The "Inner" -- What is it?

Dear Friends,

In some sense, all of Rilke's later poetry has to do with a novel sense of space.  His frequent references to distances, winds, birds and stars are part of his project of "Weltinnenraum," or "World-inner-space."  He never defines the term; it clearly has to do with the possibilities of the human heart, and it matters to him vastly. 

In the last two weeks we have looked at a poem ("Lankoronski") that considered the movement of the stars and then turned to a sense of astonishment before the unity-in-multiplicity of life and death, laughter and tears, sleep and waking.  This astonishment gave the earth "a new measure" -- a new sense of space itself, then, which is not reckoned in meters or yards but by degrees of wonder.

Here's a single verse from a longer poem we may engage with in coming weeks:

Through all beings there reaches a single space:
World-inner-space. Birds fly silently
straight through us.  Oh, I who want to grow,
I look outside, and the tree grows in me.

Durch alle Wesen reicht der eine Raum:
Weltinnenraum.  Die Vögel fliegen still
durch uns hindurch.  O, der ich wachsen will,
ich seh hinaus, und in mir wächst der Baum.

This is not a simple non-duality in which everything melts together.  The witness remains a strong instigator of experience.  It is just that everything is inside us, and this "inner" is the extensive world.

Even more, in this late poem:

Ah, not to be separated,
even by the slightest partition,
from the measure of the stars.
The "inner," what is it?
If not intensified sky,
hurled through with birds and deep
with winds of homecoming.

Ach, nicht getrennt sein,
nicht durch so wenig Wandung
vom Sternen-Maß.
Innres, was ists?
Wenn nicht gesteigerter Himmel,
durchworfen mit Vögeln und tief
von Winden der Heimkehr.

(thank you for the reminder, CR and DJ!)

We'll first bring to mind what does, in fact, normally wall us off from the measure of the stars.  And then the key term for us becomes the word "intensified."  Why would the sky or the heavens be intensified in us?  The human capacity for wonder does more than face an existing world; it adds to the substance of existence.  Rilke wants us to come "home," neither to a place on earth, nor to heaven exactly, but to the totality that has become our own inner life.

wishing you joy in all you do,
Michael

ps: Please buy a copy of my book, Be: An Alphabet of Astonishment (Lorian Press, 2022), available here and everywhere.  Or many copies!  one for you, and one for each of your friends and family....