XXXIV
Even now she was no longer that blond woman who'd sometimes echoed in the poet's poems, no longer the broad couch's scent and island, nor yonder man's possession any longer.
Or as self-referential as it gets. Because the above four lines certainly suggest a personal perspective. It is marked not so much by the physical distance from which Eurydice is observed as by the mental one from which she is, and used to be, perceived. In other words, now, as then, she is being objectified, and the sensuality of this object owes all to its surface. And though it would be best to attribute this perspective to Orpheus' shielding thus Rilke from feminist critics, the vantage point here is unmistakably the narrator's. Its clearest indication is "the broad couch's scent and island," objectifying and literally isolating the heroine. But even "that blond woman" would suffice, since the ur-poet's wife was bound to be dark-haired.
On the other hand, verisimilitude and fear of anachronism are the least relevant concerns in rendering a myth: its time frame overshoots both archaeology and utopia. Besides, here, toward the end of the poem, all the author aims at is a heightening of the pitch and a softening of the focus. The latter is certainly in keeping with Orpheus' own: Eurydice, if seen at all, is to be seen from afar.
XXXV
And here we are given by Rilke the greatest sequence of three similes in the entire history of poetry, and these deal precisely with going out of focus. More exactly, they deal with retreating into infinity. But first of all they deal with each other:
She was already loosened like long hair, and given far and wide like fallen rain, and dealt out like a manifold supply.
The hair, presumably still blond, gets loosened, presumably for the night, connoting presumably the eternal one; and its strands, presumably turning grayish, become a rain, obscuring with its hairlike lines the horizon, to the point of replacing it with a distant plenitude.
In principle, this is the same type of job that gave you the sphere at the beginning of the poem and the concentric layers of Orpheus' universe-spinning lyre in the middle, except that this time a geometric pattern is replaced by plain penciling. This vision of one's ultimate dissipation has no equal. To say the least, the line "and given far and wide like fallen rain" doesn't. Now, this is, ofcourse, a spatial rendition of infinity; but that's how infinity, temporal by definition, tends to introduce itself to mortals: it practically has no other choice.
Therefore it can be depicted only at our end, which is to say, the netherworld's. Rilke, to his immense credit, manages to elongate the perspective: the above lines suggest Hades' open-endedness, its fanning out, if you will, and into a utopian rather than an archaeological dimension at that.
Well, an organic one, to say the least. Seizing on the notion of "supply," our poet finishes his description of the heroine in the next line—"She was already root"—by firmly planting her in his "mine of souls," between those roots where "welled up the blood that flows on to mankind." This signals the poem's return to its plot line.
XXXVI
For now the explication of the characters is finished. Now they can interact. We know, however, what's going to happen, and if we are continuing to read this poem, it is for two reasons. First, because the poet has told us to whom it is going to happen; second, because we want to know why.
Myth, as we've said before, is a revelatory genre, because myths illuminate the forces that, to put it crassly, control human destiny. The gods and heroes inhabiting them are essentially those forces' sometimes more, sometimes less tangible stand-ins or figureheads. No matter how stereoscopic or palpable a poet renders them, the job may remain in the end decorative, especially if he is obsessed with perfecting the details or if he identifies himself with one or several characters in the story, in which case it turns into a podme a clef. In this case the poet imparts to the forces his characters represent an imbalance alien to their own logic or volatility. To put it bluntly, his becomes an inside story. \Vhereas the forces' is an outside one. As we've seen, Rilke shields himself from too close an affinity with Orpheus right from the outset. Thus, the risk he runs is that of concentrating on the detail, particularly in Eurydice's case. Luckily, the details here are of a metaphysical nature and, if only because of that, resist elaboration. In short, his lack of partiality vis-a-vis his material resembles that of the forces themselves. Combined with the built-in unpredictability of verse's every next word, this amounts nearly to his affinity, not to say parity, with those forces. In any case, it makes him available to their self-expression, alias revelation, and he is not one to miss it.
XXXVII
The first opportunity emerges right now, offered by the plot. And yet it is precisely the plot, with its need for conclusion and denouement, that sidetracks him.
And when, abruptly,
the god had halted her and, with an anguished outcry, outspoke the words: He has turned round!— she took in nothing, and said softly: Who?
This is a stunning scene. The monosyllabic "who" is oblivion's own voice, an ultimate exhaling. Because forces, divine powers, abstract energies, etc. , tend to operate in monosyllables; that's one way of recognizing them in everyday reality.
Our poet could have easily arrested the revelatory moment had the poem been a rhymed one. Since he had blank verse on his hands, however, he was denied the euphonic finality provided by rhyme and had to let this vastness compressed into the one vowel of "'who" go.
Remember that Orpheus' turning is the pivotal moment of the myth. Remember that verse means "turn." Remember, above all, that "Do not tum" was the divine taboo. Applied to Orpheus it means, "In the netherworld, don't behave like a poet." Or, for that matter, like verse. He does, however, since he can't help it, since verse is his second nature—perhaps his first. Therefore he turns and, boustro- phedon or no boustrophedon, his mind and his eyesight go back, violating the taboo. The price of that is Eurydice's "Who?"
In English, in any case, this could be rhymed.
XXXVIII
And had it been rhymed, the poem might well have stopped here. With the effect ofeuphonic finality and the vocal equivalent of distant menace contained in the oo.
It continues, however, not only because it is in blank verse, in German, and for compositional reasons requiring a denouement—though these could be enough. It continues because Rilke has two more things up his sleeve. One of them is highly personal, the other is the myth's own.
First, the personal; and here we are entering the murky domain of surmise. To begin with, "she took in nothing, and said softly: Who?" is modeled, I believe, on the poet's personal experience of, shall we say, romantic alienation. In fact, the entire poem could be construed as a metaphor for romantic estrangement between two participants in an affair, with the initiative belonging to the woman and the desire to restore things to normal to the man, who would naturally be the author's alter ego.
The arguments against such an interpretation are numerous; some of them have been mentioned here, including the dread of self-aggrandizement manifested in our author. Nonetheless, such an interpretation shouldn't be ruled out entirely, precisely because of his awareness of such a possibility, or else because the possibility of an affair gone bad on his part shouldn't be ruled out.