Abstract
Rilke would disagree that the difference between Dinggedichte and other poems lies solely in the distinction between the description of the object and the feeling of the subject. The value of "The Panther" (an analysis will follow) is neither zoological nor Zoo-logical (it is not against vicious people locking up animals), it's psychological/anthropological: the image of "body imprisoned in soul" (presented here in a reversed way, as opposed to the common "soul in body").
Eventually, it's about projection of Rilke's status and disposition.Explicitly, Rilke understands the difference between his poetry and poetic works of the past as the difference between "creating feeling" (das Gefühl bildn) versus "evaluating one's feeling" (über sein Gefühl urteiln), and -affectively phrased -distinction between (obsessive) indifference versus (hysterical) whining (see Requiem für Wolf Graf von Kalckreuth). In both cases, the feeling is pivotal; in case of des Dinggedichtes, however, it's acquired by identifying with the object, its introjection and projection (example will be presented), thereby creating the so called "Weltinnenraum" (see Es winkt zu Fühlung fast aus allen Dingen).Objects turn into complexes of signifiers, and because these can sometimes be rather general, the poem may appear more anonymous (another Rilke's requirement); the selection, however, succumbs to the initial idea, author's intuition that the introjection could, after the attempt to create a poem, overlap with projection.What is more important: While reading Rilke's lyric poetry in relation to Ding, twoharmful tendencies emerge: 1) The tendency to transform all objects, deeply felt signifiers, to super-Ding "death", where Rilke requested a number of figures, Gestalten (typical in the Existentialist interpretation); 2) the tendency to transform Rilke's favourite signifiers into a fixed idiolect, independent on the context, and to interpret particular poems only comparatively as a combinations of these (as in E.
Leisi's reading of Sonnets to Orpheus).