





































ARESTY RUTGERS UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH JOURNAL, VOLUME I, ISSUE IV 

 

 
 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. 
 

RILKE IN TRANSLATION: 

UNCOVERING THE 

PANTHER IN THE ENGLISH 

LANGUAGE 
 

SERENA LUCKHOFF 

 

✵  ABSTRACT 
Walter Benjamin’s influential essay, The 

Task of the Translator, reflects on how translation 

can be used to create new works of art and literature 

instead of attempting to create exact replicas of 

original works. Rather than translating by searching 

for words in the target language that are most 

equivalent to words in the original language, Benja-

min encourages the practice of translation as a pro-

cess which lets two languages influence and change 

one another. Using Benjamin as a guide, I attempt 

to create an English translation of Rainer Maria 

Rilke’s German language poem “Der Panther” that 

distributes the meaning of the original work 

throughout the entire translation. To do this, I shift 

my focus away from translating words and phrases 

in isolation to reflect on how the effects of seemingly 

small translation choices reverberate through the 

work as a whole. I will also compare my translation 

to the historically important translations of “Der Pan-

ther” by Stephen Mitchell, Robert Bly, and C. F. Mac-

Intyre, and argue how mine allows for analyses of 

themes such as stillness, the panther’s mental state, 

and the panther’s mind-body relation which more 

closely emulate Rilke’s original work.  

 
KEY TERMS: Translation, Rilke, Benjamin, Kunst-Ding, 

German 

 

 

 

 

 

1 INTRODUCTION 
When translating a work, translators must 

engage with structural differences between the 

original language and the target language, examin-

ing how the syntax and semantics of the two lan-

guages affect the integrity of the translation. Syntax, 

or grammar, can affect a translation by altering the 

order in which words appear in a sentence. Seman-

tics, which concerns the meanings of words, must 

also be considered because even when words ap-

pear to have equivalents in other languages, slight 

differences in meaning can affect the translation’s 

quality. In his influential essay “The Task of the 

Translator,” Walter Benjamin discusses how these 

differences should not be dealt with by practicing 

one-to-one translation, forcing the target language 

into the restraints of the original language, but ra-

ther by allowing the translation the flexibility to cre-

ate something new. Guided in part by Benjamin’s 

essay, I will present my own English translation of 

Rainer Maria Rilke’s German language poem “Der 

Panther,” which does not look to translate words 

and phrases in isolation but distributes themes 

found in Rilke’s German throughout the translation. 

I will discuss how my translation, which takes influ-

ence from the structure of the German language, 

better preserves Rilke’s portrayal of the panther 

than certain historically important English transla-

tions of the poem. In particular, I will focus on se-

mantic challenges surrounding Rilke’s characteriza-

tion of the panther as a powerful being reduced to 

listlessness and syntactic challenges related to how 

English and German word orders are parsed differ-

ently. I will also discuss how Rilke’s language creates 

a Kunst-Ding (art-object) by portraying ambiguity 

between physical and non-physical worlds and how 

this ambiguity can be preserved in English transla-

tion. Below, I present Rilke’s original poem, my 

translation, and the translations of Stephen Mitchell, 

Robert Bly, and C. F. MacIntyre for comparison.  

 

  



ARESTY RUTGERS UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH JOURNAL, VOLUME I, ISSUE IV 

 

 

 

Der Panther 

Im Jardin des Plantes, Paris 

 

1 Sein Blick ist von Vorübergehen der Stäbe 

2 so müd geworden, daß er nichts mehr hält. 

3 Ihm ist, als ob es tausend Stäbe gäbe 

4 und hinter tausend Stäben keine Welt. 

 

5 Der weiche Gang geschmeidig starker Schritte, 

6 der sich im allerkleinsten Kreise dreht, 

7 ist wie ein Tanz von Kraft um eine Mitte, 

8 in der betäubt ein großer Wille steht. 

 

9 Nur manchmal schiebt der Vorhang der Pupille 

10 sich lautlos auf—. Dann geht ein Bild hinein, 

11 geht durch der Glieder angespannte Stille — 

12 und hört im Herzen auf zu sein. 

