(cache)The Stony Dark Within | Joy Williams | The New York Review of Books

This is the 150th anniversary of Rilke’s birth.

Or, you might say, the 99th anniversary of his death.

I asked a small group of students if they knew of Rilke, the poet, if they had read Rilke. They did not. Had not. They were seventeen, eighteen years old. One immediately addressed his phone. Assessed that the subject was considered “eccentric” and “mystical,” had failed at military school and been kicked out of trade school, travelled a lot, lived in castles, and did nothing but write poems. Most impressive it seemed was how long ago the poet had died, for the student exclaimed with some astonishment that “he was dead before anything had even happened.”

This is no way to begin, I suppose, it is so unnerving, but it does seem to speak, scream, even, of the exclusivity of the present to the young, its dominance over the past, even the future for which it harbors annihilation.

If Rilke returned as an angel, a Rilkean angel, of course, he would be unperturbed by the student’s remark. He perceived angels in a somewhat Islamic fashion, though he was also impressed by El Greco’s Byzantine figurations. The angels of Christianity were definitely not the beings who inspired him. Rilke’s angels were indifferent, perfect, possessed of sovereign remoteness, and, like all angels, male. (At the same time, he explained carefully, they are creatures “in whom the transformation of the visible into the invisible, which we accomplish, appears already consummated.”) They neither comfort nor guide. It is easier to accept Death’s cold clasp than to be embraced by an angel. Angels are the pure timelessness of time. Event means nothing to them. Nor to Rilke.

Continue reading
for just $1.00 per issue!

Choose a Digital subscription or our best deal – All Access – that includes print and digital issues, full archive access, and the NYR App!

Or register for a free account to read just this article. Register.

Already a subscriber? Sign in

Continue reading for just $1 an issue and get a FREE notebook! Continue reading
for just $1 an issue.

Choose a Digital subscription or our best deal—All Access—and we will send you a free pocket notebook! Choose a Digital subscription or our best deal—All Access—that includes print and digital issues, full archive access, and the NYR App!

Or register for a free account to read just this article. Register.

Already a subscriber? Sign in

Submit a letter:

Email us letters@nybooks.com

A version of this essay was delivered as a speech on December 4, 2025, at the opening of “Rilke’s Worlds,” an exhibition at the German Literature Archive Marbach celebrating the sesquicentennial of Rilke’s birth. A German translation, by Julia Wolf, appeared in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on January 3, 2026. A new edition of The Testament, edited by Rainer J. Hanshe and translated by Mark Kanak, is published in honor of the sesquicentennial by Contra Mundum Press.

Joy Williams

Joy Williams is the author of fourteen books, most recently The Pelican Child, a book of short stories that was longlisted for the National Book Award and a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. She lives in Tucson, Arizona, and Laramie, Wyoming. (February 2026)