Duineser Elegien. Die Sonette an Orpheus By Rainer Maria Rilke
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Long considered the definitive English translation of Rilke's brilliant and haunting masterworks, A. Poulin's edition of Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus provides an essential introduction to some of the most passionate and intensely creative visionary poetry of the twentieth century. With a new foreword by the esteemed poet Mark Doty and a fresh new design, Poulin's revered translation is certain to acquaint a new generation of readers with the works of Rilke. Duineser Elegien. Die Sonette an Orpheus
I've never really liked poetry unless I'm teaching it because only then do I take the time to appreciate it. Yet, even without deep analysis so many poems can elicit immediate visceral responses to poignant imagery and intense emotion. For that reason, I've decided to make this Jameson's bedtime reading :-)
Different poems have different effects on his slumber:
Some cause him to think deeply
Others drive him into hiding
Some inspire a triumphant cheer
And others he just fucking hates
Finally, some are so shocking that he can't even sleep
German
Who's turned us around like this,
so that whatever we do, we always have
the look of someone going away? Just as a man
on the last hill showing him his whole valley
one last time, turns, and stops, and lingers -
so we live, and are forever leaving. (70)
When was the last time you look at the stars? Feeling the bittersweet breeze of the night in your face. A face only illuminated by the distant light of the stars. Alone with your thoughts, feeling you can do anything. Go anywhere.
This book is an invitation to look above and ponder about your own existence. About what makes you feel happiness, what troubles the mind, what confuses the heart. What you need. Time is merciless and will not stand still.
Will you look at the stars tonight?
This book includes Rilke's most celebrated works: Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus. The latter are masterfully written, faithfully portraying what a creative mind is capable of. They are also the most accessible part of the book. Written with a superb language, they are made of metaphors that express many emotions and reflections that define human beings. So I would recommend people to start with these sonnets first, and then tackle the elegies, a challenge in verse.
Like I said, this book starts with ten elegies. They contain an intense amount of mysticism. I wouldn't have like them if it wasn't for the fact that they are not like Sunday psalms but heartfelt manifestations of existential doubts and human suffering. So religion is also seen from a philosophical point of view. I think. That is what I understood, at least. Angels are a recurrent theme and they are used to express different thoughts, especially the contrast between their perfection and human flaws.
And if I cried, who'd listen to me in those angelic
orders? Even if one of them suddenly held me
to his heart, I'd vanish in his overwhelming
presence. Because beauty's nothing
but the start of terror we can hardly bear,
and we adore it because of the serene scorn
it could kill us with. Every angel's terrifying. (16)
Angels depict the distant and unbearable beauty that humans apparently will never reach on Earth. According to one of the notes in the book (I am extremely grateful for them, but they weren't enough), these angels have nothing to do with the angels of the Christian heaven. The angel of the Elegies is that creature in whom the transformation of the visible into the invisible, which we are accomplishing, appears already consummated ... (205)
There are also many images that portrays the fervent yearning for love in all its forms, but with more emphasis on the transcendental side of it, something that should define humanity. A spiritual experience that would elevate us all to where angels dwell without leaving life on Earth.
Hostility
is second nature to us. Having promised
one another distance, hunting, and home,
don't lovers always cross each other's boundaries? (38)
There is too much longing in his writing.
O hours of childhood,
when more than the mere past was behind
each shape and the future wasn't stretched out
before us. We were growing; sometimes we hurried
to grow up too soon, half for the sake of those
who had nothing more than being grown-up.
Yet when we were alone, we still amused
ourselves with the everlasting and stood there
in that gap between world and toy,
in a place which, from the very start,
had been established for a pure event. (42)
But there is also hope. And a strong desire to achieve something greater. And so much more.
Due to Rilke's symbolism, this book doesn't represent an easy read, at all. His exquisite lyricism and the images he described left me in awe. Mostly because while reading Rilke, I wasn't reading anyone else. I am certainly not an expert but I found his poetical melody quite unique. I must say, I haven't read something so beautifully strange since my encounter with Rimbaud.
