Archaic Torso of Apollo

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.

This sonnet by Rainer Maria Rilke consists, in the original German, of an introductory line, a series of 12 lines, and a final line. The atypical form, wherein the sonnet itself is segmented in an unusual way, emphasizes the broken, ruined character of the sculpture that the speaker is examining.

Paradoxically, the very fragmented nature of the torso is what lends it special strength, attractiveness, and beauty in that viewers will endlessly speculate about what the missing portions may have looked like.

In the initial line of the sonnet, the speaker bemoans that viewers will never know what the head of the statue looked like and will not experience the light of its eyes. Yet in the following lines, the speaker remarks that the power and physical beauty of the torso is emphasized by that lack—something that might not have occurred had the sculpture’s head been intact.

So the statue’s destruction, instead of being a negative event, is seen as revealing beauty in unexpected portions of the stone from which the torso, from breast to loins, is carved. The speaker implies that those who look upon the ancient torso of Apollo cannot help noting that their appreciation of this artwork is an interchange of sorts; they learn from this experience to view things in a new way.

In the poem’s final line, the speaker addresses the reader directly as “you.” Speculating that each viewer of the torso will feel, in turn, strangely gazed at by the (faceless) torso, the speaker declares: “You must change your life.” The implication is that viewers henceforth will seek beauty that may be hidden by the dominant features of any object. The value of art reaches beyond that which catches the eye.

Works Cited

Rilke, Rainer Maria. Archaic Torso of Apollo. Translated by Stephen Mitchell, in The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, edited and translated by Stephen Mitchell, Vintage, 1989, pp. 61.

Categories: British Literature, European Literature, German Literature, Literature

Tags: 20th century poetry study, aesthetic theory, Archaic Torso of Apollo, art and perception, character study, classical art in poetry, close reading Rilke, ekphrasis, existential transformation, form and meaning, fragmented beauty, German poetry analysis, impact of destruction in art, interpretation of Rilke's sonnet, last line interpretation, Literary Criticism, Modernist Poetry, poem analysis, poetic structure, poetry criticism, poetry of transformation, Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke philosophical poetry, Rilke poetry analysis, Rilke sonnet structure, sonnet analysis, statue symbolism, summary of Archaic Torso of Apollo, symbolism in Rilke, themes in Rilke's poetry, torso metaphor, viewer response theory, you must change your life meaning