In his essay, Poesie et pensee abstraite, French Symbolist poet Paul Valery describes poetry as a pendulum swinging between philosophical ideas expressed (la Pensee) and sonorous qualities of language (la Voix) : Entre la Voix et la Pensee, entre la Pensee et la Voix, entre la Presence et l'Absence, oscille le pendule poetique (1333). The same oscillation occurs in critical writing on poetry, with some critics paying closer attention to ideas explored in poems, and others focusing on linguistic expression of these ideas, on such devices as rhythm, assonance, and alliteration, as well as on use of figurative language. While, for Valery, swinging of poetic pendulum between sound and meaning (son and sens) unifies these two aspects of language that are separated in everyday discourse, for critics of Rilke's poetry pendulum of criticism has swung unevenly towards side of ideas. Since Martin Heidegger's 1946 essay, Wozu Dichter? tendency has been to interpret Rilke's poetry in a philosophical context. While Heidegger's essay shows great sensitivity to Rilke's poetic voice in attempting to determine place of poetry in modern world,1 some critics have taken this philosophizing tendency to a greater extreme, believing that Rilke can be interpreted without reference to original German, i.e., that sonorous qualities of language are incidental and not an integral part of poetry's meaning. Even when Rilke's poetry is read in German, critics have tended to translate his dense metaphors into philosophical language.2 Paul de Man noted this tendency and, in Allegories of Reading, attempted to move pendulum of criticism towards linguistic dimension of Rilke's poetry (25). Since then, some critics have followed his lead in emphasizing this aspect of Rilke's poetry and prose works.3 Others have turned philosophical mode of criticism in a more literary direction by focusing on Rilke's links with such movements as Romanticism, Symbolism, and Modernism.4 De Man's readings introduced a new direction into Rilke studies. He argues that poetry's overt assertions are contradicted by its linguistic structure. Thus, promise of finding significance in poetry coexists with lie, or loss of referentiality in figural language (47-55). For de Man, Rilke's notion of Figur differs from a traditional metaphor, which suggests the potential identification of tenor and vehicle (46). Rilke's Figuren, on other hand, are characterized by renunciation of stable meaning (47).5 My reading differs from de Man's in that it demonstrates how metaphor escapes very dichotomy of promise and lie on which de Man bases his analysis. Recent work on metaphor by linguists, philosophers, and literary critics has suggested that this trope eludes such categories entirely: to speak or write metaphorically is to make a statement that is neither literally true nor false.6 Metaphors cannot be characterized as lies, but they can possibly change way in which we view human beings, concepts, or relationships.7 I argue that it is this potential of metaphor to simultaneously bring together and separate two terms (objects, persons, concepts) that is highlighted and expanded in Rilke's poetry.8 He expands this potentiality through use of subjunctive mood in his metaphors and similes and thus creates a mode of existence outside categories of truth and falsehood, presence and absence, being and non-being. While Rilke employs subjunctive as well as other modes that escape dichotomies of truth and falsehood, such as imperative and interrogative, throughout his poetry, they are most noticeably present in his Duitteser Elegien. Many critics have remarked, in passing, on Rilke's use of these modes;9 however, an analysis of function and effect of these distinctively Rilkean linguistic features in conj unction with metaphor is still lacking. …