The Quest For Truth and Authenticity in Rainer Maria Rilke’s “The Panther”

The opaque poetic language of Rainer Maria Rilke as a symbolist writer facilitates the reader to elicit diverse interpretations from his poems and refabricate their meaning as befitting. Rilke’s poem “The Panther”, is highly recognized as a prominent symbolic modernist work, showcasing Rilke’s profound insight into the human condition and the intricacies of existence. By adopting the framework of existentialism and relying on the symbolic language of the poem, this paper tries to transcend the poem’s literal meaning and bring up the possibility of considering “The Panther” as a symbol of modern human questing for truth and authenticity in the backdrop of modernity.