Entrance

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2001

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

Writing and Reading a Poem

The poem is about the creative process and how one may enter it (hence the title “Entrance”). The speaker is himself a poet and is addressing everyone alike, both his fellow poets and readers. His aim is to present the act of poetic creation in a poem itself. (Poetry that is about poetry in this way is sometimes called meta-poetry.) It suggests that the act of creating a poem or of reading one are similar, since the reader must bring to the poem qualities that resemble those the poet summoned up as he wrote it. Rilke once wrote to a young man who had asked his advice that the ability to be a creative artist, “comes only to those who are patient, who are simply there in their vast, quiet tranquillity, as if eternity lay before them” (Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, translated by Charlie Louth, p. 14). This advice seems to echo part of the process presented in “Entrance,” and indeed it was written in 1903, less than a year after the publication of the poem. The process as described in “Entrance” consists of several main elements, each of which may be considered a theme of the poem.

Going Beyond the Staleness of the Familiar

Rilke suggests that transcending one’s own internal limitations is an essential precondition for the creative process. A person must “step out of the room that lets you feel secure” (Line 2). Comfort is not the friend of the poet. A poet must learn to see in a new way, not in ways that are dictated by long years of habit and which have become lazy and dull. A process of defamiliarization is called for, so that perception can be perpetually new. This becomes even more clear in Lines 4-5. The process of long familiarization has resulted in “eyes that have forgotten how to see” (Line 4). They must now be made to remember. Line 5, which leads into the first creative act, emphasizes the point that ordinary day-to-day vision has made all the objects of that vision “too well-known.” There is a tiredness and a weariness about this long lapse into habit. It is, in a sense, like not being fully alive. (In Line 5, the original German contains the word müde, which means tired, and it is used of the eyes; they are not alert and can barely lift themselves from their accustomed boundaries of worn-out perception.)

The invitation to step out into something new can, in addition to the above, be understood in a more literal sense as the need to leave the comfortable chairs and desk and warmth of the home and step outside into the vastness of the night, which will stimulate a new dimension of experience.

Embracing the Unknown in Order to Create

When the precondition of going beyond the long-familiar is met, the poet is now ready to create something new. This occurs in Lines 6 and 7. The emphasis is on the “dark,” that is, the unknown. All the familiar aspects of the mental and emotional landscapes have been put aside; there is, in a sense, now nothing, which is also the sense of “infinity” (Line 3). The darkness of the heavens (which might be understood as the depth of the poet’s own mind when freed from the stale rubble that encrusts it) contains at this point no distinct objects. What then emerges is the symbolic creation of a tree—“huge” (Line 8) because the first act of creating something is a hugely consequential act —that stands “alone” (Line 8) in this vastness. It is “black” (Line 7) because it is yet to be further shaped and colored by the poet’s verbal brush. Yet it is strong and solid, and stands “tall” (Line 8). It cannot now be erased. It is an entire world in embryo that has proceeded from the awakened mind and perceptions of the poet who has had both the courage and the vision to step beyond the familiar. Line 9 confirms for the budding poet what he or she has just accomplished: “you have made the world and all you see.”

Letting Go and Continuing

The creative process has to be observed by the poet as it “ripens” (Line 10) in the silence of his mind as he speaks or writes the words. But the process doesn’t end there; once the poet has grasped the meaning of what he has created, he must then let it go. He must not hold on to it but must get out of its way, so to speak, and allow it to be what it is, whatever that may be. The eyes must close again for a moment (symbolically speaking), and the letting go has to be done “gently” (Line 10), with a tender awareness of its value and integrity. The letting go is necessary because creativity is a fluid process; the mind must always be ready for something new to come.

At the end of the last line, instead of using a period, Rilke uses an ellipsis—three dots (. . .). Most translators of the poem do the same, although Gioia does not; the last line of his version concludes with a period. The ellipsis serves Rilke’s purpose because it suggests openness rather than closure. It is as if by letting go, the poet opens up once more to the infinity within him. The ellipsis is in effective way of showing this continuity, as if the poem somehow continues into the white space of the page, like a kind of infinity in which it can be shaped again for its next phase.