“The Neighbor”, by Rainer Maria Rilke, is a sad, sombre, and distraught poem about a man who woes over hearing a “strange violin” following him in “many different cities” and complains “why am I always the neighbor to those men/ who force you in fear to sing/ and to say: The heaviness of life/ is heavier even than the weight of things”. The last line is a doozy, striking right at the heart of sorrow potentially leaving the reader with a feeling of despair. Pretty heavy stuff, and yet, I believe there is a more optimistic reading that can be given to this poem.
In the poem there is a sense of camaraderieship between the man and the violin, regardless of how much the man may detest it. The man asks, “are you following me?/In how many distant cities already has your lonely night spoken to mine?/Are a hundred playing you? Or only one?” Despite both having lonely nights, in a beautiful use of personification, the man wonders how many times have the nights spoken to each other. What is crucial here is that it is not two people talking to each other, but their shared experience of a lonely night that is conversing through the medium of a violin. Although the man does not know whether or not it is a hundred or only one person, it does not matter because there is the shared thread of the violin. The violin and the night are connected through lines of this man’s life.
The man continues asking questions, “Are there in all the giant cities/ men like this, who without you/ would already be gone into the rivers?/ And why am I always the one who hears it?” Here, the man wonders how ubiquitous this violin playing is. How ubiquitous is the experience of a lonely night and the need for a violin? The man wonders that if it was not for the violin would these violin players have died? And in his question of why is he the one who always hears it, there is a sense that if he did not hear the violin would he have gone into the rivers as well? That somehow the violin is keeping the man and those playing it alive?
The turn and end of the poem is the man giving a half question and half statement, “Why am I always the neighbor to those men/ who force you in fear to sing/ and to say: The heaviness of life/ is heavier even than the weight of things”. As I said before, the last line is a doozy that invokes a feeling of dread and hopelessness; there is no doubt about that, but I still believe an optimistic reading can be done. The man treats this strange violin as some kind of intruder or something to be wary of, but it is the only thing keeping him company and in turn he is keeping it company. Among the hundreds of lonely nights of people across many cities, those nights find kinship with each other. Furthermore, each person playing the violin is finding perseverance through music and art. Despite the violin speaking to them the weight of life, the revelation of this truth and the unburdening of it through the violin is what keeps them going and I would argue keeps the man going as well. That despite there being hundreds of lonely people playing the violin, they are in a sense all playing together. Truly, they are neighbors in spite of their lonely nights.