What a strange place he chose to be burried, here in the Valais, an otherwise fairly anonymous region between languages and between mountains, in Switzerland, the country of exile and sanatoriums. As I walked up to Rilke's grave in the churchyard of Raron, I thought of the poet's singular life, commited to solitude, reaching to the world that he could only find contained in himself. Despite living through the most troubled times of Europe, he seemed to have no desire or obsession with History unlike his contemporaries but rather pursued a geographic quest. For History was war, military schools and his father...all of which he wanted to escape. And what a better place to avoid History than in Switzerland. And what a landscape serves him as a grave. With the death of the poet, time is finally abolished and only the landscape remains. One that resembles Rilke's art: open and eternal yet contained, the 'World Interior'. Mallarmé already prophesied quite rightly: Nothing Will Have Taken Place/But the Place/Except Perhaps/A Constellation. And Rilke, in Poèmes à la Nuit: 'Et les ombres des nuages Le traversent, comme si l'espace pensait De lentes pensées à sa place' #rilkeproject #torilkesgrave #geography #worldinterior
