Parker Verhoeff

English 9

Mr. Salsich

5.19.09

Rilke and the Rock:

An Essay on a passage, a rock and my beliefs

Rainer Maria Rilke is one of the greatest German poets of our time. He writes about letting go, and how our hands differ from our eyes. It relates back to Naomi Shihab Nye, William Wordsworth, and their poems. This exquisite-FAST passage relates to a garden stone and my beliefs as well.

In a passage written by Rainer Maria Rilke, he discusses the difference between your eyes and hands. He writes, "Seeing is for us the most authentic possibility of acquiring something," explaining that the only information we need can be seen with our eyes-Participial Phrase (Closer). Only when we see something is when we can truly "acquire something." Rilke then writes, "If God had only made our hands to be like our eyes - so ready to grasp, so ready to relinquish things." Our hands tend to hold on to things more than we need to. Our eyes are free to flit boundlessly over the landscape without having to hold anything to weigh them down. We can absorb as much information from seeing than grabbing, holding, lingering, and keeping-Tetracolon climax. We should not let things stay with us longer than needed, instead, "[let] everything pass through [our] grasp as if through the festive gate of return and homecoming."-Antithesis

Gray and dull, yet hard and strong, a simple garden stone takes Rilke's philosophy to heart-Appositive Phrase (opener). It does not need to keep anything in it's grasp. It can "move forward, now [it is] sturdy and strong" , even though it experiences more than we will ever know. They started out underneath the earth's crust as one thick sea of molten lava, but then it was thrust up above in various places around the world to harden. The massive rock was then broken up by glaciers, and the pieces were distributed all over this planet. Though they still are in our gardens, driveways, and all over the ground, much smaller than they originally were, but still there nonetheless. They have and always will remain to serve us, no matter what. They will stay as a token for us, to touch the true history that is a rock.

I completely agree with Rilke. I believe letting go is more efficient way of going about things, and impacts you greater as well. It makes me think back to Nye's poem "Adios", and how you should be remembered for the way you say good bye, rather than the way you say hello. Also, this passage reminds me of William Wordsworth's poem "Tintern Abbey," and how it's the little things that you should be grateful for the most, even if their so minuscule-FAST you can't even recall them. For Rilke, letting go is part of life. However, once you have let go, that occurrence seems to stay with us. So Rilke explains, "Once out of our hands [...] we should keep nothing of them but the courageous morning melody that hovers and shimmers behind their fading steps." When you let go, you should experience the a weight being lifted off of your chest. You have to remember, "For property is poverty and fear; only to have possessed something and to have let go of it means carefree ownership!"

This passage is an interesting way of looking at this popular subject. It is something that I believe as well. How letting go should not be looked at as a negative, but as a positive. Our eyes are lucky not to have to worry about possessions, because their free to see with nothing holding them back.
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SELF-ASSESSMENT

A Five Paragraph Essay on Rilke's Passage

I have been continually working on comma issues. I am trying not to be vague in my essays as well.

All my special tools seem to be correct and apt. I utilized both short, and long quotes form rilke's passage very well.

There might be some comma issues that I didn't catch. Also I might have been too reptitive with the phrase "letting go."

GRADE: B+