 

Rainer Maria Rilke 

 

 

The Panther 

In the Jardin des Plantes, Paris 

 

1 His gaze has become so weary from the pass-

ing of the bars, 

2 that it does not hold anything anymore. 

3 For him, it is as though there were a thousand 

bars, 

4 and behind a thousand bars no world. 

 

5 The soft stride, the powerful footsteps, 

6 which pace in the smallest of circles, 

7 are like a dance of power around a center 

8 where a great will, reduced to languor, stands. 

 

9 Only sometimes does the curtain of the pupil 

10 push noiselessly open—. Then an image enters, 

11 passes through the tense limbs of stillness— 

12 and ceases, in the heart, to be. 

My Translation 

 

 

 

 

 

Translated by Stephen Mitchell: 

In the Jardin des Plantes, Paris 

 

1 His vision, from the constantly passing bars, 

2 has grown so weary that it cannot hold 

3 anything else. It seems to him there are 

4 a thousand bars, and behind the bars, no world. 

 

5 As he paces in cramped circles, over and over, 

6 the movement of his powerful soft strides 

7 is like a ritual dance around a center 

8 in which a mighty will stands paralyzed. 

 

9 Only at times, the curtain of the pupils 

10 lifts, quietly—. An image enters in, 

11 rushes down through the tensed, arrested mus-

cles, 

12 plunges into the heart and is gone. 

 

 

Translated by Robert Bly 

In the Jardin des Plantes, Paris 

 

1 From seeing the bars, his seeing is so exhausted 

2 that it no longer holds anything anymore. 

3 To him the world is bars, a hundred thousand 

4 bars, and behind the bars, nothing. 

 

5 The lithe swinging of that rhythmical easy stride 

6 which circles down to the tiniest hub 

7 is like a dance of energy about a point 

8 in which a great will stands stunned and numb. 

 

9 Only at times the curtains of the pupil rise 

10 without a sound . . . then a shape enters, 

11 slips through the tightened silence of the shoul-

ders, 

12 reaches the heart, and dies. 

 

  



ARESTY RUTGERS UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH JOURNAL, VOLUME I, ISSUE IV 

 

 

 

Translated by C. F. MacIntyre 

In the Jardin des Plantes, Paris 

 

1 His sight from ever gazing through the bars 

2 has grown so blunt that it sees nothing more. 

3 It seems to him that thousands of bars are 

4 before him, and behind him nothing merely. 

 

5 The easy motion of his supple stride, 

6 which turns about the very smallest circle, 

7 is like a dance of strength about a center 

8 in which a will stands stupefied. 

 

9 Only sometimes when the pupil’s film 

10 soundlessly opens . . . then one image fills 

11 and glides through the quiet tension of the 

limbs 

12 into the heart and ceases and is still. 

 

2 THE LINGUISTIC RELATIONSHIP BE-

TWEEN NOISELESSNESS, MOTIONLESSNESS, 

AND TRANQUILITY IN GERMAN 

Instead of committing to a literal translation 

which will inevitably fail to transmit some aspects of 

the original, Benjamin, quoting Rudolf Pannwitz, 

suggests that translators should instead allow 

“[their] language to be powerfully affected by the 

foreign tongue. [...] Our translations, even the best 

ones, proceed from a mistaken premise. They want 

to turn Hindi, Greek, English into German instead of 

turning German into Hindi, Greek, English” (Benja-

min, 1996, pp. 261-262). According to Benjamin, a 

translator can best highlight the original work when 

they figure out how to convey in their own language 

what is unique to the foreign language. By integrat-

ing elements of the foreign language, the transla-

tor’s language becomes enriched. Drawing on this 

concept, in my translation, I attempt to reproduce 

Rilke’s portrayal of the panther not by finding Eng-

lish words that replicate German words, but by let-

ting the semantics of German words be distributed 

throughout my entire translation. 

