Subject: The German poet
From: LR Pearson, Arts 99 (lp9616@bristol.ac.uk)
Date: Wed Nov 14 2001 - 06:24:33 GMT
Dear bananafishers,
I have been lurking lately due to lack of time, but the question on the
German poet caught my eye. In my opinion the poet Muriel refers to is
almost certainly Rilke. As well as the amount of times Rilke is
mentioned in Salinger's work, some of the themes and images which run
through the books definitely correlate to Rilke. The carousel, for
example, is described in terms very similar to those used by Rilke in
his poem of the same name. The child riding the carousel even wears the
same colour coat as Phoebe. Seymour's mysterious sensitivity about his
feet seems to me related to the comments about feet in Rilke's 'Stories
of God', where they are represeneted as something quite sacred. It's
some time since I have read the relevant passage, but if you search the
archives for 'feet' and 'rilke' I posted a fuller comment sometime last
year. I am sure there are other Rilke motifs in Salinger, but I'm not
really that familiar with Rilke's poetry, so I couldn't say.
Inicidentally, for anyone who wasn't one the list when the discussion
about Rilke's 'Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes' was going on (headed by
Cecilia and Bernd, as far as I remember) I highly recommend you search
for it on the archives. It was a really interesting and inspiring
discussion.
Hope this is of interest,
love, Lucy-Ruth
----------------------
LR Pearson, Arts 99
lp9616@bristol.ac.uk
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