Where did Rilke say or write “The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things”?

Question

The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.

This quote is widely attributed to the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, but I cannot find the source. Where did he say or write this?

Answer 1

It seems to be from the poem "Der Schauende", variously translated into English as "The Man Watching" or "The Beholder". The original German text of this quote is:

Die Siege laden ihn nicht ein.
Sein Wachstum ist: der Tiefbesiegte
von immer Größerem zu sein.

It's been translated into English in a number of ways, including:

• Winning does not tempt that man.
  This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
  by constantly greater beings.

  _{-- Robert Bly translation}

• Winning does not tempt that man.
  His growth is this: to be defeated
  by ever greater forces.

  _{-- Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy translation}

• His growth is: to be the deeply defeated
  by ever greater things.

  _{-- Edward Snow translation (apparently)}

---

I think I got lucky finding this. When I searched Google for "rilke The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things", most of the results were lists of Rilke quotes including this as a platitude, like Goodreads and Brainyquote, but one or two hits mentioned this poem, including this blog post, which gave me the name of the poem I needed to search for to find out more.