In Rilke’s poem, the connotations of noise-

lessness and motionlessness in the words “Stille” 

(stillness, silence), “lautlos” (noiseless), and 

“betäubt” (numb), are central to his portrayal of the 

panther as a powerful spirit whose force is sup-

pressed in captivity. As the characterization of the 

panther is grounded in these words, I will examine 

how these words interact with one another to im-

merse the poem with a tone of stillness and tranquil-

ity and explain how I attempt to create a similar ef-

fect in my translation. I will begin by discussing the 

word “Stille” (Rilke, 1907, ll)  to explain how the no-

tions of noiselessness and motionlessness are re-

lated to one another in German. Stille means both 

“silence” and “stillness” in English In addition to con-

noting tranquility or serenity. It is clear that there is 

not one singular word in English that could capture 

its entire essence. It is not coincidental that the con-

cepts of silence and stillness are represented by the 

same word in German; other German words also 

convey an underlying relationship between silence, 

stillness, and serenity. The word Ruhe, for example, 

can mean peace and silence, and its adjective form 

ruhig means quiet or calm. Furthermore, the word 

taub embodies noiselessness in its meaning of deaf-

ness as well as connoting physical immobility in its 

meaning of numbness. Through the semantic infor-

mation encoded into these words, German conveys 

that motionlessness and noiselessness are qualities 

of the peace and serenity that Stille embodies. The 

word “lautlos” (Rilke, 1907, 10), which I translate as 

“noiselessly,” already strongly communicates the 

notion of noiselessness or silence, and therefore 

when translating Stille, I prioritized its connotation 

of motionlessness. Thus, I opted to translate Stille as 

“stillness” rather than “silence.”  

The word taub mentioned above, which 

means “deaf” or “numb,” also makes an appearance 

in Rilke’s poem as the root of the word betäubt. 

Betäubt appears in Rilke’s poem in a sentence which 

could most literally be translated to “where a great 

will stands numb” (Rilke, 1907, 8). However, the na-

ture of the numbness depicted in Rilke’s poem 

could benefit from a less literal translation than 

simply settling for the word “numb” or even “be-

numbed.” When the prefix be- is applied to a word 

in German, as in the word be-täubt, it means that 

that thing is being inflicted upon something or 

someone. Therefore, when reading the German 



ARESTY RUTGERS UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH JOURNAL, VOLUME I, ISSUE IV 

 

 

 

poem, an image comes to mind of the Panther’s will 

becoming numb, as opposed to already existing in 

a state of numbness. The figurative motionlessness 

of the state of numbness and the literal motionless-

ness of stehen (literally translated as “standing,” and 

thus having a similar connotation of motionlessness 

in English), in conjunction with the panther’s endur-

ing might, also contribute to a regal calmness to 

characterize the panther’s will which further reso-

nates with Stille. “Numb” and “benumbed” are too 

lifeless to describe the complexity of the panther’s 

state of mind, while translations of the word betäubt 

from other translators such as “stunned” (Bly, 1981, 

8), “paralyzed” (Mitchell, 1989, 8), or “stupefied” 

(MacIntyre, 1971, 8) are too violent and connote too 

much permanence for the calm tone of the original 

poem. 

If I were to settle for “stillness” as a transla-

tion of Stille and “numb” as a translation of betäubt, 

I would be covering the original Intent of the poem 

by eliminating meaning through literal translation. 

Instead, I stray from literalness and return to the re-

lationship between Stille and taub and the delicate 

relationships between motionlessness, noiseless-

ness, and tranquility. Instead of attempting a direct 

translation of betäubt, I opt for a word that also in-

corporates aspects of the essence of Stille, which I 

could not convey through the single word “still-

ness.” I chose “languor” in place of betäubt—not be-

cause they mean equivalent things but because 

“languor” captures many aspects of the panther’s 

body and mind throughout the poem—in addition to 

resonating with Stille and betäubt. “Languor” em-

bodies the lack of motion and decreased mental ac-

tivity implied by the word betäubt yet also contrib-

utes weariness, apathy, and lack of vitality. These ef-

fects are reflective of the panther’s body and mind 

in his captivity: his gaze is weary, pacing repetitive 

and passionless, and his power restricted. “Lan-

guor” also resonates with the tranquility of Stille in 

its connotations of relaxation and motionlessness in 

its connotation of a stillness or suspension in the air. 

