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The Eye of the Panther: Rilke and the Machine of Cinema

The Eye of the Panther: Rilke and the Machine of Cinema HE ASSORTED OBJECTS described in Rilke’s Neue Gedichte make up a collection whose variety and opulence are reminiscent of the Baroque, as are the Jardin des Plantes and the Jardin du Luxembourg, respective settings of two of the most famous of these poems, “Der Panther” and “Das Karussell.” These and other of Rilke’s so-called “thing poems” (Dinggedichte) are fraught with a “baroque” tension between the economy of form and the unstable worldly economies that poetic closure works to exclude. Figures of precarious control, panther and carousel alike gyrate, defining an empty center that exists solely in relation to a periphery. The accelerating carousel in particular illustrates how this geometry dissolves into entropy and how the periphery threatens to triumph as empty though dazzling façade. The panther too, turning in circles on tensed loins, reveals form as energy held in reserve. It is no coincidence that these poems occur at a time when the formal dynamism of Baroque art and architecture was receiving new and unprecedented attention. This rediscovery of the Baroque projected modern anxieties onto an earlier epoch torn between containment and expansion. Thus, it should come as no surprise that Heinrich Wölfflin’s discussion of animated stone, of http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Comparative Literature Duke University Press

The Eye of the Panther: Rilke and the Machine of Cinema

CALHOON, KENNETH S.
Comparative Literature , Volume 52 (2) – Jan 1, 2000
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Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright 2000 by University of Oregon
ISSN
0010-4124
eISSN
1945-8517
DOI
10.1215/-52-2-143
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

HE ASSORTED OBJECTS described in Rilke’s Neue Gedichte make up a collection whose variety and opulence are reminiscent of the Baroque, as are the Jardin des Plantes and the Jardin du Luxembourg, respective settings of two of the most famous of these poems, “Der Panther” and “Das Karussell.” These and other of Rilke’s so-called “thing poems” (Dinggedichte) are fraught with a “baroque” tension between the economy of form and the unstable worldly economies that poetic closure works to exclude. Figures of precarious control, panther and carousel alike gyrate, defining an empty center that exists solely in relation to a periphery. The accelerating carousel in particular illustrates how this geometry dissolves into entropy and how the periphery threatens to triumph as empty though dazzling façade. The panther too, turning in circles on tensed loins, reveals form as energy held in reserve. It is no coincidence that these poems occur at a time when the formal dynamism of Baroque art and architecture was receiving new and unprecedented attention. This rediscovery of the Baroque projected modern anxieties onto an earlier epoch torn between containment and expansion. Thus, it should come as no surprise that Heinrich Wölfflin’s discussion of animated stone, of

Journal

Comparative Literature – Duke University Press

Published: Jan 1, 2000

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