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Any fan of this blog (I think there’s one) knows my love for Rainer Marie Rilke’s poetry.

My favorite poem by Mr. Rilke’s is Archaic Torso of Apollo. Like many Rilke poems, it explores the affect of art over the soul and sexuality. But unlike most Rilke poems, Archaic Torso of Apollo challenges its reader to see the beauty of art and be inspired by it. It exhorts you to change your life.

Archaic Torso of Apollo
by Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Stephen Mitchell

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

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