Furthermore, to preserve a changing state implied 

by the word betäubt, I write that the will is “reduced 

to” languor. This phrasing also reflects the state of 

being restricted, and strongly resonates with the 

physical and mental detriment the panther’s impris-

onment inflicts on him. Instead of losing meaningful 

parts of Stille and betäubt through one-to-one trans-

lations, I attempt to distribute aspects of their mean-

ings throughout my translation. In doing so, I at-

tempt to convey the German language’s relation-

ship between motionlessness, noiselessness, and 

tranquility in English.  

In “The Task of the Translator,” Walter Ben-

jamin explains why translations should not aim to be 

literal: “fidelity in the translation of individual words 

can almost never fully reproduce the sense they 

have in the original” (Benjamin, 1996, p. 259). Even 

when a direct translation of a word appears to be 

possible, there will always be subtle differences in 

semantic information, emotional connotation, or re-

lationships the word in question has with other 

words. This diminishes the poetic quality of the 

translation. Therefore, in translating words related 

to the panther’s apathetic state, I do not simply eval-

uate the local meanings of words such as Stille and 

betäubt, but also take into account how their mean-

ings relate to one another and to the panther’s over-

all characterization. For the word betäubt in particu-

lar, my translation—“reduced to languor”—does not 

emphasize the local connotation of numbness as 

much as it prioritizes the motionlessness and lack of 

vitality characteristic to the panther throughout the 

entirety of the poem. Thus, I ensure that the way 

Rilke characterizes the panther with the themes of 

motionlessness and noiselessness is distributed 

throughout my translation, instead of just being pre-

sent in individual words.   

Prioritizing the selection of words I feel best 

represent the notions of noiselessness, motionless-

ness, and tranquility as represented in Rilke’s poem, 

comes at the cost of replicating aesthetic compo-

nents such as its meter and sound. My translation 

does not replicate Rilke’s ABAB rhyme scheme, as 

Mitchell does, or his loose iambic pentameter, as 

MacIntyre does. To preserve these components of 

Rilke’s work, Mitchell and MacIntyre are prone to 

choosing words that over translate the original. 

Their choices for the word betäubt— “paralyzed” and 

“stupefied” respectively—are both words which ig-



ARESTY RUTGERS UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH JOURNAL, VOLUME I, ISSUE IV 

 

 

 

nore the quietness characteristic to betäubt. An-

other example is the word “geht” (Rilke, 1907, 11), 

translated as “rush” (Mitchell, 1989, 11), or “glide” 

(MacIntyre, 1971, 11). These words overdramatize 

Rilke’s tone; geht, which can mean “to walk,” is a 

very ordinary, unremarkable word which does not 

describe specific, complex, or rushed movement. 

Therefore, I opted to translate geht as “passes 

through” in line 11, and as “enters” in line 10. These 

words convey a displacement from one point to an-

other without inserting extra emotion or unique 

movement qualities not already present in Rilke’s 

work.  

 

3 DIFFERENCES IN SYNTAX 
English language is not as syntactically 

equipped to portray Rilke’s easy flowing prose as 

the German language. A major difference between 

German and English syntactic structure is that while 

English is a SVO (subject-verb-object) language, 

German is a SOV (subject-object-verb) language. 

