German poet Rainer Maria Rilke writes of a nearly-blind woman at a party in “Going Blind.” The poem provides an observation of this woman, as if we were in the room with her. At first she looks “just like the others.” As someone who works in healthcare, usually it is obvious when a patient is sick. But more often than I think we acknowledge, we can’t always tell when a person is suffering or ill. There are many diseases or ailments that might not be readily apparent at first glance.
The narrator does soon note subtle differences in the woman: “she seemed to hold her cup / a little differently as she picked it up.” Rilke focuses on the woman, as the rest of the party moves away: “I saw her. She was moving far behind”. He notices her eyes, “radiant with joy, / light played as on the surface of a pool.”
There is a turn in the poem here, where the narrator moves from seeing her smile as “almost painful” to realizing that once “some obstacle” is “overcome, / she would be beyond all walking, and would fly.” It ends on this hopeful note, the idea that this woman will persevere, and in so doing, move beyond all others and the world’s norms.
Interestingly, here is another version of Rilke’s poem, translated by Margarete Munsterberg in 1912. Reading various English translations of poetry always makes me wonder at what might be missing when we don’t read a piece in the author’s native tongue. Did you get a different sense of the themes or of the woman from reading these translations?
Writing Prompt: Think of a time when one of your senses was limited. What did it feel like to be restricted in this way? Did you note other senses altering in response? Have you observed a patient or a loved one losing their hearing, their sight, their ability to taste food? What did you notice? Alternatively, consider writing from the perspective of the woman going blind. Imagine what she sees, what she feels. Write for 10 minutes.