Reading Rilke: Reflections on the Problems of Translation 9780375403125, 0375403124
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Reading Rilke
Reflections
on
the
Problems Translation
The
admired
greatly
U. S.A.
$25.00
CANADA
$38.00
essayist, novelist,
philosopher, author of Cartesian
and
Sonata,
Finding a Form, and The Tunnel, reflects on the art of translation and on Rainer Maria
Rilkes Ditino Elegies
own
— and
us his
gives
translation of Rilke’s masterwork.
After nearly a lifetime of reading Rilke in English, William Gass undertook the task of translating Rilke’s writing in order to see if
he could,
in that way, get closer to the
work he so deeply admired. With Gass's
own background
natural to begin with the
the
poems
fully
which
in
it
seemed
Duino
Elegies,
in philosophy,
most
Rilke’s ideas are
expressed and which as a group are
important not only as one of the supreme
West hut also which thev came to
poetic achievements of the
because of the way
—
he written
in a
in
storm of inspiration.
Gass examines the genesis of the ideas that inform the Elegies
ous translations.
He
and discusses
previ-
writes, as well, about
Rilke the man: his character, his relationships, his
life.
Finally,
the
Duino
his extraordinary translation
of
Elegies offers us the experience
of reading Rilke with a
derstanding.
new and
fuller
un-
Digitized by the Internet Archive in
2016
https://archive.org/details/readingrilkereflOOgass
Also by William H. Gass
FICTION
Omensetter's
Luck
In the Heart of the Heart of the Country Willie Master’s
Lonesome Wife
The Tunnel Cartesian Sonata
NONFICTION Fiction
and
On
the Figures of Life
Being Blue
The World Within
the
The Habitations of the Finding a Form
Word Word
READING RILKE
* *
READING RILKE Reflections
on the Problems of Iranslation
William H. Gass
KNOPF NEW YORK
ALFRED
A.
2000
—
THIS
IS
A BORZOI
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED
Copyright All rights reserved
KNOPF, INC.
A.
© 1999 by William H. Gass
under International and Pan-American
Copyright Conventions. Published Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.,
New
Canada by Random House
in the
United States by
York, and simultaneously in of
Random House,
Distributed by
BOOK
Canada Limited, Toronto. Inc.,
New York.
www.randomhouse.com
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered
1.
trademarks of
Random House,
Inc.
Gass, William H., [date]
Reading Rilke tion
/
:
reflections
by William H. Gass.
—
on the problems of
1st
transla-
ed.
cm.
p.
Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-375-40312-4 Rilke, Rainer Maria, 1875-1926 2.
Rilke, Rainer Maria, 1875-1926.
3.
Translating and interpreting.
1875-1926.
5.
Authors,
Biography.
I.
Title.
German
—
Translating.
Duineser Elegien.
4.
Rilke, Rainer Maria,
—20th century
PT2635.165Z 831'. 912
—dc2i
98-50291 CIP
Manufactured
in the
United States of America
Published September
14,
1999
Reprinted Twice Fourth Printing, May 2000
THIS BOOK
DEDICATED TO HEIDE ZIEGLER WITH LOVE AND GRATITUDE. IS
Sel f-Portrait from the Year 1906
The
distinction of an old, long-noble race
in the
heavy arches of the eyebrows.
In the blue eyes, childhood
shy look
still,
s
anxious
not a waiter’s servility
yet feminine, as one
The mouth made
who
as a
endures.
mouth
is,
wide and
straight,
not persuasive, yet not unwilling to speak out if
required.
still
A not
inferior forehead,
most comfortable when bent, shading the
self.
This, as a countenance, scarcely configured; never, in either suffering or elation,
brought together for a yet as
from
if,
a serious
far
real
achievement;
away, out of scattered things,
and enduring work were being planned.
“Selbstbildnis aus
dem Jahre
1906,
"
Paris,
Spring 1906
CONTENTS
Poems Translated in the Text Other Than the Duino Elegies xi
Acknowledgments xv
Lifeleading 3
Transreading
47
Ein Gott Vermags 56
Inhalation in a
God
94
Schade
n3 The Grace
of Great Things 134
IX
Contents
Erect
No Memorial
Stone
170
The Dnino
Elegies of Rainer
189
Notes 221
Bibliography
227
x
Maria Rilke
/
POEMS TRANSLATED IN THE TEXT OTHER THAN THE DUINO ELEGIES
Self-Portrait
from the Year 1906
Selbstbildnis aus
dem Jahre
vii
1906
Rilke’s epitaph
3
Rose, oh reiner Widerspruch
The Bowl
of Roses
4
Die Rosenschale
from In Celebration of Myself
10
Mir zu Feier
A Youthful
Portrait of
My Father
12
Jugend-Bildnis meines Vaters
Parting
27
Abschied
III.
6-7 of The Book of Hours Das Stundenbach
30
Autumn
35
Herbst
xi
Poems Translated
in the Text
Autumn Day
‘
35
Herhstag
To Music
38
An die Musik The Lace, Die
Spitze,
39
11 11
Buddha Buddha
41
The Panther Der Panther Rilke
s last
43
poem, untitled
45
The Swan Der Schwan Put
My Eyes
50
Out,
1 1
.7
of
The Book of Hours
53
Losch mir die Augen
Sonnets
to
Orpheus, 1,3
71
Sonnets
to
Orpheus,
83
Sonnets
to
Orpheus, 1,2
84
Sonnets
to
Orpheus, 11,13
88
1,
1
Torso of an Archaic Apollo
92
Archatscher Torso Apollos
Xll
?
1
Poems Translated
in the Text
Lament
/
ioo
Klage
The Spanish
Trilogy,
106
i
Die spanische Trilogie
The Great Night
iii
Die grosse Nacht
Requiem
for a Friend
125
Requiem fiir eine F reundin Sonnets
to
Orpheus,
11,
1
Sonnets
to
Orpheus,
11,
29
14
Sonnets
to
Orpheus,
11,
12
147
140
Blue Hydrangea
148
Blaue Hortensie
Sonnets
to
Orpheus,
1,
153
13
Turning-Point
160
Wendung Death
167
Der Tod Tell Us, Poet,
Oh sage,
What Do You Do?
Dichter, was
du
170
tust
“Man Must Die Because He Has Known Them’’ ‘Man muss sterhen weil man
"
sie
kennt
Xlll
171
Poems Translated Puppet Theater
in the Text
179
Marionettentheater
Sonnets
to
Orpheus,
Sonnets
to
Orpheus, 1,15
The Death Der Tod
i,
182
5
184
of the Poet
186
des Dichters
xiv
—
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
whom
Heide
Ziegler, to
much
of her valuable time and energy discussing with
meanings of the Duino
this
my revisions.
me
all),
This book
is
me
the
valuable background
strategies, correcting
mistakes (impossible to catch them
and rereading
lovingly dedicated, spent
is
Elegies, giving
me on
information, advising
book
many
of
my
and patiently reading
half hers.
No
doubt the
better half.
am
I
also indebted to
find their ter
all
those who, before me, have tried to
way through these
difficult
poems, and beaten
path ... a path from which, so often,
I
fear
I
a bet-
have strayed.
poems were published in The Review, Conjunctions, and River Styx. The first
Early versions of a few of these
American Poetry
three Sonnets to Orpheus, Part
Review.
I
i,
were published
have also cannibalized from
Nation and
in
texts
The Philosophy of Erotic Love,
in
The Chelsea
published in The a collection
the University of Kansas Press edited by Robert
from
Solomon and
Kathleen Higgens.
The poet himself
is
as close to
me
ever been; not because he has allowed at last to
stern life,
be loved; and not because
command from
I
human himself now
as
any
—
a shade
have been able to obey the
his archaic torso of Apollo to
nor because his person was always so admirable
imitated; but because his
being has
change
my
had
be
it
work has taught me what
xv
to
real art
Acknowledgments ought
to be;
how
it
can matter
commitment can course words
his
how
work allows
tall
his
is,
how
me
through
its
lifetime;
how
blood through the body of your
until the writing stirs, rises,
because ment:
like
to a life
to
opens
eyes; and, finally,
measure what we
small mine.
xvi
its
call
achieve-
READING RILKE
\ *
LIFELEADiNG
Open-eyed, Rainer Maria Rilke died
on December
29,
in the
arms of
The leukemia which
1926.
his
mouth, pain troubled
lot
when
his
body
his
depression, while physically he leaf.
like a storm,
Ulcerous sores appeared
stomach and
him, his
let
him had
killed
been almost reluctantly diagnosed, and had struck after a period of gathering clouds.
his doctor
intestines,
in
he slept a
was weighed down by
spirit
became
as thin
and
fluttery as a
Since, according to the gloom that naturally descended on
him, Rilke’s creative during his
last
life
was
over,
months: of Valery
“The Cemetery by the Sea
’
he undertook translations in particular
—and composed
—“Eupalinos,"
his epitaph, too,
invoking the flower he so devotedly tended.
ROSE, O PURE CONTRADICTION, DESIRE
TO BE NO ONE’S SLEEP BENEATH SO MANY LIDS.
The myth concerning the onset of his illness was, even among his myths, the most remarkable. To honor a visitor, the Egyptian beauty Nimet Eloui, Rilke gathered some roses from his garden.
small
While doing
wound
failed to heal,
arm was swollen, and According
so,
he pricked
his
hand on
a thorn. This
grew rapidly worse, soon
his other
arm became affected
to the preferred story, this
3
his entire
was the way
as well.
Rilke’s dis-
WILLIAM ease announced
H.
GASS
although Ralph Freedman, his judicious
itself,
and most recent biographer, puts that melancholy event more than a year
earlier.
Roses climb his
as
life
back twenty-four years an
artists’
if
he were their
to 1900. Rilke
colony near Bremen, and
is
it is
Turn the clock
trellis.
a guest at
Worpswede,
there he has
made
the
acquaintance of the painter Paula Becker and his future wife, Clara Westhoff.
One
mood, Rilke brings about the gesture
I
invented a
new
his
friends a
in a
romantic
few flowers, and writes
in his diary:
new form
closed eye until
Sunday morning,
bright
its
of caress: placing a rose gently on a
coolness can no longer be
felt;
only the
gentle petal will continue to rest on the eyelid like sleep just before dawn.'
The poet never
forgets a metaphor.
the poet’s passions.