While both word orders can attempt to convey the 

same concepts, the way they are parsed in poetry 

differs. By having the subject and the verb—the parts 

of the sentence most essential to the overall mean-

ing of the phrase—directly next to each other, a cer-

tain segmentation is imposed upon my English 

translation of the poem which does not occur in Ger-

man. One example is the opening line, “Sein Blick 

ist von Vorübergehn der Stäbe /so müd geworden” 

(“His gaze has by passing of bars so tired become”) 

(Rilke, 1907, 1-2). In German, the reader cannot stop 

reading anywhere along this phrase and still grasp 

the intended meaning of the sentence. The verb 

phrase “müd geworden” or “become tired” lies at 

the very end of the sentence, yet is essential for un-

derstanding the action. If all the supplementary in-

formation is removed from the sentence, “Sein Blick 

ist müd geworden” remains. When the supplemen-

tary information, “von Vorübergehen der Stäbe,” is 

added, the verb geworden remains at the end of the 

sentence. Because the supplemental information is 

integrated between the subject and the verb, it is in-

tegrated seamlessly into the sentence. In my English 

translation, however, all the essential information, 

“his gaze has become so weary,” appears at the be-

ginning of the sentence, while “from the passing of 

the bars” appears after it, as if an afterthought. Since 

the reader already has all the necessary information 

from the first half of the sentence, they are not re-

quired to fully attend to the meaning of “from the 

passing of the bars.” There is also a clear separation 

between the phrases “his gaze has become so 

weary” and “from the passing of the bars” which dis-

rupts the unity of the phrase and imposes some 

choppiness.   

In Paul De Man’s response to Benjamin’s 

“The Task of the Translator,” he emphasizes that syn-

tax or grammar influence meaning. De Man explains 

that when syntax is translated literally, meaning is 

lost because the way grammar yields meaning dif-

fers between languages (De Man, 1985, 41). This 

idea applies to the syntactic differences between 

German and English I described before in that by 

translating “Der Panther” into a language which 

places verbs after the subject rather than after the 

object, the way information is emphasized in certain 

lines of the poem changes. Despite this, I opted to 

mainly stay with colloquial English word orders ra-

ther than attempt to rearrange my word orders to 

better imitate the German word order. This is be-

cause Rilke’s poem reads quite colloquially, with his 

word orders being those which would be used in 

common, everyday German. The choice to maintain 

a colloquial English word order was made to pre-

serve the causal way Rilke’s poem reads in German. 

This way, I incorporated some aspects of his style in 

my translation even while choosing not to replicate 

his rhyme scheme or meter.  

 While I believe that translating syn-

tax less literally has the benefit of replicating Rilke’s 

colloquial language in English, and that translating 

semantics less literally works for words such as Stille 

and betäubt, these remain situation-specific 

choices. I believe the last line of the poem warrants 

a more literal translation in regards to both syntax 

and word choice. In the last stanza of the poem, 

Rilke describes an image which comes through the 

panther’s pupil, travels to his heart, and ceases to 

be. The last line of the poem, describing the image’s 

final moments, reads: “und hört im Herzen auf zu 



ARESTY RUTGERS UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH JOURNAL, VOLUME I, ISSUE IV 

 

 

 

sein” (Rilke, 1907, 12). Significantly, the last word of 

the poem “sein,” meaning “to be,” is the same as the 

first word of the poem “Sein,” which in that case is 

the possessive pronoun “his.” That the first and last 

words of the poem are the same is important be-

cause the transition from sein as a possessive pro-

noun to sein as a description of the cessation of ex-

istence describes a deterioration of the panther’s 

being: at the beginning of the poem the panther is 

a being capable of possessing, but by the end he 

fails to hold the image in his body.  

My translation of the last line, “and ceases, 

in the heart, to be,” keeps the infinitive “to be” (in 

German, sein) as the last word of the poem while 

also replicating the way Rilke shortens this line com-

pared to the rest of the poem and imitating the way 

his German inserts information between the two 

segments of the separable verb aufhören. Similar to 

German, my separable verbs nestle information be-

tween subjects and verbs on a smaller scale. In the 

last line, “und hört im Herzen auf zu sein,” the verb 

aufhören is broken up into the segments auf and 

hört. Verbs that appear in sentences as two separate 

particles do not occur in English. However, by rep-

resenting the phrase like this: “and [ceases] in the 

heart [ceases] to be,” it can be communicated that 

“ceases” occupies not one but two positions in the 

phrase. In German, the supplementary information, 

the prepositional phrase “im Herzen” or “in the 

heart” is inserted between the verb’s two segments, 

creating the impression of a single phrase. This al-

lows for all information to seem equally important to 

the meaning of the sentence because all infor-

mation is encountered before the end of a phrase.  

