Re: unicorn

Relating to connections with literature and art, I wonder if someone will find this response from my daughter interesting. She was a childhood "unicorn expert", and is now an artist. (She was excited about this poet because she is going to marry a man from Czech and has recently visited Prague.) Willow Brown, UNBC, Prince George, BC, Canada

Hi Mom,

     Ranier Maria Rilke was a Czech poet raised in Prague! He was born in 1875 and married a student of Rodin (my fav sculptor). I would say the mirror is most likely a reference to the intellect/imagination, i.e. through the looking glass, being the only place a unicorn can exist in our world... although I would have to check the time frames of Lewis Carroll and Rilke. I just checked... the Alice books were pulished about 10 years before Rilke was born... he would have read them. He would have also been influenced by the pre-Raphaelite painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti. After I read the poem I actually thought he was a contemporary of Rosetti but Rosseti died when Rilke was about ten, I think.
     As for the rest... it may be both a sexual and non sexual reference. Women were considered to be emotional beings with tendencies towards flights of imagination/fantasy th! erefore a woman as well as a looking glass were places in which a unicorn could reside.  I don't think it was meant as a sexual reference... considering the time Rilke was writing in.  A sexual reference like that would have been quite scandalous.  Although... since only virgins were supposed to be able to touch a unicorn it may still be a sexual reference.  Of course when it is read in our time, and by our standards it becomes a little more overtly sexual.  I did enjoy the poem, and I think one interpretation would be the value of creativity.  Without it we cannot allow for the existence of beautiful things, be they works of art or a map of the human genome. Funny how neither science nor art(s) can exist without creativity!