Move on
composes “The Bowl of
to 1907
Roses,’’
Nor do
his friends forget
now, when,
beginning
in Capri, Rilke
this
poem
with an
abrupt jumble of violent images:
You’ve seen their anger
bunch themselves
flare,
seen two boys
into a ball of animosity
and
roll
like
some dumb animal
across the ground set
upon by bees;
you’ve seen those carny barkers, mile-high
liars,
the careening tangle of bolting horses, their
as
if
upturned eyes and Bashing teeth, the skull were peeled back from the mouth.
Bullyboys, actors, tellers of force,
and
falsification
—
tall tales,
runaway horses
—
fright,
losing composure, pretending, reveal-
4
Reading Rilke
ing pain and terror: these are
compared
come from
his
Rilke has lag,
Berlin,
where
to the
new
bowl of roses.
publisher, Insel Ver-
has been distressed to discover that Rilke’s former publisher
plans to bring out The Book of Hours as well as a revised Cornet.
new
This does not get the
Moreover, Rilke
start.
been bankrolled by
is
alliance off to a
smooth and
trusting
broke again. During 1906, the poet had
his friend Karl
generously deposited funds
von der Heydt, who twice
in Rilke’s Paris
hank, but Rilke’s
habit of staying in deluxe hotels and eating (modestly) in expensive restaurants, his trains,
had
left
dependence upon porters and maids and
him holding nothing more than
Alice Faehndrich’s Villa Discopoli on Capri. sent
him some supplementary funds
making
his ticket to
Von der Heydt
eventually, but not before
a face. Perhaps these unpleasantries account for the
poem’s oddly violent and discordant opening.
now you know how to forget such things, now before you stands the bowl of roses,
But for
unforgettable and wholly filled
with unattainable being and promise, a gift
beyond anyone’s
that might be ours
More than
a
bowl was
giving, a
presence
and our perfection.
set before
him. Though the
was approaching, the island was abloom with winter Rilke’s cottage,
on the grounds of the
villa,
Year
roses,
and
was covered with
them.
Living in silence, endlessly unfolding,
using space without space being taken
from a space even trinkets diminish; scarcely the hint there of outline or ground
5
New
WILLIAM they are so utterly
—
and
self-lit
is it
possible
And
then
because
And to
GASS
H.
so strangely delicate*
in,
to the very edge:
we know
anything
like this?
like this: that a feeling arises
now and
this: that
show more
then the petals kiss?
one should open lids
an eye,
like
beneath, each closed
quench
in a sleep as
deep
an inner
fire
of visionary power.
And
this
above
light
must make
as ten, to
all:
its
that through these petals
Out
way.
of one thousand skies
they slowly drain each drop of darkness so that this concentrated glow will bestir the
The
rose
is
a distilling eye.
concentration
is
erect. If the rose
And
stamens
till
It
they stand.
gathers light and
powerful and pure, until is
not a poem, the
poem
is
its
filters
it
until the
stamens become
surely a rose.
movement in the roses, look: gestures which make such minute vibrations the
they’d remain invisible
if
their rays
did not resolutely ripple out into the wide world.
Look
at that
to stand like
white one which has blissfully unfolded
amidst
its
splay of petals
Venus boldly balanced on her
shell;
look too at the bloom that blushes, bends
toward the one with more composure,
and see how the pale one
aloofly withdraws;
and how the cold one stands, closed upon
among
those open roses, shedding
6
all.
itself,
— Reading Rilke
And what
they shed:
a cloak, a
burden, a wing, a mask
and how they
M.
E.
Butler,
let
how
it fall:
whose
as
it
if
can be
heavy,
light or
—
it
depends
just
disrobing for a lover.
Rilke of 1941
was the
biography of
first
the poet to appear in English, writes:
There
no doubt that roses cast a
is
upon
spell
Rilke.
Monique Saint-Helier recounts how he once sent her some fading flowers to die with her [sic Butler means “to
—
die in her company'], because he
was going away. His
description of a vase of falling roses in Late Poems repre-
him
sents
as
really dead,
used them itly
in
keeping them
in his
when he embalmed
room
in
were
books and
their petals in
for pot-pourri. Rilke s roses
enclosed spaces:
until they
were always
explic-
death-bed chambers, in his
study at night, in rose-bowls, bringing
summer into
a room,
bestrewing the chimney-piece as they shed their petals.
And even
in his
garden
at
Muzot, they seemed
to
boudoir-gowns and red summer dresses,
pink
silk
fully
tended and cherished, fragrant and
fragile
be clad
in
like care-
hothouse
blooms. 2
The poet
collects the world inside himself as the rose gathers
the light of the skies, and there he intensifies
it
until the phallic
element of the flower dominates the symbol. Eventually the rose bestrews
itself.
Petals, like
beautiful unity the rose once
poems, leave
was now becomes
their tree.
a
fall
The
of discol-
oring shards; yet these petals can help us see to another part of
the world as through a stained-glass window.
What
can’t they be?
lying there hollow
Was
that yellow one,
and open, not the rind
7
— WILLIAM of a fruit in
was
And was
which the very same yellow
this other
since, so exposed,
has picked up
to
undone by
opening,
aftertaste?
not a dress
is it
a chemise, light
clings,
its
ineffable pink
its
lilac’s bitter
the cambric,
which
still
GASS
more intense and darkening juice?
its
And
H.
and warm
as breath,
though both were abandoned
amid morning shadows near the old woodland pool?
And is
this of
opalescent porcelain
a shallow fragile china
cup
of tiny shining butterflies
full
and there
—
that one’s holding nothing but
Later, in the
August of an emptied
poem about
the interior of the rose:
its
Paris, Rilke will it is
first
Outside, then a bandaged wound, at
sky’s reflection.
they
as
fill,
if
When
the rose
is
in
if
einem Traum
—
a
aren’t they all that
an Inside awaiting
last a lake full
wind and
its
and
guilt
room
in a
dream. But
Rilke’s great
rain
way? just self-containing,
and springtime’s patience
and restlessness and obscure
the changing clouds,
coming and
fate
going,
even the vague intercession of distant into a handful of inner
now
lies free
it
rose-poem.
and the darkness of evening earth and even
It
of the part,
summer becomes
self-containing means: to transform the world
with
a
fueling for the journey, with inner space, finally
Bowl of Roses” which remains
And
compose
blown and the petals
overflowing into the August days, until
Zimmer
itself.
stars,
life.
of care in these open roses
8
3 .
is
ein
“The
Reading Rilke
It
would be tempting
biography around
to organize Rilke’s
such themes, because the themes are there: the significance of the rose, the mirror, the unicorn, the puppet, the fountain, or the pathos (as for Poe) of the death of a young increasing “belief parts of
all
animism
in
(that
things, are filled with
our death inside us
life);
like
it,
his
things, as well as the
the notion that
tumor; that
like a talent or a
realize the world, to raise
all
woman;
Lazarus, from
we
we grow
are here to
numb-
sullen
its
ness into consciousness; that differences are never absolute,
but that everything
and death,
(life
tinuum, as colors do; that
we
on a con-
for instance) lies
strangers in a world of
are
strangers; that simple people have a deeper understanding of their
than most, and an insight into the secret
existence
rhythms of nature. These themes are inside him, as
if
(as
and
fall
he were just their bay and receptive shoreline.
had
Rilke’s parents
Rene
like tides that rise
lost a
daughter the year before they begot
he was christened); hoping
another daughter to
for
replace her, and until he was ready to enter school, his mother, Phia, got call his
him up
good
girlishly,
self Sophie,
ing and cuddling
away
him
had had
There table
until
a
china
him with
a place in
‘‘Sophie’’
if
they were part of
skirt, a
its
else
standing by a
we
has been rakishly placed, and her high-topped shoes
wearing a pleated white
coo-
life.
a black-and-white
long hair a hat in the shape
strongly patterned rug as
doll,
someone
Stein’s, Rilke realized that
upon which, unaccountably, “her’
like a
to
with a mournful understanding that
photograph of four-year-old
crouching. Atop
encouraged him
such time as he was abruptly put
to die in order to provide is
his curls,
and handled him
in a drawer. Later,
resembled Gertrude
combed
is
call pillbox
rise
design.
white tunic with a big
dog from
a
She
is
bow at
the
neck, and white socks which peek out of those shiny shoes.
His mother had aspired,
when
she married, to something
grander than she got, though she poured cheap wine into bot-
9
WILLIAM
with better labels, and in other ways tried to keep up
ties
appearances. During his
went
like
tion,
lit
As
Rilke’s nurses
year,
drew away from one another
mother, for
like the trains his
was more and more frequently farmed out
whom
a small
boy was a
social drag, to this or
that relation or other carrier of concern.
The
believe that love, like money, time, and food, ply,
came and
lamp, would be blown out by any sudden whim.
like a
his parents
his
first
hours of the day. His time as a toy continued. Affec-
father oversaw, Rilke
by
GASS
H.
and that any love which went
into
child began to
was
one
in limited sup-
would not be
life
available to go into another.
My mother spread her presents at the feet hewn
of those poor saints
of heartwood.
Mute, unmoving, and amazed, they stood behind the pews, so
They neglected
and complete.
straight
thank her,
to
too,
for her fervently offered gift.
The
little
was
all
Still
dark her candles
lift
of her faith they knew.
my mother gave,
in a
paper
roll,
these flowers with their fragile blooms,
which she took from in the sight
His mother’s but
its
a
bowl
and longing of
religiosity
in
my
our modest rooms, soul.
was always on simmer,
turbulence took place, Rilke increasingly
low pot.
“I
am
horrified,”
who
is
empty
not on boil,
felt, in
a shal-
he wrote his lover Lou Salome, "by her
scatterbrained piety, by her pigheaded faith, by
and disfiguring things
if
to
all
those twisted
which she has fastened
as a dress, ghostlike
io
and
terrible.
And
herself, she
that I’m her
1
Reading Rilke
child, that
1
came
into the world through a scarcely perceptible .”
hole in the paper of this faded wall. In his mother’s
tary
— but even
.
josef, Rilkes father,
life,
He had had
disappointment.
.
his
hopes
—
to
was the principal
advance
in
the mili-
years of dedicated service proved unavailing. His
upward march was slowed by frequent
illnesses, so that
he was
eventually compelled to accept a minor bureaucratic post with a
where he wore
railroad,
a
uniform which bore no medals
valor, let alone persistence.
