Analysis of The Song Of The Widow
Rainer Maria Rilke 1875 (Prague) – 1926 (Montreux)
In the beginning life was good to me;
it held me warm and gave me courage.
That this is granted all while in their youth,
how could I then have known of this.
I never knew what living was----.
But suddenly it was just year on year,
no more good, no more new, no more wonderful.
Life had been torn in two right down the middle.
That was not his fault nor mine
since both of us had nothing but patience;
but death has none.
I saw him coming (how rotten he looked),
and I watched him as he took and took:
and nothing was mine.
What, then, belonged to me; was mine, my own?
Was not even this utter wretchedness
on loan to me by fate?
Fate does not only claim your happiness,
it also wants your pain back and your tears
and buys the ruin as something useless, old.
Fate was present and acquired for a nothing
every expression my face is capable of,
even to the way I walk.
The daily diminishing of me went on
and after I was emptied fate gave me up
and left me standing there, abandoned.
Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming
Scheme | XXXAXXBB CXXXXC XAXXXX DXXXXX D |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 0001011111 111101110 1111011011 11111111 11011101 1100111111 11111111100 11110111010 1111111 1111110110 1111 1111011011 011111101 01011 1101111111 11101101 111111 1111011100 1101111011 01010110101 111000101010 1000101111001 1010111 01001001111 01011101111 011101010 0101101010 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,001 |
Words | 201 |
Sentences | 13 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 6, 6, 6, 1 |
Lines Amount | 27 |
Letters per line (avg) | 29 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 157 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 40 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 29, 2023
- 1:00 min read
- 164 Views
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