The Cult of Life and the Care of Death

Life and Death are normally visualized as two distinct and different things, their only relation being that they are a natural part of every being’s cycle. In this poem Death, by Rainer Maria Rilk, Life, Death, and the speaker are gathered for a drinking of red wine ritual, one which fills the speaker with glee and leaves Death with its head in its hands, sobbing profusely. As this poem begins it puts forth a cult ritualistic atmosphere with the occult drinking of the red wine, displays how personal death is with the reading of the speaker’s and Death’s personified emotions, and how Death is left desolate by the control over the speaker’s fate.

The ambience of the sect ritual is in clear relation to Life and Death’s presents. To have a deeper understanding of life or death is a reason many people join cults, “They feel like [they have] found [t]he [a]nswer to life's problems,” the promise of knowledge lure us into this controlling occult life (Elizabeth Esther). The magical look of the cup that the speaker drinks from pushes this idea, “To drink deep of the mystic shining cup,” the speaker drinks deeply, to signify how overjoyed and ready they are for what is coming (line 4). The color of the wine hints at a cult, “Life’s red wine,” red is the color of anger, seduction, and most importantly blood. The wine is an allusion to the blood of Jesus, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me,” and this carries a symbolic representation of life and death, as in this moment Jesus is preparing for the ending of his life (Bible Gateway 1 Corinthians 11:23-25). The cult ritual and religious allusion gives a foreboding of what is to come for the speaker and for Death, the controlling and ending of the speaker’s newfound life.

Death is a personal thing, something only an individual can experience in their own special way. This poem capitalizes on that with how the speaker is able to read Death’s personified emotions, proving the connection between the speaker and Death. At first the speaker sees as Death watches silently and aimlessly, “within his quiet hands,” not even Death’s hands betray a sound, showing just how isolated Death is in this moment (line 2). The speaker is the opposite, shown by how excited they are to be able to drink from Life’s wine, “through all our being leaps,” the diction choice of leap especially highlights the ecstasy that the speaker is in as they drink from the cup (line 5). The reading of the emotions and the personification is used to show how Death digs into the very fiber of our being, because it is an unknown thing that in