The most important poetic realization of the myth of Orpheus in the literature of the twentieth century occurs in the work of Rainer Maria Rilke. Rilke's Orpheus bears traces of the archaic shamanistic figure who crosses between the living and the dead. He is also a magician, a wonder-worker in words, transfiguring external reality by sounds. The first of the Sonnets to Orpheus describes his power over nature; the last speaks of his magic (Zauberkmft [Sonnets z.zg}). Rilke himself practices the incantatory power of Orphic song-music in the untranslatable rhythms of Sonnets 1.6.
Kundiger boge die Zweige der Weiden
wer die Wurzeln der Weiden erfuhr.
More knowing would he bend the willows' branches
who has experienced the willows' roots.