Rainer Maria Rilke

[quasimodo1]

PLEASE RESPECT COPYRIGHT LAWS: READ THIS BEFORE POSTING:

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17515

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The Buddha in the Glory (translated by C. F. MacIntyre)

Center of centers, of all seeds the germ,
O almond self-enclosed and growing sweeter,
from here clear to the starry swarms
your fruit's flesh grows. I greet you.

Lo, you feel how nothing more depends
on you; into infinity your shell
waxes; there the strong sap works and fills you.
And from beyond a gloriole descends

to help, for high above your head your suns,
full and fulgurating, turn.
And yet, already in you is begun
something which longer than the suns shall burn.

--Rainer Maria Rilke, from Neue Gedichte: Anderer Teil ....Although not translated by Mitchell, the great poet shines. Any other Rilke fans here? quasimodo1

[lavendar1]

Any other Rilke fans here?

I am…

Lösch mir die Augen aus: ich kann dich sehen

Extinguish my eyes, I’ll go on seeing you.
Seal my ears, I’ll go on hearing you.
And without feet I can make my way to you,
without a mouth I can swear your name.

Break off my arms, I’ll take hold of you
with a heart as with a hand.
Stop my heart, and my brain will start to beat.
And if you consume my brain with fire,
I’ll feel you in every drop of my blood.

From Rilke’s Book of Hours
--Translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna May

[stlukesguild]

Any other Rilke fans here?

Oh certainly! I have ten volumes of poetry by Rilke which must surely be the most by any single 20th century poet in translation. I'll post a favorite soon... but which one...? Choices...choices... choices.:confused:

[quasimodo1]

To Stlukesguild: Maybe something from the Duino Elegies? He has so much stunning work. I've been trying to track down which poem had the metaphor where a thread or two in his blanket would turn into steel needles, such a vivid piece; tell me if you know the work. quasimodo1

[Psycheinaboat]

I love Rilke's poems, but I cherish his letters even more.

"Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."

[stlukesguild]

Acckk! 12 volumes!:eek2: I just noticed the extremely slim volume of his early Book of Hours and forgot I was just recently browsing through his Letters to a Young Poet and forgot to re-shelve it.

A most (deservedly) famous one:

The Archaic Torso of Apollo:

We never knew his head and all the light
that ripened in his fabled eyes. But
his torso still glows like a gas lamp dimmed
in which his gaze, lit long ago

holds fast and shines. Otherwise the surge
of the breast could not blind you, nor a smile
run through the slight twist of the loins
toward that center where procreation thrived.

Otherwise this stone would stand deformed and curt
under the shoulder's transparent plunge
and not glisten just like wild beast's fur

and not burst forth from all it's contours
like a star: for there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

Tr. Edward Snow from Ranier Maria Rilke: New Poems

And one less well known (undeservedly so):

The Raising of Lazarus:

Yes, it was necessary for this common sort,
since they required signs, signs that screamed.
Yet he dreamt how for Martha and Mary
it would be enough simply to see
That he could. But none of them believed,
they all said to him, Lord, why come now?
And so he went, to do the unallowed
to peaceful nature.
In anger. His eyes almost shut,
he asked where the grave was. Tormentedly.
It seemed to them that his tears streamed,
and they thronged behind him full of curiosity.
Even on the way he thought it monstrous,
an appalling, frivolous experiment,
but suddenly a great fire broke out in him,
such an argument
against their prized distinctions,
their death and life, their here and there,
that he was enmity in every limb
when he instructed hoarsely, Lift the Stone!
A voice shouted that he must stink by now
(for he'd lain there four days) but He
stood tensed, entirely filled with that gesture
which rose in him and heavily, so heavily
lifted his hand- (no hand had ever raised itself
so slowly- with this much weight)
until it stood there, shining in the air;
and then it clenched, almost clawlike:
for now he dreaded that all the dead might
come rushing back through the suction
of that tomb, where the thing had started
to writhe up, larvae-like, from its stiff reclining-
but then just a single shape stood there,
crooked in the daylight, and one witnessed:
the inexact, vague Life again accept it.

tr. Edward Snow from Ranier Maria Rilke: Uncollected Poems

[quasimodo1]

Autumn day

Lord: it is time. The huge summer has gone by.
Now overlap the sundials with your shadows,
and on the meadows let the wind go free.

Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine;
grant them a few more warm transparent days,
urge them on to fulfillment then, and press
the final sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander along the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.

- Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Stephen Mitchell
{I always liked Mitchell's translations best} quasimodo1

[Logos]

{I always liked Mitchell's translations best} quasimodo1
I don't think I've read anything but Mitchell's ["The poets disappear into their works."] translations :) I've got the miniature, well-thumbed Shambhala Pocket Classic's The Sonnets to Orpheus by Rilke. [Original pub. 1922; trans. 1985.]

From Sonnet II:

And it was almost a girl and came to
be
out of this single joy of song and lyre
and through her green veils shone
forth radiantly
and made herself a bed inside my ear.

And slept there. And her sleep was
everything:
the awesome trees, the distances I had
felt
so deeply that I could touch them,
meadows in spring;
all wonders that had ever seized my
heart.

She slept the world. Singing god, how
was that first
sleep so perfect that she had no desire
ever to wake? See: she arose and slept.

....


.

[quasimodo1]

To Logos: In my halting attempts at poetry; when reading Rilke I'm heartened and disheartened by his mastery. No accident that Orpheus was the legendary poet of antiquity (and made the first harp or lyre). Rilke lived contemporary with Rodin and Cioren. He forsaw, in my opinion, the future world both modern and in upheaval. **********[ Letters to a Young Poet (1934)]
"Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism : they always result in more or less fortunate misunderstandings. Things aren't all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsayable than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life."
Letter One (February 17, 1903)
*****************************

[quasimodo1]

If many of Rilke's early poems are virtuoso pieces, richly coloured and sometimes verging on the precious and sentimental. the later work is much more difficult. The Duino Elegies may only be understandable to those familiar with Rilke's own states of mind, which resulted from an intensely private and solitary existence. Language was pushed to its uttermost, and the technical mastery allowed Rilke to say beautifully what it had not said before. "The essential function of art is to think and feel existence to that conclusion which convinces us of its perfection - to affirm, bless and deify existence." The words are Nietzsche's, but express the existentialist aims of much of Rilke's poetry. The heroic self-dedication of the Symbolist poet reached greatness in the Rilke, but it was a road that left enormous problems of interpretation, and one that few travelled thereafter.
{ quote from.......http://www.poetry-portal.com/poets18.html }

[quasimodo1]

October

Oh Lord, it's time, it's time. It was a great summer.

Lay your shadow now on the sundials,

and on the open fields let the winds go!

Give the tardy fruits the hint to fill;

give them two more Mediterranean days,


the final sweetness into the heavy wine.



Whoever has no house by now will not build.

Whoever is alone now will remain alone,

will wait up, read, write long letters,

and walk along sidewalks under large trees,


not going home, as leaves fall and blow away.



From The Book of Pictures, 1902-1906 ...By Rainer Maria Rilke

[quasimodo1]

Like in old cans of paint the last green hue,

these leaves are sere and rough and dull-complected

behind the blossom clusters in which blue

is not so much displayed as it’s reflected;

....

Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Berhard Frank

[quasimodo1]

As Once The Winged Energy

As once the winged energy of delight
carried you over childhood's dark abysses,
now beyond your own life build the great
arch of unimagined bridges.

Wonders happen if we can succeed
in passing through the harshest danger;
but only in a bright and purely granted
achievement can we realize the wonder.

...


- Rilke Maria Rainer

[quasimodo1]

THE SONNETS OF ORPHEUS XXIII
Call to me to the one among your moments
that stands against you, ineluctably:
intimate as a dog's imploring glance
but, again, forever, turned away
when you think you've captured it at last.
What seems so far from you is most your own.
We are already free, and were dismissed
where we thought we soon would be at home.
Anxious, we keep longing for a foothold
we, at times too young for what is old
and too old for what has never been;
doing justice only where we praise,
because we are the branch, the iron blade,
and sweet danger, ripening from within.



