manic, crazy way. Often Rilke uses such examples to lament or describe the situation of the less fortunate within his society.
In general, most of Rilke's poetry should be analyzed through the lens of his time and physical location. The struggles of the multicultural state of Austria-Hungary play a pivotal role within his poetry and often individual poems make more sense seen this way. Rilke is famous for using his personal struggles as a huge influence, making the background of each poem more important than for many other poets.