It is a cruel norm established by one merciless being: tormented souls are the ones that can bring beauty to everything they touch. While purging themselves, they convert their sorrow into beautiful images that delight every reader willing to be taken for an intrepid journey without knowing the destination. Perhaps, it is a cruel norm. Or a blessing in disguise. A blessing that transforms a man into an artist, something that lets him live without drowning in a loud sea of despair.
...we vanish in our feelings. (24)
After reading Rilke's poetry, I experienced an overwhelming sense of smallness. The last two elegies are brilliantly written. And yet, I think there is still so much mystery surrounding these verses. Mystery I hope I can unveil the next time I read this book.
June 1, 14
* Also on my blog.
Notes:
-This is a bilingual edition, so those who speak German will be able to appreciate Rilke's magnificent poetry without the intervention of another person.
** Painting: The Guardian, Marina Petro / via druma.co German It seems wrong to mark this as read, as I don't think I will ever be done with it. There is infinity here. German Yesterday our campus bookstore had a sale and so I went and bought books including this one. Then instead of doing math homework I laid in the grass and read Rilke out loud to myself for two hours. I didn't mind that my throat got dry after a while. German Num mundo eminentemente magnetizado, torna-se fisicamente entendível que, quais ímanes, sejamos sugados para determinado pólo, em detrimento de outro - do qual nos afastamos. Quanto à natureza desses extremos, poderão eles pertencer ao mundo físico, numa atração mais carnal, ou, por outro lado, a uma vertente mais interior, esse oásis das emoções. Este lugar, não descrito em mapas, é balizado por duas frentes opostas: o positivo, alegre, e o negativo, triste.
Com uma tendência bucólica, tão característica dos poetas, Rilke escreveu estes versos sofridos, num ambiente álgido, cuja temperatura sofre ainda um decréscimo, devido à envolvência terrena: os anos negros da Primeira Grande Guerra e a morte de uma pessoa amiga. Aprisionado nestas grilhetas psíquicas, o autor canta emoções duradouras e sentimentos perenes, numa reflexão extremada sobre a existência, como um espelho fluído. Esta é uma poesia em casulo, fechada em si, com uma construção frásica não usual, que nos enreda na leitura, com um fito: ver para lá do real. Findada a metamorfose, é admirável enxergar a natureza, plena de comparações e imiscuída nos terrenos recônditos da metafísica.
Retornando à física, aceita-se que possamos ser peças de engrenagem de uma máquina maior - um Uno que respira em simultâneo. Nascido desse ovo cósmico, chamado Big Bang, que se expandiu e expande, com um respeito desmesurado a Lavoisier. Tudo está aqui, nada nasce e nada perece. Vida e morte apresentam-se com um mero ciclo. Porventura, será por esse motivo que estas duas obras foram aglutinadas num volume exímio. A audácia de Orfeu, em salvar a sua amada, é a mesma que o leitor terá de ter para desbravar estas letras.
Mas porque estar aqui é muito, e porque aparentemente
precisa de nós tudo o que é daqui, esta efemeridade que
estranhamente nos respeita. A nós, os efémeros. Cada
uma vez, só uma vez. Uma vez e não mais. E nós também
uma vez. Nunca outra. Mas ter sido
esse uma vez, ainda que só uma vez:
ter sido terrestre não parece revogável. German
After a second reading (31 December 2020):
My gods. Every time I pick up Rilke I seem to read him all at once in a kind of trance. In him whatever Life Source exists comes to pause for a moment at the threshold of the seen and unseen, only to rush in and whisper each Truth in a hot breath. As Mitchell's introduction reviews and Rilke's own letters and journals reveal (the latter are excerpted in the Notes section), the poet felt that the Elegies and the Sonnets had simply descended upon him. He was a conduit, shocked into inspiration by the angels or the muses or both. Truth reveals herself to those of us willing to face Death, Rilke says. And clearly, he wasn't wrong.
This is an eternal book. Mitchell as translator is a poet in his own right. I'll be returning soon for a third helping.
—————————
Extraordinary.