- Rainer Maria Rilke

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

[ktd222]

I don’t know how anyone can forget one of Rilke’s most well known poems, The Panther from New Poems 1907, translated by Edward Snow. For me the word choices, word orders that Edward Snow chose seem to give his translated versions a flow, and images in his poems a power that I have yet to see in other translated versions. As one reads through this poem, one loses all sense of the panther’s presence.

His gaze has from the passing of the bars
become so tired, that it holds nothing anymore.
It seems to him there are a thousand bars
and behind a thousand bars no world.

The supple pace of powerful soft strides,
turning in the very smallest circle,
is like a dance of strength around a center
in which a great will stands numbed.

Only sometimes the curtain of the pupils
soundlessly slides up --. Then an image enters,
goes through the limbs' taut stillness,
and in the heart ceases to exist.

[quasimodo1]

To ktd222: I posted "the Panther" in an earlier, non-Rilke thread but it rates any number of re-postings. Thanks. quasimodo1

[quasimodo1]

http://www.stephenmitchellbooks.com/ Considering the amazing versatility of Stephen Mitchell, besides translating Rainer Maria Rilke.

[quasimodo1]

PARABLES AND PORTRAITS
HarperCollins, 1991

This book — which Richard Wilbur called “fresh, plain, profound, funny, and full of Zen ambushes” — is comprised of fifteen verse portraits and forty-seven prose poems and parables, all of them filled with Stephen Mitchell’s unique Judeo-Zen humor. The pieces range through history and myth, and investigate, encounter, or become such figures as Spinoza, Freud, Eve, Hitler, Cinderella, Faust, Montaigne, Achilles, and Jonah, and the illustrious camel who passed through the needle’s eye. “In Parables and Portraits,” Jim Harrison wrote, "we find work of the first order, poems of improbable directness and integrity that everyone who reads poetry will want to own." (Rilke translator)

[quasimodo1]

If only we too could discover a pure, contained, human place,


our own strip of fruit-bearing soil between river and rock.
Four our own heart always exceeds us, as theirs did.
And we can no longer follow it,

gazing into images that soothe it or into the godlike bodies where,

measured more greatly, it achieves a greater repose.
{from the Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke, Shambhala Publications Inc. 1992...translated by Stephen Mitchell}

[stlukesguild]

Continuing with the digression concerning Stephen Mitchell... I certainly admire his translations of Rilke (and others)... although I would not be without Robert Snow's Rilke, either. One of my favorite books by Mitchell. however, is his marvelous translation of The Book of Job. The book begins with a brief but incredibly insightful essay/analysis in which Mitchell makes some audacious and truly thought-provoking connections between the author of Job and Kafka as well as some Asian literature. Like William Blake he challenges the common-held interpretations of Job and his translation captures the shift from the simple folk-tale like frame story to the visionary poetic ranting of Job... something that is missed in the King James Bible... for all its brilliance. I highly recommend it.

[quasimodo1]

To Stlukesguild: I will have to read this Job work, sounds intriqueing. And following up on your other essay and your correct dismissal of poetry disguised as conversation or visaversa. Why is it some people take the suggestion to re-evaluate thier views and/or pre-conceptions...why do they interpret this as some sort of personal attack or even worse, reject rethinking something entirely. Especially, people involved in organized religion, especially the kind that have and believe in dogma. The obvious fault with all dogmatic systems is they reject change, which is the one constant in all things. BTW, I thought you mentioned that you trained or are training in classical music of some sort. If I may ask, what do you play and what kind of musical groups do you play in...orchestra, string quartet...would love to know. Or not. quasimodo1

[ktd222]

Autumn day

Lord: it is time. The huge summer has gone by.
Now overlap the sundials with your shadows,
and on the meadows let the wind go free.

Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine;
grant them a few more warm transparent days,
urge them on to fulfillment then, and press
the final sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander along the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.

- Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Stephen Mitchell
{I always liked Mitchell's translations best} quasimodo1

I read this the other day and liked it very much. I liked how autumn was treated as the period, the last chance in which plant life blossomed. I liked how even though the Lord was perceived as responsible for controlling the seasonal changes in nature, His approach was very nurturing, not demanding. I liked how the poem shifted focus from nature to people in the third stanza. I don’t know if this was characteristic of how Rilke constructed his poems but I recognized this same sort of shift in The Archaic Torso of Apollo. The onus of a fulfilled life was addressed in the third stanza. In a way I think our lives parallel that of plant life, in that we too are seeking fulfillment in our own lives. What an ominous way to end a poem though, static and inactive. To “sit, read, write long letters” is a very passive way of fulfilling one’s own life. Thanks for posting this poem quasimodo1.