He
appeared
to
be surrounded by
bad luck. Josef’s brother Emil died of dysentery,
Hugo committed
to Josef
should have done), while the eldest, Jaroslav,
It
own
his brother
suicide because he had failed, at fifty-one, to
advance past captain (suggesting, perhaps,
with his
for
what he
damned
Josef
success, at least in Phia’s envious eyes.
was Josef who
insisted that the former dollchild Sophie
enter military school, where she was miserable but not nearly as
miserable as Rilke would be in the myth he later
was at
Josef, too,
who assumed
that the poet the
made
boy began
of
it.
It
to play
being was his mother’s doing; yet he supported Rilke finan-
cially
even after
and was out of ghost,
that,
years, as
if
then Josef decently died
way, unlike Phia, the empty-garmented
life’s
who remained
lasting the poet.
poem
his marriage to Clara;
to
Even
be encountered
at the
in foreign corners, out-
age of forty, Rilke complains in a
although he has carefully built himself up over the
he were as secure as
mother comes and thoroughly
The church and
a small
tears
house of stone,
his
him down.
became
Rainer’s north
and south
poles. His mother’s sentimental religiosity provided
him with
saints
and the
to
and lead
lift
the military
relics of saints,
while his father gave him weights
soldiers to arrange.
Both realms remained active
aspects of Rilke’s personality, providing his poetry with an abun-
dant stock of malleable symbols able to enter and contribute to
new
contexts.
1
WILLIAM
GASS
H.
Rilke wrote harshly of his mother, but of his father’s short-
comings he was
far
more
forgiving, possibly
hadn’t been. In “A Youthful Portrait of
frequently did, winds the
My Father,’
poem around
away.
A fresh wet ring around
Rilke, as
he
a pair of hands.
Dream-inhabited eyes. The brow as far
because his mother
if
feeling a feeling
the mouth:
smileless yet seductive.
And beneath
the ropes of ornamental braid,
on the slim imperial uniform, both hands rest calmly
which encloses the a clasp
now
they were
in the
cup
saber’s hilt,
nearly invisible, as
first to
if
the distance
grasp
had dissolved them.
And
all
the rest so self-contained,
and teetering
like a top, as if
deep
own depths
that
in its
we
it
didn’t
understand
disappears.
O fast-fading photograph, my slowly fading hand
held here in
Illness
became Rene’s
The household
are consoled.
profession.
first
important to him
to his side, especially
household.
4 .
.
.
.
It
brought his mother
when
where hands
Josef
are held
Kid, Kitchen, Kirk, Koffee in
left
the
and hearts
which
to dip a
Kookie: they add up to Komfort.
This
is
love, Rilke
look: here are
exchanging
is
—and
aren’t
we
all
mother and father being nice
gifts,
is
now
a priest, to
told?
to
—
take a
one another,
adoring their furniture, their pets, their child;
a faintly smiling
here
friend, a
told
whom
dog whose
madonna, and there
one
tail
is
a stern saint,
and
unfailingly polite, next a nurse, a
wags; but on top of what
12
we
are told,
Reading Rilke
hand, soon rests what
like a cold
we
see and feel and finally
know: the mother who picks us up and puts us down as she
would
wet paper, without a sound,
who
union that parts, perhaps
a bit of knitting; the joyful
sings
its
in front of
like
our fearful eyes; the cat
sex in the night and runs away; those saints
who
swallow only candle smoke and say nothing; the dog whose devotions knock us over or dirty our pants; or the priest, with a forced
warmth heating
his polished face,
who
twists the
arm of
an unruly acolyte because the boy doesn’t dare yelp during the
who
service; the nurse
says
good night, sleep
tight
over the
closing latches of her traveling bags; and finally those friends .
.
.
those friends
who have love?
is
who
skip scornfully
called us dreadful names:
it
only
made
of words
—
away
to play with children
which
layer
is
the layer of
that kiss called “lip service,”
welcome
that caress called “shake hands," that
that feels like
“good-bye”?
During childhood, contradiction paves every avenue of ing,
and we grow up
with
all
floor
and nowhere
in
bewilderment
and none meant
that space
to light.
way
comprise a general manner of being from the contrast between the life is
for flying, a
So out of the
every day the child constructs a
unofficial facts of
like a bird in a
lies
and confusions of
and making,
born a dream of what
leaning, as
sent
him
mother
love.
will
Thus
this pain, this pas-
ought
Rilke eventually learned what he thought a
which
language of love and the
official
sion, this obsession, this belief, this relation,
when he sought
ballroom,
wide shining
to cope, part of in,
feel-
it
to be.
was, because,
in his mistress instead of a mistress,
one into the wind, on Lou Salome’s
off into the world again
—on account
and maternal hug
—out
spirit,
she finally
of her schoolroom, bed,
of his increasing dependency,
she said, out of her need for freedom to develop, because of her similar
hope on her part
did not realize
it all
at
for Rilke
and
once, he would
!
3
his art;
come
to
and although he understand
how
WILLIAM we
H.
GASS
constantly endeavor to match that ideology of romantic love
we’ve been taught with the disheartening reality of
memory conspires,
Flowers fade, photographs fade,
its
practice.
forgetting
is
a boon.
Lou Salome was no ordinary woman. She would not be
A friend
nary even by the standards of our time.
Hauptmann’s, Freud’s, she was
Rilke’s,
not, like
ordi-
of Nietzsche
s,
Alma Mahler,
merely a collector of geniuses (though she did collect them); she was bold, stalwart, smart, and alluring, a
woman who
sought
her freedom as though freedom’s wings would take her to the fatal flame.
when they became released said, we assume dryly, that he
Gerhart Hauptmann,
from whatever relation they had,
"was too stupid for Lou.” Most were. Rilke was. Nietzsche and
Freud weren’t.
She was a true Muse. throw themselves into the
Muse
succeed. She was a
When pit
she
left
her
and subside, or
to herself, too,
men
they would
into their art
and
producing a hundred
essays and twenty books, although, as one of her biographers,
H.
Lou “thought with her heart whirlpool, she drew men in,
F. Peters, remarks, as a writer,
and
felt
with her head.” Like a
then, after a while, she flung
them out
again. Peters quotes
one
of her admirers:
One
noticed at once that Lou was an extraordinary
She had the the as
it
man
gift
of entering completely into the
woman. mind of
she loved. Her enormous concentration fanned,
were, her partner’s intellectual
anyone else
in
my
long
life
fire.
have never met
who understood me
so well, and so completely, as
Lou did
Rilke hated to have his mistresses go to transform
I
so quickly,
5 .
away mad; he preferred
ardency into friendship; but Lou Salome was the
l
4
Reading Rilke
who
only lover bitter
left
him before he could
was
leave her, and this
a
experience which estranged them for a time. Eventually,
due mainly
became
Lou’s sagacity, she and Rilke’s wife, Clara,
to
his closest confidants, his darlings of distance.
Lou, under the threat of Friedrich Andreas’ suicide, married
him
(that
was a knife he had plunged into his chest and into her
men
horrified eyes); but she only slept with to,
avoiding, in her sex
that one. In Lou, Rilke
make in
for a
life, all
met
forms of habit and routine except
match. Meeting your match may
his
doubled flame, but
she wasn’t married
will certainly result, quite soon,
it
two burnt ends.
They met over tea at the Munich flat of the novelist Jakob Wassermann. At thirty-six she was ten years older than the awkward young poet who had, she head.’’ In nearly everything,
he
—perhaps
told her diary, "no
back
to his
she was far more experienced than
not, though, at taking tea.
Or
at
dispatching over-
heated notes, which he did the following morning. Her father
was
a general; her family
was esteemed and
rich; like
most well-
to-do Russians she had a French governess, admired her father,
had enjoyed her childhood. Although Lou probably never had had enough teen,
when
man,
faith
never
far
grip
on a
faith to say she’d lost
she set her cap for a popular
was already nowhere
in sight
—
from her mind, and she made,
antagonist. Pastor Gillot fainted, offering
had
it
since,
by seven-
Petersburg clergy-
St.
religious matters for
a lap she sat in,
him the opportunity
—
dogma,
were
a natural
and where she
also
to take liberties, or to
demonstrate great self-control (history has drawn a curtain over which); in any case, she seduced him in short order, but only up to the point of a declaration. Caution, in
always
particularly
adorer’s career
significant,
and earned her
an impulsive person,
is
and caution preserved her
his help in obtaining the oppor-
tunity to study at the Polytechnical Institute in Zurich (one of
l
5
WILLIAM
H.
GASS
the few such institutions that admitted
women), where she
enrolled to study that for which she had no conviction: religion
and theology. In unhealthy
Rome, where Lou had gone
met the philosopher Paul Ree, and cist
become philosopher
for her health, she
shortly his friend, the classi-
Friedrich Nietzsche. At twenty-one,
Lou Salome had the sad pleasure of rejecting both men’s proposals of marriage. But she had menage on her mind, a com-
mune
a cottage;
in
she could keep them about,
that way,
adoring and busy. She began a serious study of Nietzsche,
had
just
Many
completed The Gay Science.
later drift
of his ideas
who
would
through Lou to land on Rilke’s shore.
Nietzsche could scarcely manage one wheel, tion as a third,
alone func-
and he soon grew jealous of what he saw
imbalance of attentions. As a thinker, in his class.
let
this fellow
as Lou’s
Ree was hardly
But she didn’t agree. And did he want
be merely a
to
shareholder in a mistress? Angrily, Nietzsche drove himself
away,
now
Rilke
A
,
Leppmann
describing Lou, as Wolfgang
Life
6 ,
reports
as “this dried-up, dirty, foul-smelling
it
in
monkey
with her false breasts.” Lou remained with Ree for several years,
down
during which time she turned
and
offers
from a sociologist
a psychologist before finally accepting another Friedrich,
another
philologist,
infliction
(which nearly
Friedrich killed
Carl
Andreas,
whose
him) did compel her
Although Lou saw nothing wrong
in
self-
to say yes.
going on as they had
been, this triangle Paul Ree could not complete, and eventually, in despair,
he
Free as ever to
left
her to slide slowly out of intellectual sight.
flirt,
Lou
tantalized an editor in Berlin as well as
playwrights in Paris and Vienna before taking up with an exiled
Russian doctor she boasted could pull nails out of walls with his teeth.
Her
lovers
were invariably younger but not invariably of
the opposite sex, and
when
she slipped up and became preg-
nant Lou disappeared from her scene for a few months to tidy
16
Reading Rilke
things up.
Wolfgang Leppmann suggests
ceived a child by Rilke as well In short,
that she probably con-
7 .
