Quotes from book
The Panther

Name: The Panther
Author: Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke

The Panther is a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke written on 6 November 1902. It describes a captured panther behind bars, as it was exhibited in the Ménagerie of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. It is one of Rilke's most famous poems and has been translated into English many times, including by many distinguished translators of Rilke, like Stephen Mitchell, C. F. MacIntyre, J. B. Leishman and Walter Arndt, Jessie Lamont and poets like Robert Bly. It is used in the film Awakenings by the protagonist Leonard Lowe as a metaphor for his physical disability.

“His tired gaze - from passing endless bars -
has turned into a vacant stare which nothing holds.
To him there seem to be a thousand bars,
and out beyond these bars exists no world. His supple gait, the smoothness of strong strides
that gently turn in ever smaller circles
perform a dance of strength, centered deep within
a will, stunned, but untamed, indomitable. But sometimes the curtains of his eyelids part,
the pupils of his eyes dilate as images
of past encounters enter while through his limbs
a tension strains in silence
only to cease to be, to die within his heart.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book The Panther

Sein Blick ist vom Vorübergehen der Stäbe
so müd geworden, daß er nichts mehr hält.
Ihm ist, als ob es tausend Stäbe gäbe
und hinter tausend Stäben keine Welt.<p>Der weiche Gang geschmeidig starker Schritte,
der sich im allerkleinsten Kreise dreht,
ist wie ein Tanz von Kraft um eine Mitte,
in der betäubt ein großer Wille steht.<p>Nur manchmal schiebt der Vorhang der Pupille
sich lautlos auf—. Dann geht ein Bild hinein,
geht durch der Glieder angespannte Stille—
und hört im Herzen auf zu sein.
As translated by Albert Ernest Flemming
Der Panther (The Panther) (1907)