Ariel Author(s): Rainer Maria Rilke and Stephen Mitchell Source: The Kenyon Review, New Series, Vol.

3, No. 4 (Autumn, 1981), pp. 48-49 Published by: Kenyon College Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4335225 Accessed: 02/12/2010 03:50
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ARIEL Rainer Maria Rilke

after reading Shakespeare's "Tempest"

Once, somewhere, somehow, you had set him free with that sharpjolt which as a young man tore you out of your life and vaulted you to greatness. Then he grew willing; and, since then, he serves, after each task impatient for his freedom. And half imperious, half almost ashamed, you make excuses, say that you still need him for thus and such, and, ah, you must recount how you have helped him. Yet you feel, yourself, how everything held back by his detention is missing from the air. How sweet, how tempting: to let him go-to give up all your magic, submit yourself to destiny like the others, and know that his light friendship, without strain now, with no more obligations, anywhere, an intensifying of this space you breathe, is working in the element, thoughtlessly. Henceforth dependent, never again empowered to shape the torpid mouth into that call at which he dived. Defenseless, ageing, poor, and yet still breathinghim in, like a fragrance spread endlessly, which makes the invisible complete for the first time. Smiling that you still could beckon him, so easily accustomed to being intimate. Weeping too, perhaps, when you remember how he loved and yet wished to leave you, always both, at once. (Have I let go already? I look on, terrifiedby this man who has become a duke again. How easily he draws the wire through his head and hangs himself up with the other puppets; then steps forward
48

RAINER MARIA RILKE

49

to ask the audience for their applause and their indulgence. What consummate power: to lay aside, to stand there nakedly with no strength but one's own, "which is most faint.")
Translated from the German

by Stephen Mitchell