Panther, by Reiner Maria Rilke and Travelling

¶ … panther, by Reiner Maria Rilke and Travelling through the Dark, by William Stafford, are two poems about wild animals and the effects of human kind's interference into their existence. In the case of Rilke's poem, the interaction is intentional: the man has locked one of the most impressive creatures in the wild, a panther, behind bars. In the second poem, the interaction is unintentional: the narrator finds a road kill in the dark, a deer. Even if so different, the animals are symbols for the same world: the world of wilderness.

The Panther, expresses the image such an impressive creature as a panther evokes when seen behind bars. The eyes of the panther draw the onlooker, leaving a lasting impression on him. One of the most powerful gazes in the animal world has lost its meaning for the one who sees it behind bars. It is as if the world, as we know it, has ceased to exist. It is a timeless world of nothingness for the wild displaced creature. The new context has no meaning for it.

The caged panther, with its gracious, powerful steps moving in circles, its fixed gaze, its impressive body, its black, shiny, luxurious hair, suggests the mystical dance of an ancient priest. The person on the other side of the bars is aware that he or she stands in the nothingness for this captured animal. That person is looking at it, analyzing it, trying to understand what a wild animal feels when behind bars. Captivity seems to have rendered almost everything in that animal redundant. Only its will, a powerful will is in a state of numbness, like under the effect of a powerful drug the caretakers have injected in its limbs. Those limbs, with their perfect lean and strong muscles, complete the picture of what the panther is there for: to remind the one looking at it that, in spite of what humanity has achieved so far, in spite of its apparent triumph over the animal kingdom, everything is only temporary. The mighty in the middle, the narrator evokes, may wake up some day and push the bars aside. Another thing the narrator seems to guess when looking at the caged panther is that humans are hopeless in their efforts to dominate the other worlds. Physical barriers can only contain the body of a being, but they will never retain and render the essence.

The last verse of the poem shows the creature whose power to kill is still there actually killing. It shows it killing an occasional image it penetrates what one thought was perfectly still. The meaning of that creature in this world is there in spirit, unattained. The panther, like a magician, freezes from time to time, to absorb and bring an image to its very heart where it finds the end. It fulfills thus its destiny.

In the second poem, Travelling Through the Dark, the narrator starts innocently with what could be described as a common image: riding through the nigh, on the edge of a river, a driver almost bumps into road kill. The two beings, the man vs. that of the dead body of an animal, are presented first in a completely disjointed world: "it is usually best to roll them into the canyon." The use of an impersonal voice is deliberate, thus the delimitation between the person behind the wheel and the object of its possible future action being suggested. The pronoun "them" from "to roll them" finishes this separation between those who have the rule "to role them into the canyon," the humans that is, and them, the animals in the wild.

The wilderness is present in the first verse through three symbols: the darkness, the Wilson river and the dead deer on the road. The one behind the wheel thinks like the deserving member of the community: he or she leaves the shelter of his or her car, transgressing, to enter the darkness, guided by his taillights. His first action is thus apparently motivated by his or her concern for the other members of his own community: "the road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead."

To describe the reason that made him or her descend into the darkness, the first word the narrator uses is noncommittal: "a heap." The second word that follows immediately is: "a doe." This is another word for the female deer, but it will also bring one to the idea of a John / Jane Doe: an unidentified corpse, that is, a dead human being. The word that follows in the description seems to reinforce this idea: "a recent killing." The narrator deliberately describes his finding as a killing, leaving behind the object of that killing as if, to establish a first connection between the two worlds: his or hers and the being in the wild, the deer. The reader finds the next image jumping back to the original attitude of indifference, in a void of feelings: "I dragged her off." But, the phrase continues and engages: "she was large in the belly." The narrator uses the third person personal pronoun to suggest he or she realized it was more than just "a heap," furthermore, it was more than just a dead animal. From that moment on, the story becomes very personal: the dead wild animal was bearing life, a life that had not ceased along with its bearer. The second and most powerful connection between the human world and the animal kingdom is thus established: the ability to give life.

This is the moment when the human hesitates. He or she is incapable of finishing something as mechanical as getting rid of a lifeless obstacle on the road. The moral aspect of human existence, what humans think separates them from animals, enters the stage: to act deliberately and to take or not to take a new life. Here it is the fourth unseen character: the living fawn. The five character is quickly introduced: the car. The car takes the lively form of an animal: "under the hood purred the steady engine." The human and the lifeless mechanical engine are partners in conquering the animal kingdom and establishing the victory of men vs. animals.