 The Fifth Elegy is largely inspired by Pablo Picasso 's 1905 Rose Period painting , Les Saltimbanques ( " The Acrobats " , also known as " The Family of Saltimbanques " ) in which Picasso depicts six figures pictured " in the middle of a desert landscape and it is impossible to say whether they are arriving or departing , beginning or ending their performance . " Rilke depicted the six artists about to begin their performance , and that they were used as a symbol of " human activity ... always travelling and with no fixed abode , they are even a shade more fleeting than the rest of us , whose fleetingness was lamented . " Further , Rilke in the poem described these figures as standing on a " threadbare carpet " to suggest " the ultimate loneliness and isolation of Man in this incomprehensible world , practicing their profession from childhood to death as playthings of an unknown will ... before their ' pure too @-@ little ' had passed into ' empty too @-@ much . ' " 
