Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

The poem "What Will You Do, God, When I Die?" by Rainer Maria Rilke captures the existential anxiety of mortality, but also challenges conventional religious paradigms. It subverts the traditional concept of a human dependent on God for meaning and proposes an alternative: What if God depends on humans for purpose?

The poem begins with a provocative question: "What will you do, God, when I die?" It immediately disrupts the assumed hierarchy between the human and the divine, flipping the script and making God accountable to human existence. The speaker identifies as God's "jar," "well-spring," "craft," and "vesture," emphasizing the interdependency between the divine and the human. The imagery of a cracked jar or a dried well-spring shows vulnerability but also utility: the speaker is not just an object of divine creation but also a vessel of divine purpose. "You lose your purport, losing me," the speaker contends, arguing that their mortality implicates a loss of meaning for God, too.

This argument gains further traction when the speaker suggests that God's "cold house will be / empty of words that made it sweet." Here, the house may symbolize the universe or the realm of the divine, which would lose its resonance or 'sweetness' without human life and language. This point takes the idea of interdependency a step further, insinuating that human art, thought, and discourse bring a form of enrichment to divinity.

The next lines, "I am the sandals your bare feet / will seek and long for, wearily," touch upon the theme of yearning and comfort. It is as if the speaker embodies an essential part of God's journey through existence. They are the comfort that even God seeks, the protection God needs in traversing the complexities and challenges of existence.

The final lines paint a poignant picture of loss: "Your cloak will fall from aching bones. / Your glance, that my warm cheeks have cheered / as with a cushion, long endeared, / will wonder at a loss so weird." It is not just the human who loses; God too loses warmth and comfort. The 'cloak' and 'glance' are metaphorical ways to convey God's dependence on human affection and presence for some form of emotional sustenance. The word "weird" is a stark choice, highlighting the incomprehensible nature of this loss from God's perspective.

The final line, "What will you do, God? I'm afeared," encapsulates the speaker's existential dread but also leaves us with a question rather than an assertion. It subtly positions the human and divine on the same existential plane, united in their shared ambiguity and vulnerability.

In "What Will You Do, God, When I Die?", Rainer Maria Rilke grapples with questions that disrupt the very foundations of religion and spirituality. It unseats long-standing assumptions and forces both believer and skeptic to confront a new paradigm: a God intimately entwined with human existence, susceptible to the same existential questions that plague humanity. The poem becomes a complex web of theology, existentialism, and poetic ingenuity, exploring a radically empathetic form of divine-human relationship.

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