A Walk

My eyes already touch the sunny hill.
Going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
It has inner light, even from a distance–

And charges us, even if we do not reach it,
Into something else, which, hardly sensing it,
We already are; a gesture waves us on
Answering our own wave…
But what we feel is the wind in our faces.

-Rainer Rilke (All Poetry)

Cartesian Ideas and Sentiments in “A Walk” by Rainer Rilke

As the first modern philosopher, René Descartes has been informing our thoughts and sentiments since the beginning of the 17th century. Rainer Rilke was a poet who wrote during the late 19th and early 20th century. His poem “A Walk,” while perhaps not written with the intention of expressing Cartesian ideas, is informed by the ideas of Descartes, as Descartes’ ideas drastically shape the way we look at questions of doubting and knowing. Rilke’s poem depicts a human relationship with truth, Descartes’ central concern in his writings from both Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy.

Descartes’ method for achieving truth begins where Rilke’s eyes begin in “A Walk.” Both men “beyond the road…” “…have begun.” Descartes knows what he is looking for. He wants something on which his eyes can rest, and his eyes do not rest anywhere except for on the truth that he has yet to find, as he begins his quest toward certainty. This initial comparison is likely not because Rilke was informed by a Cartesian idea, but it provides the grounds for the Cartesian idea that is a central sentiment on the walk of Rainer Rilke: “We are grasped by what we cannot grasp.”

We are grasped by the notion of perfection, of something true, of something perfect. Descartes himself is the best example of this, but more significantly, it is in our doubting of what we know – in our failure to grasp – that we know anything at all: that we think and as such know we exist. Even if we are afflicted by our inability to grasp truth, to hold something tightly to us or reverently above us, we still are grasped with this very notion of the capacity to know or not know and the understanding of this phenomenon. Rilke says that what we grasp “has inner light.” It is in itself true. In Discourse on Method Descartes writes that “I am, I exist” is necessarily true in the very act of his stating it or thinking it. It is as if he just feels it; as if he shouts it because the shouting makes it pierce all the louder as true. Descartes finds truth in his own being by the impossibility of the contrary, because in the very act of contemplating his being, his being is true, even if truth appears beyond him, like the light of Rilke that shines “even from a distance.”

Another Cartesian idea informing Rilke’s poem is the notion of an innate idea “charging” us. In writing about the inner light Rilke finds on his walk, this light that charges us, Rilke refers to the function of charging. Charging enables, it allows something else, some goal, some sort of truth. In proving the existence of God, the greatest of all possible lights in the eyes of many, Descartes writes both of how the idea of God is an innate idea, an inner light, and also about how this idea is like a charge, empowering us to know and live. Descartes advocates that the only way we, as imperfect creatures, finite and flawed, can know of God, is if a conception of the infinite has been given to us by something infinite, this being God. It follows that the only way we can know of anything else, of the finite substances in the physical world we sense, is if God has enabled us to do so. God charges us with the ability to sense and know, because otherwise, we could not be certain as to whether or not the way reality appears is deceptive, and we could not achieve true knowledge because we would have this constant doubt. With God as an inner light, our conceptions are informed and our perceptions remain true as long as we do not waver from God. Descartes warns, however, that even though a perfect God does not himself deceive us, we can still deceive ourselves, or more likely fail to sense our accidental self-deceit or live unaware of what is actually true. This leads to another Cartesian idea Rilke employs.

We are not only charged according to Rilke’s poem by some inner light, but also charged to be something new, with the catch that we already are this thing. It is, as Rilke says, something we barely sense. This state of being something we are already equipped to be follows a Cartesian notion. It is a paradox upon first glance, as Descartes writes that God, being perfect and undeceiving, has not given us faculties that would allow us to make mistakes, and we should not make mistakes by this line of thought. Yet, we, being human, are flawed. In this way, we, according to Descartes, make false judgments as to the nature of truth, requiring us to put trust in God that the way things are, and the way we are, is correct because it proceeds from God. In Meditations on First Philosophy Descartes writes, “No doubt God could have created me such that I never erred. No doubt, again, God always wills what is best. Is it better that I should be in error rather than not?” Because God is perfect, Descartes goes on to note that the state of human imperfection holds a perfect place in the universe that is, itself, perfect and where the imperfections of unique things are only pieces of the composite perfection that God has created.

So it is that Rilke’s idea of finding truth in what we already are is a Cartesian notion, because what we already are is perfect, as it is what we are by God in the following way. Descartes advocates that we are thinking things, and at this, things that reach, things that seek to grasp as Rilke writes, but we grasp only the substance that we are things who look beyond ourselves, seeing perfection, the infinite, God, only to remain ourselves, imperfect, human; yet, never ceasing to grasp at what we cannot grasp: eternity, perfection, all things divine and true beyond our trembling fingers and feeble conceptions. This is our lot, to be thinking, grasping things. This is our piece, small but even if incomplete, still existing amidst all things created to be perfect, and perfect in the composite case of the universe created by God.

It is not clear if Rilke’s poem as it refers to grasping truth and being charged by an inner light is referring to God as Descartes might advocate, but we can conjecture that Rilke is referring to truth as something we struggle to know. It is a struggle with the wind in our faces, but it is in our relationship with this struggle that the truth beckons us with a wave that answers our waves, illuminating the state of being that is our own, the state in which we are perfect as thinking, grasping things, with feet bound to the road, but eyes far ahead, narrowed to bear the wind, and touching nonetheless the sunny hill in the distance.