As for who translates Rilke’s poems best, it’s just a personal preference, quasimodo1. Nothing against Stephen Mitchell, because I found this translated version of Rilke’s poem to be very good, but I just prefer Edward Snow’s translations.

[stlukesguild]

Quasimodo. No... I am not trained in any musical instrument. I am certainly an art lover of all genre... primarily literature, visual art and music. Following my graduation from high-school (quite some time ago) I knew that I wished to be involved in some way in the arts in my career of choice... but my absolute incompetence in music made it clear quite soon that it wouldn't be in a musical direction. I remain a passionate music lover with a fairly sound foundation of musical history and a fairly large music collection (mostly classical and jazz). I am also plainly a bibliophile. My "training"... or education, however, is in the visual arts. I am a painter/printmaker/collage artist and an art educator. I often refer to music (for reasons other than my love of it) due to the fact that my own work is greatly inspired my music... but also due to the fact that the abstract structures of music are something that many others, hostile to abstraction in visual art... or to ambiguity in literature... can readily grasp or appreciate. Perhaps Walter Pater was right (heck, he was Oscar Wilde's mentor and we know Oscar was always right:lol:): All art aspires to the state of music.

[quasimodo1]

Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Bernhard Frank
excerpt from "The Sirens' Island"




THE SIRENS’ ISLAND[ii]
Nightly, after all their day’s travail,

since his gracious hosts had asked about

his journeys and sojourns, he will regale

them softly with his yarns: and yet without

suspecting how they started, and at which

bold word they turned to see, like him, in those

calm, blue island-studded seas how rich

the golden shimmer of that island glows,

just the sight of which evokes the scent

of danger, well removed from far more common

rage and wrath, where it was often spent.

Soundlessly it overtakes the seamen,

who understand that sometimes song will soar

from that golden island’s boundary,

and who apply themselves now to the oars

as though surrounded

by the silence which within holds all ...

[ktd222]

This is the first elegy from Duino Elegies.


Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them suddenly
pressed me against his heart, I would perish
in the embrace of his stronger existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure and are awed
because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Each single angel is terrifying.
And so I force myself, swallow and hold back
the surging call of my dark sobbing.
Oh, to whom can we turn for help?
Not angels, not humans;
and even the knowing animals are aware that we feel
little secure and at home in our interpreted world.
There remains perhaps some tree on a hillside
daily for us to see; yesterday's street remains for us
stayed, moved in with us and showed no signs of leaving.
Oh, and the night, the night, when the wind
full of cosmic space invades our frightened faces.
Whom would it not remain for -that longed-after,
gently disenchanting night, painfully there for the
solitary heart to achieve? Is it easier for lovers?
Don't you know yet ? Fling out of your arms the
emptiness into the spaces we breath -perhaps the birds
will feel the expanded air in their more ferven flight.

Rainer Rilke, tranlsated by Ernest Flemming

at: http://www.geocities.com/Paris/LeftBank/4027/duino.html

The part in bold freaks me out.

[quasimodo1]

AS ONCE THE WINGED ENERGY OF DELIGHT

As once the winged energy of delight
carried you over childhood's dark abysses,
now beyond your own life build the great
arch of unimagined bridges.

Wonders happen if we can succeed
in passing through the harshest danger;
but only in a bright and purely granted
achievement can we realize the wonder.

To work with Things in the indescribable
relationship is not too hard for us;



Translated by Stephen Mitchell

(first two stanzas)

[quasimodo1]

"Go within and scale the depths of your being from which your very life springs forth. At its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must write. Accept it, however it sounds to you without analyzing. Perhaps it will become apparent to you that you are indeed called to be a writer. Then accept that fate; bear its burden, and its grandeur, without asking the reward, which might possibly come from without." Rainer Maria Rilke

[quasimodo1]

Rainer Maria Rilke

Second Elegy, from Duino Elegies (opening lines)





Every angel is terrible

And still, alas

knowing all that

I serenade you

you almost deadly

birds of the soul.