Lou Andreas-Salome was
a
woman
program, and a past, as Rilke began to discern
that should
it,
have made that program clear and their future
warmly wooed
Lou had
lately
this
unknown woman.
— published
own
with her
Rilke
plain.
After he read an essay
“Jesus the Jew”
— he
mailed her
poems he thought congenial to her point of view. He then arranged to meet for tea, and the morning after sent by messen-
He contrived to pop up inside her field of He proposed reading a few of his recently
ger a flattering line.
view
at the theater.
written "Visions of Christ,” persisted to a point near impolite-
once but twice. Rilke also
ness, then carried out his threat not
wrote a number of wretchedly overwrought poems
Lou’s
in
honor, including one in which he bears a bouquet of roses
through Munich’s Englischer Garten. The
poem hopes
she will
be motherly to the poet’s flowers. Well, she would.
But Lou was not
be wooed and
to
won by
anyone, however
enamored. Nor led down another’s garden path, even Mothering, moreover, wasn’t on her agenda. ing,
whether
in
bed or
at the
Still,
a
if
little
rosy.
tutor-
study table, could do no harm.
There’d be languages to learn, Nietzsche to ponder, cultures to encounter, a temperament to tame and steady.
needed
a
women, he
model
to
certainly
Rilke had
guide him in his future relations with
would have found
seduced and abandoned with migratory Rilke
If
would use marriage
as a
it
in
Lou Salome, who
regularity.
As Lou had,
form of self-protection. And
like
Lou, he would specialize in dumping.
A common meaning
to a
problem had
initiated their relation:
world that has
lost its deity,
and thus
how its
to give
purpose
and meaning. Lou would ultimately psychoanalyze the need. Rilke
Him
would overthrow God altogether in another.
in
one
set of
poems and supplant
WILLIAM Lou
told Rilke to
keep a
diary,
she took him along as her lover
and sent him
when
him
eled to Russia; she ordered
GASS
H.
to
to Italy to
fill it;
she and her husband trav-
drop Rene for Rainer (more
manly, more German), and to change his handwriting, which, full
of obedience, Rilke refashioned into the elegant calligraphy
which held Rilke
his later
was becoming
sent away;
husband, a writing;
all
poems.
He was
a battered lover.
more and more there was another Lou wanted
critic
and there were
to consult for
women visitors
fetched; he was
lover present, or a
an
as well
article
whose
departure he had to endure; so that he dangled
she was
arrival
and
when he wished
They could be alone, but rarely alone together. He would sulk or (as Lou thought) grow hysterical. She endured his moods with less and less forbearance, eventually seeking the to cling.
diagnosis of another lover, a physician acquainted with psychiatry,
without any sense for the intolerable high handedness of
her
own
behavior.
Rilke got his wish. Their second Russian journey
taken without Andreas. They would at
(though she knew only
St.
and learning set off to
that Tolstoy
Yasnaya Polyana
is
the severest and truest
spending several weeks
was to
Lous land
Petersburg) and together refresh
their creative spirits. Travel, however, test of compatibility. After
last travel to
would be
at his
in
Moscow
country estate, the couple
pay the great
man
a visit, full of the
presumption of fans who believe their adoration alone makes their idol sacred. For
the great
They sign,
man
would be uncalled
for
and only too common.
arrive in late spring sunshine, a misleadingly propitious
and
some searching finally find a servant to carry in The count, in the middle of another prolonged quar-
after
their cards. rel
it
them, the occasion would be unique. To
with his wife,
is
in a surly
mood. He allows Lou
slams the door behind her and Rilke omits in his
own
to enter
in front of Rilke s face
account.
18
—
but
a detail
Reading Rilke
The count
who
his son, Sergei,
own
their
few
much
devices for
books. Tick ess,
walks them about before
number: studying
in
who
is
.
.
.
portraits,
very slowly
.
.
still
examining the spines of
and preoccupied. After
curt
summer
Lou
them on
a
the Tolstoys have
all,
place,
shelving books. Finally, the great
instead of lunch, leads
and the countess
man
reappears, and,
walk through the garden while
Russian too rapid and colloquial for Rilke
he speaks
to
to follow,
although Rilke claims to have understood every
ble
in a
to
They encounter the count-
tick.
.
of
morning. Their devices are
of the
only recently reoccupied their is
company leaving them
tosses the couple into the indifferent
—every warm and animated word —
sylla-
was not drowned
that
out by the wind. Rilke biographer Ralph Freedman, whose revisionist version
am
I
relying on, shrewdly
sums up Lou Salome
s
response: "The extent of the snub, a burden of embarrassment that
seemed
him
in all his
have devolved from Rilke upon her, revealing
to
inadequacy,
may have hastened
the end of their
conjugal phase .” 8
By
train,
by wagon, by Volga steamer, they reached Kiev,
where they stayed
in a hotel
which appeared
to rent
rooms by
the hour. In Saratov, the horse pulling their cab from station to pier
went
the boat.
wild, nearly spilling
Then
lage where, in a
them
into the street.
was Novgorod and
it
fit
They missed
finally a small distant vil-
of romantic overreach (which was, alas, char-
acteristic of both), they
decided
to stay close to the
living next to a barnyard, sleeping
on
peasants by
—now—separate
mattresses, suffering porridge, splinters, and large noisy
Back
in St. Petersburg, after
and went a
to
Finland to
rooming house
the couple
to howl.
Lou excused
flies.
herself
her mother, leaving Rilke behind in
She stayed away
— now uncoupled —came back
business, which
whom
visit
only a day,
straw
was accepting
a
month, and then
to Berlin
invitations.
and regular
Heinrich Vogeler,
the poet had commissioned to do the illustrations for his
'9
WILLIAM Stories of
God, had invited
swede, an
art
from Bremen light.
The
GASS
“patron" to visit
his
colony which was located
—
in
a spare flat land valued for
much-needed
trip offered Rilke
one might
H.
From
kitchen courtyard.
Worp-
at
bog country not
far
and
its
its
isolation
relief,
and he
arrived,
His dormer room overlooked the
panting.
say,
him
there, like a muezzin, he called out
what the housekeeper sourly described
as his prayers,
and from
there he also sallied forth in his Tartar boots and Russian
smock
to collect the smiles of the local peasants.
For
weeks Rilke
five
Worpswede’s ity,
among creative people. communal dedication, its seren-
lived quietly
simplicities,
its
enchanted him. Here he met
painter Paula Becker,
whom
his future wife as well as the
he fancied
during this time, as he had in Florence
appears in sketches in a
it
at
fill its
pages.
them
as
and warm
from the
as
all
and
been
an ominous one.
petals.
business; they exist for butterfor us, for
Autumn’s hues are even more
are finished,
and prose
opening roses, he writes. Light
and bees, but only incidentally
tion of the leaves has
in
and breasts of bent
tips
Blooms, as Rilke knew, are
fortuitous.
Lou’s behest. Paula
These pieces often couple roses with sex
commonplace way, and with death
glistens in
Rilke kept a diary
as "the blond painter." Poetic fragments
Paula’s eyes are soft
flies
first.
fulfilled, so
whom flowers
are
serendipital; the func-
they are discarded, they
their colors are the result of useless residues.
The beauty of the world happens only in our eye; even the allure of women is as utilitarian as a wagon’s wheel. The Worpswede light, the way the countryside’s colors glow even on a dim wet evening, the festive stars and the warm windows of distant farms, the comforting purl of a stream: those are the purest
when one when a rose
accidents. So
of us turns aside from living in order to
admire
petal
life;
is
a line of charcoal depicts the inviting
no longer going
when length of a thigh; we are but contrary to it. What
allowed to cool an eyelid;
in nature’s direction
20
Reading Rilke
was never meant use
suddenly
is
for us
we
all
becomes ours
entirely;
what never had
a
need. Gradually, what Rilke’s Russian
—how poet — would
adventure had appeared to teach him with nature, so appealing to the
to live in
harmony
prove
itself
impossible for the poem. Rilke returned to Berlin and to a
him back
like a
bad
He
day.
wish he’d go away,” she confessed
bottle. “I
to her journal. Rilke’s spirit
willing:
is
his
he writes
to Clara every
plans a third trip to Russia. But his several journalistic
projects, designed to bring in a
and
Lou who had already sent
accounts are empty.
few marks, are not panning out,
He meets
Gerhart Hauptmann and
attends a rehearsal of Michael Kramer, which impresses him. Rilke found distraction in the theater, as he frequently suc-
ceeded
in
suited to
gifts
were not
—by
the fake
doing during his early days, though his it.
He was
fascinated
—
in
my
terms
camaraderie of casts during the hubbub of rehearsals, by
and immediate impact on
forceful
actor’s voice
audience, the way an
could elevate the most puerile of feelings, the
crude simplicities of theatrical scene getic
its
a play’s
setting, the art’s
unapolo-
melodramatic formulas. Another distraction: the blond
painter visits and
is
tantalizing, although she will
soon inform
the poet of her impending marriage to Otto Modersohn, while
being saddened herself by his
he intends
Salome
is
to
own news, some weeks
later, that
marry “the dark-haired sculptress.” Clara? Lou
appalled.
She then writes what biographers
like to call
her “Last Appeal.” Rilke’s depressions are symptoms of a sickness; his sicknesses try to see
make her
sick as well; he
is
not to write or
her again; she releases him in order to release herself.
The connection between Rilke and his mother/lover was a long time breaking, but his Worpswede friendships were quicksilvery and had as many degrees as a thermometer. The rapidity with which these relations were secured can be accounted in part,
for,
by the cruise ship atmosphere such colonies create, but
21
WILLIAM principally by the self into the air
way
and
Rilke
GASS
H.
seems simply
have thrown him-
to
cried, “Catch!”
Clara Westhoff caught him; a cottage caught him; domestic-
seemed
ity
Love
is
swaddle him, and protect him with
to
always dreamed before
warmth.
its
performed, and Rilke imag-
it is
ined himself in soft lamplight standing before his stove preparing a simple supper for his beloved
—perhaps
writes her, perhaps a bit of porridge.
honey gleaming on the platter of
Westphalian
He
envisions a dish of
table, butter pale as ivory, a long
ham
he
a vegetable,
narrow
“larded with strips of white fat like
an evening sky banded by clouds," and wheat-colored tea glasses, too,
all
standing on a Russian cloth.
