Rainer Maria Rilke: The poetry in the modern age

Abstract

For Rilke, like Heidegger, the being of things becomes problematic. Already in 1912, the poet wrote that, for example, things transferred their essence to the money and they disappeared then; and, after a time, the disillusioned individual notices that the money also has gone away and the essence of the things with it. The sixteenth century, in which the money still was golden and precious metal is already very far. Heidegger describes as prophetic this idea: the poet describes nostalgy of the things by its lost being. Here is the necessity to stop us a little while in his verses to retrace steps the lost way of the being.