by Rainer Maria Rilke，translated by Stephen Mitchelle
A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place your sight can knock on, echoing; but here within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze will be absorbed and utterly disappear:
just as a raving madman, when nothing else can ease him, charges into his dark night howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels the rage being taken in and pacified.
She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen into her, so that, like an audience, she can look them over, menacing and sullen, and curl to sleep with them. But all at once
as if awakened, she turns her face to yours; and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny, inside the golden amber of her eyeballs suspended, like a prehistoric fly.
”Rilke (1875-1926), is considered one of the greatest lyric poets of modern Germany. He created the "object poem" as an attempt to describe with utmost clarity physical objects, and the "silence of their concentrated reality." In my opinion, the above poem is a prime (and successful) example of this style, in both its composition and effect. [Where is the reader that does not see and sense and know the cat in this poem, as presented?] Rilke believed in the coexistence of the material and spiritual realms, but human beings were for him only spectators of life, grasping its beauties momentarily only to lose them again. With the power of creativity an artist can try to build a bridge between two worlds, although the task is almost too great for a man. I only mention these points because I think they become relevant toward an understanding of what he is doing with this poem. Using something fairly describable (a cat) to awaken us to something mysterious, ineffable, perhaps even numinous.”