Huge lemons,
in
red-
dish tangerines, silver saucers, are invited, and then long-
stemmed
roses, of course, to
We
unanxious sensuality. chores, the clutter of silver,
complete
need not describe the
mismated china,
annoying habits and nervous
rich cloth
when
this picture of quiet
reality arrives;
layer of boring
and soiled
sticky pots,
tics,
which
will
cloud the
and the bellowing of the baby,
her repeated poops, the sighs of reproach, the pure passages of self-pity
which
will
carom from one small room
before disappearing out the door
improve
He
itself
flight
how he
to
make
How? By
child.
Rilke beneath her
Routines take over. in the
How
same space with
seeking to
make her life (as he Her friends observe
has enthralled her. Whereas she
On
ple appears in public, the large little
trying to
his) into a sacred rite.
and then possesses the her
a poor smell
and dissipation.
possesses his wife.
endeavored it:
by
—
another
to
the other hand,
encompasses
when
the cou-
and robust Clara seems
arm
in the
first
(a
few wrote)
like a
world can three
a pouty face, in the
to
have
pet pooch.
live as
one?
.
.
.
humorless boudoir,
the barren pantry? Clara concentrates on Rilke, and her concentration compacts him. like,
He
feels
remorseless.
22
himself growing hard, rind-
— Reading Rilke
No
Ich liebe dich.
sentence pronounced by a judge could be
more threatening.
It
you may not want.
It
you
for
and
way
rib
controlling your behavior.
like mistletoe or
was removed.
own
you. “Let
to receive a gift
—
one wants you as an adjunct can survive,
you are about
that
means that someone is making it very easy them if they are not making it inevitable
to injure
in that
means
It
me
means
give
to their
It
life.
means
means
It
some-
that
that they
moss, only on the side where the
one way or other they intend
that
you a hug.
I
to
have a hundred arms.” So
has Siva.
Alongside the
life
of recurrent symbols, then
— the rose and —one might
the mirror, the simple peasant and the simply plain set
down
women
like a
his hive; or
as the
some
man drawn
to
bee who, heavy with their honey, soon returns
to
and
that of the lover
letter writer, a
one might remark Rilke
s
career as a social climber,
accomplished cultivator of those who may prove assistance to Art
—occasionally
artists, critics, editors,
estates; or take note of the life of “the inspired one,”
rocky coasts
den
stiff
Muse from
the traveler
way others pass their years. With a romantic naivete gia
tides rise
for
purely a poet
life
—because he
who
to
all,
for the
passes through places the
which we may
now, and out of a precocity
Rilke struggled his entire
is
—with sud-
onslaughts of both poetry and prose. Above is
who
time to time the way storms lash
—the same shores where the
biographer, Rilke
and
and comfortable
poets, but generally people of wealth, position,
attacked by the
be of
to
feel sorne nostal-
for personality as well as verse,
be a poet
felt,
—not
a pure poet, but
against good advice and
much
experience to the contrary, that poetry could only be written by
one who was already a poet: and a poet was above ordinary (Villiers
de L Isle-Adam’s famous quip, “As for
living,
we
life
shall
have our servants do that for us,” described his attitude perfectly); the true
poet dwelt in a realm devoted entirely to the
23
WILLIAM spirit (yes,
GASS
H.
Rilke had “realms” in
which he
“dwelt”); the true
poet was always “on the job”; the true poet never hankered for a flagon of wine or a leg of
were “the Muse,”
mop
true poet
to
mutton or
a leg of lady either
(women
be courted through the post); nor did the
floors or
dandle babies or masturbate or follow
the horses or use the john; the true poet was an agent of trans-
whose
figuration
ment
sole function
was the almost magical move-
of matter into mind.
Rilke
was eventually very convincing
testimony, which
I
take from
Edmond
chosen
in his
role.
This
Jaloux, could be multi-
plied.
When
I
was the that
all
began talking with Rilke first
time that
seemed
talked with a poet.
I
the other poets
it
I
to I
me
mean
that
it
to say
have known, however great they
were, were poets only in their minds; outside their work
they lived in the same world as .
.
but
.
when
with the same creatures
Rilke began to talk he introduced
world that was his
by some
I,
own and
sort of miracle
His poetic persona
into
which
I
me
to a
could enter only
9 .
may have
played well even in front of the
French, but Rilke was only intermittently sure of his success. Facial hair, for instance,
chops and as
if it
itself,
a full
was a problem. His father had mutton-
mustache.
Rilke’s
beard always looked young,
hadn’t quite arrived yet, and his mustache tried to outdo
eventually drooping in a vaguely oriental manner. Ry the
First
World War
eyes.
During the years which followed, the beard disappeared,
it
had lidded
his
mouth
and the mustache gradually shortened
in the fashion of his
itself.
One
could say he
was wearing something conventional by the time he took up residence at Muzot, in Switzerland. But he kept the spirit well cov-
— Reading Rilke
ered: long coat, hat,
vest, the shiny tips of his
tie,
shoes showing
beneath trousers bearing exclamatory creases.
The course
of
was consequently marked and marred by
life
weakness, by giving
schemed
for
by disappointment, as he
in,
advancement, groveled
for
money
or
loved,
ate,
employment,
worried about a roof over his head, while trying to keep that
head
in the
good clouds where
when
for Rilke
the world
belonged. There were periods
it
seemed
to
want him, and he acqui-
esced. But friends and lovers held him, like a restive balloon,
near the earth; possessions were possessive, families were closing
even historic
fists;
spas, full of
like
sunny seaside towns, famous
cities,
charm and bent on seduction, could
pull the poet
into their routines, dull the eye with undesirable familiarity,
and, most of
like the
all,
whole range of ordinary
things, lay
claim on his time, contrive to obligate him, do him
Money may have meant
‘‘duties.’’
was
slavery. Rilke felt that
he had
to
the
money
everyone whose help he sought, and
seek help often, had been a witness to his humiliation,
and so had a share all
freedom, but making
with
in
in
shame’s hold on his sleeve
more inwardly onerous
if
that hold
—
a humiliation
had been born
in
nothing more than a handshake.
However, from, as closely
if it
life
wasn’t something the poet was simply to flee
were
a grave
approached
There was,
first
of
dug out of trivial
— approached all,
the simple
routines;
it
was
to
be
and accepted and praised. life itself,
the peasant’s
life,
close to the earth, close to basic things, unspoiled by wealth and vice,
unmannered and wholesome
form of cleansing poverty was
upon
had peered
in
about
simple
“the
it.
If
life,
to
—and
for Rilke the peasant’s
be found
in Russia,
where he
gave Tolstoy the strength to
guilt
lie
Rilke found joyous justification in
observing an existence already
—by the strength
transformed for him, so that
he needed to do was describe
all
25
of his bias it,
WILLIAM
H.
GASS and
since, in the peasant’s fortunate union of nature
and soul were marvelously one. Rilke giance to the simple
life
spirit,
body
liked to display his alle-
by eating greens and taking barefoot
walks.
On
their
something
two
right,
trips to Russia,
but Rilke was
own dreams,
every step his
all
into
Lou Salome may have gotten romance, casting ahead of
which he then strode with
his
little
satisfied cries of discovery. All of his
weaknesses were awhirl:
his adolescent mysticism, his
oneness (which evolved),
his desire for a naivete
nent and keep
it
wish
for
which would encompass an
entire conti-
contained in the Middle Ages.
Poverty eventually disillusioned Rilke about poverty, but he
blamed
Paris for this knowledge. City poverty
crippling; country poverty
was horrible and
remained ennobling, and
cism energizing. Nevertheless, Rilke preferred best hotels and fruit.
visit
expensive spas.
Where
he’d
its
asceti-
to stay in the
make
a
meal of
Solitude was the only satisfactory creative state, but
com-
munes were wonderful, standing for a common commitment: help one another simplify the most acceptable
life
to
while satisfying social needs in
way within
a
community
of similar souls
laboring for similar results. But one’s fellows married (hadn’t
he?) and found themselves with family responsibilities (hadn’t he?).
They consequently turned bourgeois
as certainly as sour-
ing milk; soon they only dreamt their dreams,
them done
at all; for,
they
became
if
they entertained
jealous, competitive, disappointed,
and no longer helpful
to Rilke’s career or a significant
part of Rilke’s definition of himself. Vissi
cl'arte,
vissi
d’amore.
We all feel the
tug of opposing obli-
gations, contrary desires. Rilke understood his well
make
virtues of them.
More than one poem
enough
to
will tell us to treat
the wave of greeting as one of farewell. Rilke sent signs of his
ardor safely through the post, although the passions his letters
26
Reading Rilke
provoked were not without their hazardous consequences. Did he not
arms
tell
to
ment
embracing
broaden the spaces we breathe”? hungering
to those
was
emptiness out of their
— hardly an encourage-
have him. Considering Rilke’s
to
Magda von Hattingberg (whom
with the pianist as
lovers to “throw the
“Benvenuta
his suspicious habit,
Rilke renamed,
which
”),
affair
a flurry of
envelopes fanned into flames, Ralph Freedman writes: "Their life
together
fell
tionships with
into a pattern that
women would
many
of Rilke’s serious rela-
follow, beginning with sensitive
caring, tender endearments, small sophisticated gifts,
and an
almost domestic tranquillity, before distancing set
10
in.’
After
having convinced himself of the sincerity and depth of his ings, the fully
feel-
poet would overwhelm his victim with words so power-
put together there was no resisting them. These were no
longer effusions from feelings
more imaginary than
by a thought, a music, tough as
lines linked
den denken, dass ich jahre
und nun endlich nimmst
so
—
Du
steel.
ein Fremder unter
real,
but
Kannst du dir
Fremden fakre,
mich nach Haus. “Can you under-
how much I’ve wandered, a stranger in a world of strangers, and now at last you take me home? This is nearly irresistible. Nor does Magda manage to keep him down on the stand
farm.
Home
How
I
is
have
and how
I
felt
feel
Something a perfect
not where Rilke’s heart
it,
is.
that nameless state called parting,
it still:
a dark, sharp, heartless
that displays, holds out with unapparent hands,
union
to us, while tearing
With what wide-open eyes
I’ve
it
in two.
watched whatever
was, while calling to me, loosening
its
hold,
remaining on the road behind as though yet small
all
and white and nothing more than
27
womankind, this:
WILLIAM
GASS
H.
*
a
waving which has blown the hair beyond
a slight, continuous flutter
its
brow,
—scarcely now
explicable: perhaps the tremor of a plum-tree
and the bough a
cuckoo has
startled
set free."
the poet’s purpose to put the world into words, and, in
It is
that way, hold
it
steady for us.
The poet can
write of love, too, in
a similarly immortalizing fashion.
