Reading notes

• The Book of Hours §15 Rome

  Rome stands here for the greatest of built things, which nonetheless 'falls to ruin'---set against God, the cathedral that can never be completed.

• New Poems: The Other Part §51 the cluttered city

  Rome, from whose over-built mass the straight road of tombs (the Via Appia) runs out into the malarial Campagna—'into the fever.'

• Duino Elegies §1 Rome

  In whose churches, Rilke says, the fate of the young dead once spoke calmly to him.

• Stories of God §89 Rome

  The city where Raphael kneels; later of Michelangelo's papal work.

• The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge §416 Rome

  The ancient seat of the papacy; in the king's card-game it lies, round and indifferent, at the table's far edge, while rival Avignon sits under his hand---the two capitals of the Western Schism.

• New Poems §33 sarcophagus

  Roman stone coffins, here imagined reused as basins through which aqueduct water is channeled — Rilke's image of dissolution and renewal.