Where are the days of Tobias

when one of these

brightest of creatures

stood

at the simple front door

disguised a little

for the trip

and not so frightening

(a young man

like the one

who looked curiously

out at him).

If the dangerous archangel

took one step now

down toward us

from behind the stars

our heartbeats

rising like thunder

would kill us.
.......................................Rainer Maria Rilke

[quasimodo1]

But we, while wholly concentrating on one thing,
already feel the pressure of another.
Hatred is our first response. And lovers,
are they not forever invading one another's
boundaries? -although they promised space,
hunting and homeland. Then, for a sketch
drawn at a moment's impulse, a ground of contrast
is prepared, painfully, so that we may see.
For they are most exact with us. We do not know
the contours of our feelings. We only know
what shapes them from the outside.

Who has not sat, afraid, before his own heart's
curtain? It lifted and displayed the scenery
of departure. Easy to understand. The well-known
garden swaying just a little. Then came the dancer.
Not he! Enough! However lightly he pretends to move:
he is just disguised, costumed, an ordinary man
who enters through the kitchen when coming home.
I will not have these half-filled human masks;
better the puppet. It at least is full.
I will endure this well-stuffed doll, the wire,
the face that is nothing but appearance. Here out front
I wait. Even if the lights go down and I am told:
"There's nothing more to come," -even if
the grayish drafts of emptiness come drifting down
from the deserted stage -even if not one
of my now silent forebears sist beside me
any longer, not a woman, not even a boy-
he with the brown and squinting eyes-:
I'll still remain. For one can always watch.
..........two stanzas taken from the "Fourth Elegy" by Rainer Maria Rilke

[quasimodo1]

Yes--the springtimes needed you. Often a star was waiting for you to notice it.
A wave rolled toward you out of the distant past,


or as you walked under an open window, a violin yielded itself to your hearing.
All this was mission. But could you accomplish it?
Weren't you always distracted by expectation, as if every event announced a beloved?
(Where can you find a place to keep her, with all the huge strange thoughts inside you

going and coming and often staying all night.)
But when you feel longing, sing of women in love; for their famous passion is still not immortal.
Sing of women abandoned and desolate (you envy them, almost)

who could love so much more purely than those who were gratified.
Begin again and again the never-attainable praising; remember: the hero lives on;

even his downfall was merely a pretext for achieving his final birth.
But Nature, spent and exhausted, takes lovers back into herself,

as if there were not enough strength to create them a second time.
Have you imagined Gaspara Stampa intensely enough

so that any girl deserted by her beloved might be inspired by that fierce example of soaring,
objectless love and might say to herself, "Perhaps I can be like her?"
Shouldn't this most ancient of sufferings finally grow more fruitful for us?
Isn't it time that we lovingly freed ourselves from the beloved and,

quivering, endured: as the arrow endures the bowstring's tension,

so that gathered in the snap of release it can be more than itself.
For there is no place where we can remain.
.................................................. .................................................. ....from the First Duino Elegy by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephan Mitchell

[quasimodo1]

Loesch mir die Augen aus

Extinguish both my eyes: I see you still;
Slam shut my ears: I can still hear you talking;
Without my mouth i can implore your will
And without feet: Towards you i keep on walking.
Break off my arms: I shall still hold you tight;
My heart will yet embrace you all the same.
Suppress my heart: My brain knows no deterrent;
And if at last you set my brain aflame
I carry you still on my bloodstream’s current.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke {in German............................................ .................................................. ..................... Loesch mir die Augen aus: ich kann dich sehn,
wirf mir die Ohren zu: ich kann dich hören,
und ohne Füße kann ich zu dir gehen,
und ohne Mund noch kann ich dich beschwören.
Brich mir die Arme ab, ich fasse dich
mit meinem Herzen wie mit einer Hand,
halt mir das Herz zu, und mein Hirn wird schlagen,
und wirfst du in mein Hirn den Brand,
so werd ich dich auf meinem Blute tragen.}