Archaic Torso of Apollo
by Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Stephen Mitchell

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

Archaischer Torso Apollos

Wir kannten nicht sein unerhörtes Haupt,
darin die Augenäpfel reiften. Aber
sein Torso glüht noch wie ein Kandelaber,
in dem sein Schauen, nur zurückgeschraubt,

sich hält und glänzt. Sonst könnte nicht der Bug
der Brust dich blenden, und im leisen Drehen
der Lenden könnte nicht ein Lächeln gehen
zu jener Mitte, die die Zeugung trug.

Sonst stünde dieser Stein enstellt und kurz
unter der Shultern durchsichtigem Sturz
und flimmerte nicht so wie Raubtierfelle;

und brächte nicht aus allen seinen Rändern
aus wie ein Stern: denn da ist keine Stelle,
die dich nicht sieht. Du mußt dein Leben ändern.

I sense a value judgment here, as if one could measure the value of a life by its immortality factor – how wide the impact of that life is and how widely remembered it is. To survive at all costs, even beyong death, I see as more of a biologically based urge of the ego (the sense of self) rather than a measure of value.

The meaning of one’s life is different, in that it is based in the present, your life as you’re living it. Sometimes there is meaning in the mere feeling of ‘I’m glad to be alive to witness this sunset”. Sometimes there is meaning in making a child laugh with glee. Sometimes there is meaning in helping lots of other people. Sometimes there is great meaning in just having made it through another day.

Each person has to choose the meaning they can find or create in his life of today, and each person will benefit (or not) from their choices.
To worry about immortality takes attention away from actually living.