But love
as they love, so that their love
also altered
comes from
a different
is
mouth and
is
alters its lovers
even
and the next
pressed to a different
from “The Second
breast. In this cruel yet courageous passage
Elegy,” Rilke interrogates our passions:
Lovers, satisfied by one another,
about
us.
am
I
asking you
You embrace, but where’s the proof?
Look, sometimes
it
one another, or that This yields
me
happens that
my hands grow to know
my weary face
a slender sensation.
seeks their shelter.
But
who
dares to
believe he exists because of that?
You, though, who, from one another’s passion,
grow
until, quite
overcome, you plead: “No more
.” .
.
you, who, beneath one another’s groping, swell
with juice you, I
am
like the
who may go
grapes of a vintage year;
like a
bud
asking you about us.
you touch so
blissfully
I
into another’s blossoming:
know
because your touch survives such
bliss,
because just below your
finger’s
end you
feel the tip of
pure duration.
So you expect eternity
And
yet,
to
when you have
entwine
itself in
your embrace.
dealt with your fear of that
look,
the longing, later, at the window, and your
28
kiss
first
turn
first
—
— Reading Rilke
about the garden together: lovers, areyou any longer what
you were?
When you
lift
yourselves up to one another’s lips
—
chalice
to chalice
and
slip
wine into wine
like
an added
flavor: oh,
how
strangely
soon
is
each drinker’s disappearance from the ceremony.
Rilke and Clara
would go
fifty-fifty
on expenses, but the poet
had no money and small hope. His books weren’t he begged
ter,
this
He began
few of ties.
acquaintance, that friend, this editor, that a small loan, a part-time
to write reviews for a
Bremen newspaper, but
was forthcoming
his efforts to find
such work turned into even opportuni-
He was commissioned
Rodin
—
windfalls of
what an
ironic title
opening
in Berlin.
Their
lives
puny
get
it.
on Worpswede and on
to write
fruit.
—had flopped
And
his play, Daily Living
as his
own
daily life had, at
passed from Clara’s confinement to his
then to their union. Neither
promise of
let-
—
institution. Little task.
By
selling.
To
.
.
its
and
nor any longer saw the
Paula, Clara complained that she once could
on her bike and simply
pack, leaving one
felt fulfilled,
.
—
life for
ride away, her belongings in a back-
another.
Rilke and his wife set one another free, then, freeing their infant at the
same time by
leaving her, blanket and basket, in
the rushes of a relative. In Paris, where Rilke goes to write about
— —one
Rodin, he will learn about another kind of love artist for his
women
work; and about another kind of
life
that of the
are merely sources of relaxation, servants, or
models; he
will learn of
him
first is
which
sometimes
an existence utterly devoted to things
things observed, things made, things preserved; but strike
in
the streets and people of Paris
profound sense of estrangement from them
29
—
what
itself,
and
will
his
of disgust, loneli-
— WILLIAM
GASS
H.
ness, fear, despair; so that death
is
the topic which will pursue
his pen.
Death because poor
weak
ill
city smells
Paris appears to be full of hospitals, full of
people, homeless beggars, dirt and decay. Full of
and
city noise.
The poet
is
no longer
The
in the country,
where there
are only
suck him
so that as he walks alongside them, he increasingly
in,
winds and
birds.
Paris streets slowly
belongs to their flushing gutters, their screeching trams and
human
outcries; he leans, like others lost, against their dirty
defaced walls. This Brigge,
one of
is
how The Notebooks
literature’s great novels, begins,
wound might from
Make
Laurids
oozing like some
the pages of his letters to Clara,
yet joined him. Begins with death will
of
who
and goes slowly on
as
has not if
death
never end.
Love and death: a Germanic theme indeed. Just as going and
coming loving
are one, just as beginnings
and ceasing
and ceasing
to love, living
we mature our death
and endings overlap, so are to live, reciprocals,
and
as
rolls
up the beach while another wave recedes, and each
the surf
matures, too, the way one wave
succeeded by a quiet
is
hiss.
6
O
Lord, grant each of us our
the dying its
fall
own
that goes through
love, significance,
and need
ripe death,
life
—
like breath.
7
For
The is
we
are nothing but the bark
great death
we
and
burrs.
bear within ourselves
the fruit which every growing serves.
3°
roar of
Reading Rilke * /
For as
its
it
for
sake young
a tree-like
women its
sake
by change
them
men
seen
all that’s
itself,
as
lyre;
brought
frost to
into
it
is
and inspire
seen sustained fire;
artisan maintained
world out of
a
wind, sunlight,
it,
life’s
to listen
the frozen were the
if
myth and made
And
charms,
to share their heart’s alarms.
and the work of every this
their
music issued from a
lean on
these not yet
For
grow
sake small boys long to shoulder arms,
its
and
girls
this fruit, rain.
warmth has followed
suit,
heart’s heat absorbed, the fever of the brain:
Yet
when
swoop
the angels
they shall find that
all
our
to pick us clean,
fruits are
green
.'
2
Rilke proclaimed the poet’s saintly need to accept reality in all
its
aspects,
meanwhile welcoming only those
parts of the
world for which he could compose an ennobling description. Fie
was venomous about organized
religion, yet there are
Virgin Marys, saints, and angels in his
And he
work than
in
many
more
cathe-
The Poet he eventually became, both secure there and scared, empty and fulfilled; the inspired author of the Duino Elegies sensitive, insightful, gifted nearly beyond compare; a man with many devoted and distant friends, many extraordinary though frequently fatuous enthusiasms, but drals.
hid inside
,
still
couldn’t ets
homeless boy as
a lonely unloving
wave away, enjoying
enough
words
were
buck-
a self-pity there
rarely
to contain; yet with a persistence in the pursuit of
his goals, a courage,
made them
well, with fears
into
which overcame weakness and worry and
poems
pure or passionate or
.
.
.
no
.
.
sacrificial,
31
.
into lyrics that love,
however
could never have achieved by
—
— WILLIAM itself
.
.
.
only
lines
could accomplish
he,
emotional duplicity even,
terror,
frailty,
— the consequence
the weaknesses from which
When
GASS
H.
it
took
of an honesty bitter about
its
strength.
whose profession was Waiting, stayed
in strange
towns, the hotel’s
bemused and preoccupied bedroom morosely contained him, and the
room presided
and,
later, in
in the
avoided mirror
again,
the tormenting bed,
yet again
where
this adjudicating air,
manner beyond understanding, passed judgment upon his heart whose beating could
in a
—
barely be felt
through
its
painful burial in his body
and pronounced to
this hardly felt heart
be lacking in love
Rilke
s life,
Rilke’s poetry, Rilke’s alleged ideas,
an amazing attraction highborn
him
women who
for
many minds.
have sewed a
loving letters, or offered
ceaseless devotion; less
13 .
and he
who came
him to
skirt
It’s
not been just the
about him, or written
castle space, eager ears,
him
as
been introduced
life;
up
to
studies have multiplied as
into a scholar-empty Australia;
check out
if
they had
and dozens of
translators have blunted their skills against his obdurate, plex,
and compacted poems, poems displaying an
atrical
and
though they were soup-
a kitchen. Biographers have lined
the contents of his
have exerted
com-
orator’s the-
power, while remaining as suited to a chamber and
its
music as a harpsichord: made of plucked tough sounds, yet as rapid and light and fragile as fountain water.
32
Reading Rilke
Rilke was, like most
women. How
men and women, many men
to describe this
.
.
and
.
crude and jostling crowd of par-
venus and office seekers without becoming fascinated or especially repelled
by one or other of them, turning into a sycophant
or hanging judge, as Rilke his
presumably snobby
mumho jumbo
spiritual
s
politics jars?
He
is
charms, or
passion’s spokesman.
He’s a cold and calculating egotist, covering his selfishness with the royal robes of loner.
He
He’s a poseur, a courtier, a migrant, a
art.
hates the United States for reactionary reasons:
because he hates machines and commerce, and equality
He
is
charming and
sensitive
melt the heart. His soul is
He
a trifler.
is
and given
to
He
as a creature of myth.
shows of concern that
a knot of childhood resentments.
too continuously serious
is
too.
has
all
He
— he thinks of himself
the moth-eaten arrogance of
the self-taught, and sports a learning, both quirky and full of holes,
on
which he
airs?
as
is
An Eskimo
proud of as a pup just trained has not so
triune god
layers of fuss
A
—forming, with Valery and Yeats perhaps,
a true
he takes the European
are not required to believe in
Serafico,
the
called him.
Doctor Ricochet
lyric to
creates the texts of a worthy religion at
one which we may wholeheartedly admire,
Hohenlohe
and show.
levels
—and
Doctor
Put
new
priest of the poet’s art,
of achievement
many
to paper.
... as
it
or pay
princess
it
in part
last,
because we
tithes.
von
Thurn
und
Taxis-
More appropriately, Doctor Dodge we follow this summary full of repeti.
.
.
tions of repetition: In Linz,
it is
Olga, in Prague,
it is
Vally
who helps him publish;
then Rilke meets Lou, his lover/mother, in Munich, follows her to Berlin,
accompanies her
to Berlin again;
he vacations
to Danzig, St. Petersburg, in Viareggio,
and back
where he meets Elena;
company of Paula and Clara at Worpswede; marries Clara when bounced by Lou, although he does so against Lou’s
enjoys the
33
WILLIAM good advice, and little
rolls to
H.
GASS
Westerwede, where there
if
charming
a
cottage soon too full of child cries and other obnoxious
where Rodin (and
duties; consequently he’s shortly off to Paris,
not a
is
woman)
is
the lure, but
no fun being poor
it is
in Paris,
even
the parks are pretty; so with Clara (who has parked the kid
with her parents), Rilke escapes to Rome, then volleys north to Ellen Key in Scandinavia, where he’s handsomely taken
visit
care of by her friends, until
tingen (one of
estates
Lou Salome’s haunts), and
because
for long,
— the
time to return to Bremen, Got-
it is
it’s
Berlin again; but not
few more elegant
Rilke’s luck to enjoy a
Countess von Schwerin’s, the Baron von der
Heydt’s, the beginning of a pleasant habit
back
to Paris
and
travel tables
It
a
is
life
are forms of exaggeration, yet so are
and those figures
odd and
like a literary lion, halls,
maps
in the carpet.
of packing and unpacking, of smiling at
friends, looking out of different to write at
trudging
a crankier Rodin.
