Rilke, teoria twórczości. Pierwsze rozpoznania

Abstract

The reflections originate with Rilke’s poem Handinneres and the discussion of its translations. The translators (M. Hamburger, M. Jastrun, B. Antochowicz, and A. Pomorski) miss the sense of the poem, remaining faithful to the ideal of creation typical of their mentality, typical of the spirit of the “machine” era, namely the ideal of the creative power - the man who in himself finds the beginning - the source of his fate - himself. Yet Rilke expresses an ideal which is just the opposite, the ideal of creative grace - the man, in a creative act, opens up, through his creation, to something that transcends him, and accepts and undertakes what is higher than himself, and in this way finds himself. The two meanings of the German word schöpfen, to create and to acquire (separated in the ideal of creative power), are in Rilke’s understanding associated. To acquire, the source, to kneel, heaven, love - are the main categories of Rilke’s thoughts of the creative process: they, too, denote a process in which man encounters beauty.