THE BOOK OF HOURS: ECHOES OF RAINER MARIA RILKE (2022)

WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY OMKAR BHATKAR

“I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not even complete the last one,
but I give myself to it.
I circle around God, the primordial tower.
I have been circling for thousands of years,
and I still don’t know : am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?”

-Rainer Maria Rilke

One night after watching Tarkovsky’s film, Andrei Rublev, the young poet goes to sleep only to be visited by Rilke’s
angel in his dreams. The poet, in his awakened sleep, listens to the echoes of Rilke’s elegies, raising existential
questions about his own inner life, his struggles toward comprehension, and, above all, his perils as a poet.
The young poet starts reading Rilke’s ‘The Book of Hours’ and sees himself falling deeper in love with Rilke’s icon
painter-monk. He now wonders if Tarkovsky’s Rublev is the unnamed monk in Rilke’s apotheosis of art. The night is a
surreal meeting of these monks in the young poet’s mind. It results in an indescribable poetic affair that lasts until the
sun rises, and disappears into the void, leaving no trace as if the night was real and everything delusional or vice
versa.
The play is an attempt of a modern (hu)man to orientate himself within his chaotic world, undertake the quest of a
beloved, embark on the journey in search of truth and the promise of a better life. In this long loneliness, the young
poet’s reading of ‘The Book of Hours’ brings together poets, mystics, artists, and seers to confabulate on love and life.

St. Andrew’s Centre for Philosophy & Performing Arts and Metamorphosis Theatre Inc presentation