Such summations and
—before
windows,
new
sitting in trains, trying
irregular hours, signing
books and behaving
having ideas, getting used to strange dark
guest beds, always cadging and scrounging, eating poorly,
keeping your pants pressed, and most of favorite,
all,
falling
ill,
the flu a
sneezing into a pillow, dozing while wrapped up in a
chair: life
time which gets
little
about a sore throat or a coughing
report, for
what
is
there to say
the fumble to find a
fit?
cham-
ber pot beneath strangely squeaking springs? a scheme to put one’s ear out of range of the sleep-inducing bore who’s
seated at your It is
been
left?
a life of loneliness, of brooding, self-absorption,
the world seems to mirror, because
spend making a
living in office or
Rilke has on his hands.
Hence
all
the hours most of us
schoolroom or farm or all
those
letters, of
34
factory,
course, a
prodigious output of prose, prose which rehearsed his
might play as a poem.
moods
life
so
it
Reading Rilke
The as
leaves are falling, falling from far away,
though
they
a distant
fall, fall
garden died above us;
with denial in their wave.
And through
the night the hard earth
falls
farther than the stars in solitude.
We all are falling. And
see
— there goes another.
And yet
there’s
One whose
let this falling fall
Later in that
Here, this hand
in us all.
gently holding hands
and never
same September
It’s
falls.
land.’ 4
of 1902, he feels
autumn on him
once again.
The summer was too long. Lay your shadow on the sundials now, and through the meadows let the winds throng. Lord,
it is
time.
Ask
the last fruits to ripen on the vine;
give
them
to bring
further two
more summer days
about perfection and to raise
the final sweetness in the heavy wine.
Whoever has no house now whoever will
lives
alone
will establish
now will
live
waken, read, and write long
none,
on long alone, letters,
wander up and down the barren paths the parks expose
It is
a
life
of taking
down rooms and
in:
when
leaves are blown.' 5
landscapes and atmospheres, both run-
lush islands, portrait galleries in this Schloss
35
:
WILLIAM
GASS
H.
and that lodge, books by forgotten Scandinavians, but sometimes by equals like Valery, Flaubert, or Proust, paintings by
Cezanne, sculpture by Rodin: training
wadded
see the thing seen and not to be the
young heart flung food,
The of
and
live
on
who It is
at
to
is
Laurids Brigge "At
Most important,
Rilke
trained on prose,
therefore a
life
be found
in the merciless
am
learning to see."
last
I
s life is
the
who made
which
white heat, he creates
ries:
were
if it
sustenance, even in hibernation. Regarde!
result of his labor
Make
ball of feeling his
absorb sensation as
at things; to
its
his eye not to flinch, to
life
exactness
of a great writer, a poet
weaknesses into warriors.
his
moments when, whole populations of poems and stois
built of those great
Book of Monkish Life from September 20 to 1899, followed by The Stories of God from Novem-
the entire
October
14 in
ber 10 to
21;
September
then thirty poems of The Book of Pilgrimage from
Hours from April
13 to
20 in 1903,
poems
The Book of the stanzas which make up
18 to 25 in 1901, the thirty-four
of
Mary between January 15 and 22 of 1912, the sudden announcement in Duino of the Elegies on the same month’s The
Life of
21st, or, of course,
the greatest inspirational storm, perhaps, in
poetry’s history, the Elegies' surprising completion in
when,
as
if
a tap
had been
he would dedicate
to
left
running, a sequence of sonnets
Orpheus appeared
in the
days, from February 2 to 5 in 1922, priming the to
draw
forth
on the nth just yet.
like a flourish of
A "Fifth all,
pump,
as
it
were,
pen entered the second week of
month, with the main body of the "Tenth"
hinge of the set elegy of
space of three
“The Sixth Elegy," compose the "Seventh,” then
the “Eighth" and "Ninth,” as his that sacred
Muzot
Elegy” is
is
trumpets.
The
cycle
is
to arrive
not complete
replaced by another on the 14th.
The
the last one written, perhaps the most bitter
a bitterness
which sounds
in the final
notes of his
triumph.
These explosions of poetry were
36
regularly
accompanied by
Reading Rilke
prose
— such was the pattern
of the past
—and
it
was no
differ-
ent this time: Rilke writes The Young Workman's Letter sum,
ming up
toward
his attitudes
art,
Christianity,
and
sexuality, in
most important prose piece since The Notebooks of Make Laurids Brigge. As if he is hitched to a runaway, the second sechis
tion of the Sonnets to
Orpheus rushes
February days. There are
poems. And Rilke
talline
triumphant
letters.
now still
into being in eight
more
of these dense yet crys-
fifty-five
has the energy to write numerous
What had been wrung from him was more
than wine. It
caps a
cluded
life,
like a
and Rilke
feels, in a
way, that he has been con-
symphony. Yet, as Edward Snow points out
Uncollected Poems Rainer Maria Rilke ,
his troughs, are dotted, as a dry creek
able
poems
(as occasional as
16
his alleged dry spells,
,
by nuggets, with remark-
matches
lit
in
crowd) which
in a
Rilke simply does not bother to collect, his focus elsewhere, or his health a painful preoccupation.
Raum. of things.
If
there were one
The space
word
where
would be Raum. The space
of outer space.
comes through porous windows cal carpet
it
lovers wrestle.
raum. Not just the room
in
The space
to feed
on our
The womb
of night
which
The
mysti-
faces.
of the mother. Welt-
which the furniture of the world
The space made by Beings breathing. Then Innerweltraum. (The German language, the German spirit, can and must compound.). Not just the space we call consciousness, but the space where we retire rests,
but the space of the things themselves.
in order to avoid a feeling, the
touch of a
friend, the threat of intimacy. Distance. stars.
These spaces are always palpable,
lover, the plea of a
Darkness dotted by
as
though space were
smoke, or the mountains of the heart where the
may be
last
hamlet of
The various distances of death. Time itself is a spaceline. For when we are dead we journey on through what we once believed was past. Cathedral spaces. The
feeling
discerned.
37
— WILLIAM spaces
GASS
H.
made by music. Innerweltraum. The
slopes shaped hy
the word in the countrysides of poetry.
Music: breathing of statues. Possibly:
Speech where speech
stillness in pictures.
ends.
Time
upon the
coastline of our passions.
Feelings for of
all
You
upright and poised
whom? You
feeling into
are the transformation
—what?
.
.
.
audible landscape.
stranger: music. Heart’s space
that’s
outgrown
which
it’s
Innermost us
us.
scaled, surmounted,
gone beyond
into holiest absence:
where what’s within surrounds us the
way
the most skillful horizon does,
or the other side of the
air,
pure,
immense, no longer
Similarly,
lived in .' 7
The Notebooks of Make Laurids Brigge
moved through
like so
hours, because
it is
space in
— two spaces,
ancl
if it is
by leaf or
line
many
a book, a thing? really,
a space,
by
passing minutes.
line.
it
the space
and it
Isn’t
if it is
any book of
a thing,
it is
makes and the space
exists all at once, not bit
The scenes
are not to be
in the novel
by
for
is
woven,
like
it’s
bit or leaf
which fasten the
two notebooks together depict the famous unicorn tapestries Paris’ Cluny Museum. And the whole of Make is built, painted,
a
in is
those calm and gracious images, symbols
each of the senses. They are there
all at
once, traveled over
by the eye, made of threads, but they are not
38
thin, lengthy, or
Reading Rilke
line-like like threads, these
tures hover like symbols
flowered places where solemn crea-
hung about
a
hidden neck.
Every line which Rainer Maria Rilke wrote there in later
life:
an Offering
to the
in fact did
I
many
their
now on
like
read the so-called later
predecessors. So the poet
back or go forth or leap ahead only subject matter
—where
—
two parked
bikes,
poems before
development
s
on a tabletop.
a lifemap held flat
is
Lares and the Sonnets to
Orpheus may stand beside one another and
in early life
I
may,
if
I
read
I
drawn
is
wish, travel
which Rilke
into books in
is
words about him are the only
words.
Everything passes, there
on a Right
to Egypt; yet
nowhere we can
is
nence. Because ruhmen dass
And
if
all
as
though
it
such things
suffer
perhaps, was
each
this
enough
much was
a happiness in for
a bit
done
this length
hand
loss there
woven swatch
to hold us here?
accomplished.
made
too
let slip;
appeared
little of,
in its
place
spun-out thing, no lighter than
no longer too
early,
who knows?
yet despite this,
life,
and yet perfect, and so beautiful that are
—
kicked off our childhood shoes
—would not
of linen flowers, be
A life,
object
and strange,
trivial
of yellowed lace, this densely
See: this
place in perma-
were no longer clear
why we should have for
if it is
proof.
we do and
should seem suddenly
A
The most modest
ist.
—can provide
one day
even
what did Proust prove? That the world
can be taken out of time and given a place.
of lace, perhaps
rest,
smiled
39
at,
all
our so-be-its
and held
in
abeyance
.'
8
WILLIAM This
much was
on August
GASS
accomplished. But
28, 1902, to study
young man
H.
Rilke reached Paris
and write on Rodin, he was
in his twenties, given to
highs, to enthusiasms
when
still
a
depressions and hysterical
which overmatched
their causes,
and
to
the habit of seeking in the world convenient containers for his
copious but volatile and uneducated feelings.
reformed and focused, and he was: by
Paris,
He needed
moods, by the
fictions of Flaubert,
be
by the example of
Rodin, by the poetry of Baudelaire, which so suited Rilke’s
to
its site
and
and maybe most of all
by the paintings of Cezanne.
Not the dots but the distance between them that creates the line; not the lines which turn into contours, but the planes between; not simply the planes but the surfaces they define; not the surfaces alone but the light with which they
bring every point
upon them
of the things he learned.
may
He
vibrantly to
life:
combine
these were
to
some
learned that in one’s art an elbow
flow into a thigh, a chin disappear into a palm, a walker
walk more purely without the distraction of arms; he learned
how
a figure
might emerge from a chunk of marble
like a plant
from the ground; he learned that “there are tears which pour from
pores’’
all
where
because everything has an expression,
a smile alone lives; that there
motion, or a motion held
is
a face
stone that can be set in
like a pose; that
every accident should
be made necessary, and every necessity look like a towel thrown these were a few of the lessons he over the back of a chair
—
took to heart: that the poet’s eye needs to be so candid that even a decaying vulva, full of flies,
must be
fearlessly reported, fol-
lowing Baudelaire’s example; that exactitude
achievement, so that whatever rendered spare that art
is
when
sparse,
is full
should be
— the breathing
tation of nature but
its
prerequisite to
fully
shown, but
and empty when empty; above
actually the opposite of nature,
of being
is
of statues
—
is
transformation
40
and that the creation
what counts; not the is
all,
the
artist’s
imi-
aim: these
Reading Rilke
were some of the things he learned, they began his
moment
of "turning.
and then he learned
"To see" means touch and
Wendung,
what seeing
Finally, Rilke learned
is,
to see.
to taste
and thereby
feel at one’s finger
selves cloud like
his
end
a
to
"dance the orange,"
little
to
eternity, to smell our-
steam from a warm cup,
to hear voices, to
lis-
ten so intensely you rise straight from the ground.
