Rilke speaks of the "open" especially in the eighth of his Duino elegies, dedicated, significantly, to Rudolf Kassner. It is not our intention to present a comprehensive interpretation of this elegy, for that is not necessary. What is necessary is only an unequivocal indication of how Rilke's word about the "open" is distinct in all respects from the "open" as essentially connected to ἀλήθεια and to thoughtful questioning. The eighth Duino elegy begins:
With all eyes the creature sees
the open. Only our eyes are
reversed and placed wholly around creatures
as traps, around their free exit
What is outside we know from the animal's
visage alone
The first verses of the elegy immediately say to whom it is given to see "the open" and to whom it is not. The eyes of the "creature" and "our" eyes, i.e., human eyes, are opposed in this respect. What then does "creature" mean here? Creatura, from creare, means "what is made." Creator is the maker. Creatio, creation, is a biblical-Christian fundamental determination of beings. Omne ens est qua ens creatum,1 with the exception of the uncreated creator himself, the summum ens. Creatura in the sense of ens creatum therefore includes man. According to the biblical narrative of creation, man is the creatura formed last. Thus creatura means "creation," i.e., the created world as a whole, in which man is included as the "crown of creation." It is in this sense that the word creatura occurs in the famous medieval sequentia, Dies irae, dies illa, a poem written by Thomas of Celano in the first half of the thirteenth century He is the one who also wrote the celebrated biography of St. Francis of Assisi.
The fourth strophe of the Dies irae, which perhaps some of you have heard in Verdi's composition, is as follows:
Mors stupebit et natura
cum resurget creatura
Iudicanti responsura
Death benumbs all that emerges
when creatures rise
to answer to their judge
Now if Rilke places "creatures" in opposition to man, and this opposition is the exclusive theme of the eighth elegy, then the word "creatures" cannot mean creatura in the sense of the whole of creation. The
1 "Every being, as a being, is something made "—Tr