I Live My Life in Widening Circles by Rainer Maria Rilke

Full Text

I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I have been circling for thousands of years,
and I still do not know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?

Overview

This poem opens "The Book of a Monastic Life," the first section of Rilke's "Book of Hours." Written in the voice of a Russian Orthodox monk, it presents spiritual seeking as an ever-expanding movement rather than a destination. The speaker circles God without reaching, questions without answering—embodying Rilke's belief that living the questions matters more than finding answers.

Line-by-Line Analysis

Lines 1-2

"Widening circles that reach out across the world" — Life expands outward like ripples. Each circle encompasses more, suggesting spiritual growth as accumulation rather than arrival.

Lines 3-4

"I may not complete this last one" — The speaker accepts incompleteness. The giving of self matters more than finishing. This is devotion without expectation of success.

Lines 5

God is "the primordial tower" — ancient, central, vertical. The speaker orbits this fixed point, moving around what cannot be directly approached.

Lines 6

"Thousands of years" dissolves individual identity into something larger. The speaker becomes all seekers who have ever circled the divine.

Lines 7-8

The three possibilities—falcon, storm, song—move from physical creature to natural force to pure art. The speaker's uncertainty about their own nature is the poem's profound conclusion: we seek without knowing what we are.

Themes

• Spiritual seeking as process
• The unknowability of God
• Identity as question
• Devotion without arrival
• The expansion of consciousness

Literary Devices

Extended Metaphor

Life as widening circles — The central image structures the entire poem—existence as orbital motion around the sacred.

Tricolon

"a falcon, a storm, or a great song" — Three options escalate from animal to element to art, each more abstract than the last.

Temporal Expansion

"thousands of years" — Individual life becomes archetypal, the speaker standing for all spiritual seekers across time.

Open-ended Question

The final question without answer — The poem refuses closure, embodying Rilke's philosophy of living in uncertainty.

Historical Context

Rilke wrote the Book of Hours after two transformative trips to Russia (1899-1900), where he encountered Orthodox Christianity and met Tolstoy. The poems emerged in intense bursts of inspiration, often multiple poems per day, written in the voice of a monk speaking to God.