Similar to how in Rilke’s German, the verb 

aufhören is broken up into “hört” and “auf” with the 

phrase “im Herzen” appearing between them, my 

translation thus reads, “and ceases, in the heart, to 

be.” The phrase “ceases to be” is broken into the 

phrases, “ceases” and “to be,” with “in the heart” ap-

pearing between them. While this isn’t the most col-

loquial way to state this in English, breaking up the 

phrase “ceases to be” with a pause after the word 

“ceases” emphasizes the information that is to 

come: the image’s discontinued existence and the 

invocation of the infinitive “to be” which is so central 

to the German poem. This more literal translation 

also has the benefit that it does not over translate. 

Unlike Mitchell’s colorful language, which describes 

the image as “[plunging]” (Mitchell, 1989, 12), or 

Bly, who somewhat misleadingly suggests that the 

image “dies” (Bly, 1981, 12), a literal translation 

keeps my language free of action words or words 

that evoke visceral emotions while also staying close 

to the discussion of existence central to the word 

sein.  

 

4 AMBIGUITY BETWEEN PHYSICAL AND 

NON-PHYSICAL WORLDS 
Rilke’s German portrays an ambiguity as to 

whether the panther resides in physical or non-

physical realms. Poetic subjects which do not con-

form to characterization as strictly physical objects 

are common to Rilke’s works. In her essay “How the 

Panther Stole the Poem: The Search for Alterity in 

Rilke’s Dinggedichte,” Claire Y. van den Broek dis-

cusses Rilke’s quest to create a Kunst-Ding (art-ob-

ject) which can exist autonomously, unmovable by 

the reader. Rilke claims that in order for an object to 

be eternal, it must be freed from time and space 

(van den Broek, 2013). In “Der Panther,” Rilke does 

this by creating ambiguity between the physical and 

the non-physical realm. Most translations, however, 

fail to transmit this. Consider, for example, the lines 

“geht durch der Glieder angespannte Stille-/ und 

hört im Herzen auf zu sein” (Rilke, 1907, ll-12), or ac-

cording to my translation, “passes through the tense 

limbs of stillness - / and ceases, in the heart, to be,” 

where Rilke describes an image, or Bild, passing 

through Glieder, or “limbs,” of stillness, to land in 

the panther’s heart. Most translators interpret the 

word Glieder as the limbs of the panther’s body. I, 

however, interpret this as Rilke trying to give a phys-

ical form to stillness. This is not the only time in the 

poem that Rilke conveys a separation between the 

body of the panther and the bodies of abstract con-

cepts: in the second stanza, there is a clear physical 

distance between the panther’s will, which stands in 

the center of the cage, and the panther’s body, 

which paces around it. By assigning the will, an ab-

stract concept, to a location in space, Rilke creates 



ARESTY RUTGERS UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH JOURNAL, VOLUME I, ISSUE IV 

 

 

 

ambiguity between what belongs to the physical 

realm and what belongs to the non-physical realm. 

Simultaneously, he creates ambiguity about the 

scope of the panther’s body and mind, as one would 

typically assume that a person’s will resides inside 

their body. Again, in the phrase Glieder an-

gespannte Stille, or “limbs [of] tense silence,” there 

is ambiguity as to what is tangible and what is not, 

as well as what belongs to the panther’s body and 

what does not. Rilke assigns stillness, which gener-

ally does not have a physical form, the physical char-

acteristics of having limbs and being tense. 

