Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

John Frederick Nims' "Rilke Surmised" is a meditation on love, beauty, and transience, deeply imbued with the spirit of Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetic philosophy. The poem’s title signals an engagement with Rilke’s worldview, particularly his belief that art and love serve as transmutations of suffering into meaning. Nims’ sonnet mirrors Rilke’s introspective lyricism, layering grand metaphysical claims with highly charged personal experience. The language and form suggest a kind of exalted resignation: an awareness that beauty and love are fleeting, yet they are the only things that momentarily illuminate existence.

The opening line, "God knows I never loved any, no, not her", is at once defiant and sorrowful. The phrase "God knows" implies both an invocation and a confession, an admission to something deeply felt yet ambiguous. The assertion of never having loved is immediately complicated by the next lines, which describe the power of a woman whose "least Dishevel at Night rocked the Blood’s Rhythm." The capitalization of "Dishevel at Night" gives it an almost mythic quality, elevating a simple moment of intimacy into something seismic. The phrase "rocked the Blood’s Rhythm" suggests both physical and emotional upheaval, reinforcing the idea that love—whether admitted or not—has shaped the speaker’s very being.

The second quatrain continues the theme of grandeur in transience, comparing love to celestial and artistic forces. The "Sun in that wild Weather’s Blur" conveys the chaotic yet illuminating nature of desire, while "The One Ray split and crazied in that Prism" suggests an analogy to the way love refracts and distorts perception, much like light through a prism. Here, love is not stable or singular—it is fragmented, dazzling, and beyond control.

The third quatrain deepens the speaker’s reflections, drawing from historical and artistic allusions. The mention of "Drowned Kings and Queens, lost Wealth, such dubious Freighting" suggests that love carries with it the weight of grandeur and ruin, echoing the impermanence of power and possession. The invocation of Michelangelo’s "Caro... sonno" (a reference to his sonnet on the solace of sleep) and Mozart’s "Exaudi" (likely referring to Exaudi Domine, a plea for divine hearing) positions love within the realm of great artistic expressions of longing and transcendence. These references reinforce the idea that all human experience—including love—is ephemeral unless transfigured into art.

The volta, or shift in thought, comes with the striking claim: "Everything (I learned this in Sobs and Kisses) / Is lifted from Nothing at all, to Nothing goes." This line distills the core of the poem’s existential meditation. The speaker acknowledges the ultimate void from which all things arise and to which they return, emphasizing the fleeting nature of love, beauty, and experience. The phrase "Sobs and Kisses" encapsulates the dual nature of passion—both its joy and its sorrow, its ephemerality and its intensity.

Yet the closing lines offer a kind of redemption through art. The "Revealing Voice" is invoked as the force that can transmute fleeting experience into something lasting. The phrase "Our Jubel und Ruhm!" (meaning "our jubilation and glory") suggests an exaltation, a celebration of what love and art make possible. The final imperative—"to Canticle transpose / All this! all this!"—calls for the transformation of ephemeral human experience into something sacred, mirroring Rilke’s belief that art must wrest meaning from mortality.

The closing couplet—"Though some hail other Truth, I sailed by this one / in stark Weather of Youth."—resolves the poem with personal conviction. The speaker acknowledges alternative perspectives but affirms his own: that beauty and love, however transient, are given meaning through artistic expression. The phrase "stark Weather of Youth" suggests that this understanding was shaped by the storms of youthful passion, by the raw and unfiltered experiences that left an indelible mark.

Structurally, the poem follows the Shakespearean sonnet form, with its three quatrains building toward a concluding couplet. However, its diction and cadence echo Rilke’s more meditative, searching voice. The poem is marked by its strategic use of capitalization—"Dishevel," "Prism," "Freighting," "Nothing," "Canticle"—which gives these words a heightened presence, as if they belong to a sacred lexicon. The enjambment throughout creates a fluidity that mimics the way thoughts unfold in a moment of deep reflection.

Ultimately, "Rilke Surmised" is a sonnet of existential reckoning. It grapples with the paradox of love and art: that they are the only means of giving meaning to human existence, yet they are themselves fragile, transient. By invoking Rilke, Michelangelo, and Mozart, Nims aligns his reflections with a tradition of artists who sought to capture the sublime, the fleeting beauty of life. The poem ends with neither despair nor triumph, but with the quiet certainty that love, even when lost, finds permanence through the act of poetic transfiguration.

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