I am neither a Rilke expert or German linguist but, from what little I know, Stephen Mitchell's translations here are exquisite. Rilke's poems are notoriously difficult to capture in other languages, and the Elegies and Sonnets are no exception. However, Mitchell not only takes each line into consideration, he also accounts for the whole of each piece. It is clear that his translations are thoughtful and intelligent, emotional and trustworthy. Within this, Rilke's poems themselves are stunning, and I can see myself returning over and over again to this volume for insight and inspiration.
I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in seeing the original German alongside Mitchell's translation and also for anyone fascinated by the most essential Things in life. Rilke's work will make you investigate yourself and your grief and your love for the world. I am grateful for it. German Que cela est frustrant de lire de la poésie. Un instant, les mots m'emportent et, pris par une émotion violente et pourtant indescriptible, je sens les larmes poindre. Mais l'instant d'après, je suis de glace, étrangère à l'univers qui s'offre à moi, comme prisonnière d'un sort qui me permet de voir la beauté mais m'empêche de la ressentir et de la comprendre - si tant est qu'une telle chose soit possible.
Je cherche alors toutes les raisons à mon atonie ; la poésie je la préfère récitée, je trouve que la voix de son interprète lui insuffle toujours de la vie ; la poésie je la préfère non traduite, en version originale ou en français, parce que les sonorités me permettent de ressentir à l'unisson du rythme cardiaque du poète mis à nu, ; mais, en vérité, la poésie n'est-elle vraiment accessible ?
Incapable de la lire au diapason de mes instincts et de mes sensations, je cherche désespérément un guide pour y pénétrer coûte que coute. Pourquoi la poésie me résiste t-elle ainsi ? Est-ce mon coeur qui est trop petit ? German I don't read a lot of poetry because I have trouble getting inside of it. With prose, I feel like I can instinctually move around between the words; sometimes it even seems to me I can see their original order and the phases they went through to get to their final form. Poetry doesn't let me in like that. But whatever Rilke did here, it was worth peeking through the cracks in the wall, however slant they might be for me, to get even a partial look at that revelation.
Of the dead, he says:
Of course, it is strange to inhabit the earth no longer,
to give up customs one barely had time to learn,
not to see roses and other promising Things
in terms of a human future; no longer to be
what one was in infinitely anxious hands
Strange to no longer desire one’s desires. Strange
to see meanings that clung together once, floating away
in every direction. And being dead is hard work
and full of retrieval before one can gradually feel
a trace of eternity.—Though the living are wrong to believe
in the too-sharp distinctions which they themselves have created.
Angels (they say) don’t know whether it is the living
they are moving among, or the dead. The eternal torrent
whirls all ages along in it, through both realms
forever, and their voices are drowned out in its thunderous roar.
Yesterday I walked outside and saw hawks flying in the sky and was struck by an immense, overwhelming joy; when it vanished the next instant, it seemed, by contrast, tragically absent from the overwhelming majority of my life. But how greedy that is of me. Later in the day, Rilke told me:
Silken thread, you were woven into the fabric.
Whatever the design with which you are inwardly joined
(even for only one moment amid years of grief),
feel that the whole, the marvelous carpet is meant.
These poems left me with more energy, which is strange, as though I had sucked the lifeblood out of a person. German Lonelier now, dependent on one another
utterly, though not knowing one another at all,
*
Does it really exist, Time, the Destroyer?
[…]
Are we really as fate keeps trying to convince us,
weak and brittle in an alien world?
*
Silent friend of many distances, […]
Let your presence ring out like a bell
into the night.
*
More than we experienced has gone by.
*
All is far - and nowhere does the circle close. German A pantera
De percorrer as grades o seu olhar cansou-se
e não retém mais nada lá no fundo,
como se a jaula de mil barras fosse
e além das barras não houvesse mundo.
O andar elástico dos passos fortes dentro
da ínfima espiral assim traçada
é uma dança da força em torno ao centro
de uma grande vontade atordoada.
Mas por vezes a cortina da pupila
ergue-se sem ruído — e uma imagem então
vai pelos membros em tensão tranquila
até desvanecer no coração. German