December 12, 2003

• Apollo Belvedere Statue

  
  

  

  
  

   

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  Archaic Torso of Apollo by Rainer Maria Rilke

  
  

  We cannot know his legendary head
  with eyes like a 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.

  
  

   

  
  

  I felt so empowered by the last line of this poem, “You must change your life“ that a friend (Ben) and I got into the topic of how this sculpture could inspire the poet to write this poem about changing your life.  Our insight:  We are bound by our own physical limitations.  This torso, having no appendages to stretch out or reach with, is an extreme representation of these limitations.  But from within, there is a brilliance like a star that reaches out without boundaries… the human potential.

  • 3:39 am
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