The image which comes through the pan-

ther’s pupil to pass through the limbs also does not 

necessarily have a physical form. It can pass through 

the stillness suggesting that like the will, stillness has 

a location in space. The notion that the image 

passes through stillness in order to enter the pan-

ther’s heart also begs the question of whether still-

ness itself is a part of the panther’s body. The ambi-

guities for which abstract concepts can take physical 

forms, or of what the panther’s body consists of are 

lost when this line is translated to show that it is the 

panther’s limbs which the image passes through: 

e.g., “the tensed arrested muscles” (Mitchell, 1989, 

11) or “tightened silence of the shoulders” (Bly, 

1981, 11). By asserting that the limbs belong to the 

panther, Mitchell and Bly transform the pathway of 

the image into one which occurs wholly in the pan-

ther's physical body. Other translators forcing the 

interpretation that the limbs refer to the panther’s 

limbs is what Werner Hamacher would call an “at-

tack.” On the topic of translation, he states: “Only 

through separation from meaning does an idea take 

the place of an attack” (Hamacher, 2019, xliii). It is 

when translators are preoccupied with transmitting 

a certain interpretation that translations attack the 

original by imposing something that was not previ-

ously there. Instead of interpreting a specific mean-

ing, my translation leaves open the possibility that 

the poem is set in a nonphysical realm. My transla-

tion reads: “passes through the tense limbs of still-

ness.” This phrasing does not force the reader to as-

sume that the limbs belong to the panther. It can be 

understood in multiple ways: that the panther’s 

limbs are comprised of stillness, or that the limbs 

belong to a physical manifestation of stillness. The 

reader is not forced to assume that the limbs are the 

panther’s physical limbs, and they are also free to 

imagine stillness having a physical form. Thus, it 

contributes to Rilke’s interplay between physical 

and the nonphysical worlds. Furthermore, the term 

angespannte Stille connotes suspension of time as 

well as physical immobility. By opting for a more lit-

eral translation of angespannt (tense) and Stille (still-

ness), I preserve some of the temporal aspects of 

this phrase. By creating ambiguity as to whether the 

tenseness refers to the limbs or the stillness, or 

whether the limbs belong to the panther or to still-

ness itself, the path of the image to the panther’s 

heart is neither bound to the physical world nor is it 

governed by the passage of time. The pathway of 

the image is bound only to the panther himself, 

whatever his body may consist of. This freedom of 

interpretation contributes to a panther who is— char-

acteristically to Kunst-Dings—freed from time and 

space.  

 

5 MINOR POINTS REGARDING DEVIA-

TIONS FROM OTHER TRANSLATIONS 
One word which I did not find a suitable 

translation for is Blick (Rilke, 1907, 1), which refers to 

the panther’s gaze as he is constrained in his cage. I 

opted to use the word “gaze,” while other transla-

tors used “vision” (Mitchell, 1989, 1), “seeing” (Bly, 

1981, 1), and “sight” (MacIntyre, 1971, 1). “Vision,” 

and “sight” are words which emphasize the capacity 

for seeing, whereas “gaze” and “seeing” are words 

which emphasize the action of seeing. While I be-

lieve the word Blick refers more to the action of see-

ing than the capacity for it, my translation, “gaze,” 

denotes a more sustained and prolonged look even 

though Blick represents the shorter duration of a 

glimpse or a glance. Unfortunately, the words 

“glimpse” and “glance” in English are more collo-

quially used in phrases such as “stole a glance” or 

“caught a glimpse.” Using the word “glimpse” apart 

from such a phrase and translating Rilke with “His 

glimpse has become so weary” would be awkward.  

One place where nearly all other transla-

tions I consulted deviated from Rilke’s syntax is “Der 



ARESTY RUTGERS UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH JOURNAL, VOLUME I, ISSUE IV 

 

 

 

weiche Gang geschmeidig starker Schritte” (Rilke, 

1907, 5), which describes the panther’s footsteps as 

he paces around the cage. Rilke’s phrase lacks a 

preposition and could be translated literally as, “The 

soft walk smooth strong steps.” All the translations I 

consulted, however, inserted a preposition into the 

phrase: “The easy motion of his supple stride” (Mac-

Intyre, 1971, 5), “The lithe swinging of that rhythmi-

cal easy stride” (Bly, 1981, 5), “As he paces in 

cramped circles” (Mitchell, 1989, 5) (emphasizes 

mine). Keeping with Rilke’s syntax, my translation, 

“The soft stride, the powerful footsteps,” does not 

insert a preposition into this line. 

