Analysis of Heartbeat

Rainer Maria Rilke 1875 (Prague) – 1926 (Montreux)



Only mouths are we. Who sings the distant heart
which safely exists in the center of all things?
His giant heartbeat is diverted in us
into little pulses. And his giant grief
is, like his giant jubilation, far too
great for us. And so we tear ourselves away
from him time after time, remaining only
mouths. But unexepectedly and secretly
the giant heartbeat enters our being,
so that we scream ----,
and are transformed in being and in countenance.

Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming


Scheme XXXXXXAABXX B
Poetic Form
Metre 10111110101 110010010111 1101101001 01101001101 1111001011 111011100101 11110101010 1110100 0101101010 1111 010101000100 0101101010
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 482
Words 86
Sentences 7
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 11, 1
Lines Amount 12
Letters per line (avg) 32
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 194
Words per stanza (avg) 42
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 28, 2023

25 sec read
553

Rainer Maria Rilke

René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke — better known as Rainer Maria Rilke — was a Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist, "widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets", writing in both verse and highly lyrical prose. more…

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