 

6 CONCLUSION 
Observing the way Rilke’s German conveys 

themes such as the noiselessness, motionlessness, 

and listlessness in the panther’s physical body and 

mental state, I attempt to provide a translation of 

“Der Panther” which preserves the way these 

themes are represented in the poem. By first analyz-

ing the poem’s themes and then examining how lo-

cal translation choices affect the poem in its entirety, 

my translation would allow for an analysis of the 

poem which remains closer to the original than anal-

yses of other translations. One such example is that 

my translation does not restrict the scope of the 

panther’s mind and body to the realm of linear time 

and space, allowing for the panther to be analyzed 

as one of the Kunst-Dings characteristic to Rilke’s 

writing. Thus, my translation resonates with Rilke’s 

other works. Furthermore, by staying consistent with 

Benjamin’s idea that translators should let the target 

language be affected by the original language, my 

translation takes influence from how the structure of 

German portrays meaning, as well as how it allows 

itself to be read in poetry.  

7 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 
I would like to thank Professor Nicola Beh-

rmann for her helpful comments on the paper.  

 

8 REFERENCES 
[1] Benjamin, Walter. “The Task of the Translator.” Trans-

lated by Harry Zohn. In Walter Benjamin: Selected 

Writings Volume 1 1913-1926, edited by Marcus Bull-

ock and Michael W. Jennings, 253-263. Harvard Uni-

versity Press, 1996. 

[2] Bly, Robert, and Rainer Maria Rilke. 1981. Selected 

Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke. Translated by Robert Bly. 

New York: Harper Perennial.   

[3] Broek, Claire Y. van den. 2013. “How the Panther 

Stole the Poem: The Search for Alterity in Rilke’s 

‘Dinggedichte.’” Monatshefte (Madison, Wisconsin : 

1946) 105 (2): 225–46. 
HTTPS://DOI.ORG/10.1353/MON.2013.0046. 

[4] De Man, Paul. 1985. “‘Conclusions’ Walter Benjamin’s 

‘The Task of the Translator’ Messenger Lecture, Cor-

nell University, March 4, 1983. Yale French Studies 65: 

25-46. 

[5] Hamacher, Werner. 2019. “95 Theses on Philology.“ 

In Give the Word: Responses to Werner Hamacher’s 

95 Theses on Philology, edited by Gerhard Richter 

and Ann Smock. Lincoln: University of Nebraska 

Press.  

[6] Rilke, Rainer Maria. 1907. “Der Panther.” In Neue 

Gedichte und Der Neuen Gedichte anderer Teil, 33-

34. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Taschenbuch Verlag.  

[7] Rilke, Rainer Maria. 1971. “The Panther.” Translated 

by C. F. MacIntyre. In Rilke: Selected Poems, edited 

by C. F. MacIntyre. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: 

University of California Press.  

[8] Rilke, Rainer Maria. 1989. “The Panther.” Translated 

by Stephen Mitchell. In The Selected Poetry of Rainer 

Maria Rilke: Bilingual Edition, edited by Stephen 

Mitchell. New York: Vintage Internationa

 

https://doi.org/10.1353/mon.2013.0046


ARESTY RUTGERS UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH JOURNAL, VOLUME I, ISSUE IV 

 

 

 

Serena graduated from Rutgers in May 2022 with majors in German and 

Cognitive Science. She became interested in translation as a means to com-

bine her interest in the philosophy of language with her interest in practicing 

German. During her time at Rutgers, she was involved in various theoretical 

and empirical language based research projects, including serving as a re-

search assistant for the Comparative and Experimental Linguistics Lab, con-

ducting a project about heritage languages and emotions as an Interdisci-

plinary Research Teams fellow, and working on her senior thesis in German, 

titled Praying for Language: Hamacher’s Bogengebet and the Possibility of 

Address. This year, Serena will be in Graz, Austria as a Fulbright student to 

combine her interests in science, philosophy, and literature by conducting a 

research project about the epistemological frameworks underlying quantum 

theory.  

 