And he saw a man growing from the shoulder of a seated woman; he saw Orpheus Eurydice behind him helpless
—
Orpheus’ hand
he saw a sculpture called The Death
at his eyes;
of the Poet another called The Prodigal Son; he saw plaster cou,
ples intertwined; he artfully
sky to
saw sleeping marbles, and birds of stone so
wrought that every feather implied
fly
through; he saw a victim of
and convulsing on
a Paris street, blind
begging; he saw a
woman who,
much
as their subjects did,
.
.
.
.
.
if
dance
men
her face in her .
.
.
prose that
that filled space as
Meudon.
he listened. Silence. Depth.
And we hold back our breath. Yet nothing yet. And he is star. And other great stars ring him, though we cannot see that far.
O he is fat. Do we he’ll
see us?
Sink
in
he’ll sit
He
suppose
has need of that?
any supplicating pose before him,
deep and
idle as a cat.
For that which lures us to his feet has circled
in
jiggling
blind and beggars
eventually
poems
a
such as the Buddha he contem-
plated so often in Rodin’s garden at
As
.
and therefore
St. Vitus’
in grief, left
hands: each called forth poems
equaled the best of his poems
flight
him now
a million years.
4i
WILLIAM He
has forgotten
encloses
all
GASS
H.
all
we must endure,
we would
escape.' 9
Rodin had an actual exhibition pavilion from the 1900 Paris World s Fair moved to his property in Meudon-Val-Fleury, just outside the
city. In this
building,
which was flanked by Rodin’s
own manor house and surrounded by
a
number
of cottages,
workshops, studios, he installed a bounty of his sculptures. the grounds were placed
and
in
numerous stone
fragments, both Rodin
Buddha
just celebrated.
own and
s
Among
pieces, both
On
whole
antique, including the
the statuary
minced many
doves, in spite of the dogs, and on the grounds near the banks of
managed
the river three swans
to
waddle. Here, too, the
New
—
Poems emerged, the Dinggedicht a set of solids set in their book as if in a gallery. As Norbert Fuerst correctly observes: “It is characteristic of many of these chiseled and sculptured
poems
one can read them backwards, or that one can read
that
back and forth
in
them. They are more spatial than temporal."
20
Eventually, and for a time, enlisted as Rodin’s secretary, Rilke will
occupy
a cottage at
Meudon, lunch with Rodin and
his
anxious wifewishing mistress, feed the swans, and inspect the stones. I
wonder
and Rodin
become
s
if
Rilke ever realized
careers
a Master, to
would
ironic the
outcome of
his
Master
be, for Rilke leaves the
to
grow through each succeeding year toward
his whirlwind, while
whirlpool. Sexually
how
Rodin
overcome
sucked by sycophants into a
is .
.
.
again and again
.
.
.
Rodin
is
tamed by an American lady who has managed with Jamesian ingenuity to become a duchess. She dressed him, Kenneth Clark says, “in a silk top-hat and frock coat and led him round Europe finally
in a
black limousine like a dancing bear."
When
Rodin
got rid of her (beseeched to do so by friends),
he
Reading Rilke
remained
Meudon, where the
at
parasites could find
him and
deprive him of his intestines. “The chorus of praise from enthu-
and
siastic ladies
litterateurs," in Clark’s opinion,
lated to bring out the worst in his genius for
pseudo-mystic qualities
work.” 2 That
in his
'
is
it
"was calcu-
dwelt on the
what
precisely
many
of Rilke’s female friends offered him: adoration of his
flaws.
But they only induced
One must
table-tipping.
they are.
fly
him
in
a
weakness
from fan and foe
for
seances and
alike, for
how
alike
Saved because sex could not entrap him; saved
because he always needed
Raum. And
felt
.
the fear of
.
its
lack.
Breathing room.
when crowded,
the parks, but even
because the
.
spiritual spaces
He
walks
the parks are vacant,
between the people who form the
crowds are empty. The poet has sought solitude and found only loneliness. At the zoo, the animals appear superior, yet even
they pace, turn like the horses of the carousel, or like the panther in that celebrated poem:
His gaze has grown so worn from the passing of the bars that
it
sees nothing anymore.
be a thousand bars before him
There seem
to
and beyond
that thousand nothing of the world.
The supple motion
of his panther’s stride,
as he pads through a tightening circle, is
like the
dance of strength around a point
on which an equal
Only
rarely
enabled.
which
is
will
stands stupefied.
an opening
in the eyes
Then an image brims
slides the quiet tension of the limbs
until the heart,
wherein
it
43
dies
22 .
WILLIAM Rilke
s
strategy for the defeat of time
way what was passing
In that
passed on to another part of
water of a fountain, observer alpine
GASS
H.
—and
reality.
was
to turn
it
everything was
Sometimes,
meadow
—merely
if it
changing never changed.
its
inner world would be spread out inside
s
into space.
or even an
armed camp
were the
And
him
the
an
like
or an independent
country, despite the fact that consciousness has no objective location. Emotions could be measured and sited among the
mountains of the heart, so when love died,
it
died of closeness
and confinement, not from aging or duration. Aren’t lovers
always arriving at the borders of each other,
although both promised breathing space, unimpeded hunting,
home ? 23
But habits die hard; nothing utterly passes. Life patterns see to
that actions, attitudes, conditions, return
it
Baladine Klossowska, taeva, for instance,
— the
painter,
replaced by the poet, Marina Tsve-
is
and
Rilke’s early
connection with Russia
when Marina’s first letter arrives. His name, she said, poem in itself. That was a good start to an epistolary love
reappears
was
a
except in acceleration. Marina
affair similar to all the others
drew him out and
How could It
him.
she
on. Into another elegy,
know
that this
was not
was not time which did him It
was not the women,
leukemia, the cancer that his daughter’s
know now
is
playmate
kills
a
for her.
good omen?
in, for
for
one he named
he had years ahead of
he eluded them.
It
was
children, the cancer that claimed
Wera Knoop; an
illness of the
most often borne by our genes, and
is
blood
we
therefore the
death sent by our ancestors: the ragged core of a sweet apple to in the poet s mouth. It was indeed sore and swollen erupt
—
—
Rilke’s proper
death
(if
there
is
any
44
that’s proper),
running
like
Reading Rilke
fire
through his veins, just as he had written, ostensibly address-
ing God, "and
blood
I’ll
if
you
set this
mind
of
mine aflame, then on my
carry you away.’’
Refusing narcotics confront his
in
order to keep a clear head, the better to
wrote
illness, Rilke
letters to friends describing his
agony, a few lines of verse too, no longer French, inscribed on
He
flyleafs.
composed
also
his intimates,
his testament in
should his faculties be dimmed, to prevent any
priestly intervention
when
his soul
“moved into the
Symbolic hopes were held out against
A
mans.
which he begged
open.’’
his sickness like talis-
three-hundred-year-old goat willow, planted in the
courtyard of the von Salis castle because the willow’s Latin
name was family,
and hence a suitable emblem
Salix caprea,
had miraculously restored
down through
itself
for the
by driving a new root
rotten trunk from an upper branch; and Rilke
its
copied “The Willow of Salenegg” into the guest book of that house. Could he reroot too? That was in August. at the year’s
He would
die
end. But his thought then would be of the pain that
was passing
like a
angers of his
life.
filament through
all
the other aches and
Rilke admonishes us not to confuse the
ill-
nesses of childhood, for instance, which were respites, even subterfuges, with those of dying. In a
little
notebook, he wrote
his final lines:
Come
on
in
now, you
incurable, into
As
my
spirit
in you; the its
last
my body’s
burns
of the pains
will admit,
web.
— see—
wood no
I
I
burn
longer can deny
agreement with the flame you’re flaming.
You burn me, but
My present
I
inside your burning burn.
mildness, in your ferocity, will be
not of here but there, most hellishly.
45
WILLIAM I
climbed
soul
Am
s
still
I
GASS
this pyre, faggots piled to fearful heights,
convinced
my
H.
I
*
d never sacrifice
uncounted sum he
who
to gain a future.
— unacknowledged— burns herer
my memories to burn nearby me. O life outside me Oh to live you. And aflame. Known now to none 24 I’ll
not
call
—
—
I
.
46
TRANSREADING
In a translation,
one language, and one particular user of that
language, reads another.
Mit gelben Birnen hanget
Und
mit wilden Rosen
voll
Das Land
If
am
I
language of words I
can
let
hangs
/
be trying to
will
which German
them
And
—wild
These
ring in
full
I
my
lines, first of all,
and
heard. “With yellow pears
the land in the lake.” Easily
may
send
me
to experience.
fruited, the fruit tree’s
remember how,
I
/
if
is
as the roses are.
directly
Then
head as
understood, because the order of the words
I
remember
branches are bowed;
in the clear fall light, flowers,
trees are oddly reflected in
and
Holderlin has chosen these, and
offers,
with wild roses
how, when heavily
and
German in German, the understand itself. Out of the number
reading Friedrich Holderlin’s
said, less easily
well
den See,
in
still
water as
if
bushes,
actually upside
down,
beneath themselves, an optically odd apparition. read the poem’s
realize that the pears
and
title
their
(“Halfte des Lebens”) again,
image are halves of one
real,
unreal whole.
The
land, heavy with fruit
and flowers, hangs down into the
47
a
WILLIAM where object and
lake,
the natural order pears,
and
full
is
GASS
H.
reflection are joined, h ask myself
interrupted. Shouldn’t
down
of wild roses, the land hangs
“With yellow
be:
it
why
into the lake
?
But then the word hanget wouldn’t hang. Every
line of fine literature
yet unquiet
community. As
special interests
forms a secure, seemingly serene,
any community, there are many
in
and the groups which promote them; there are
predominating concerns, persistent problems; and, as psyche of any individual, or
tions, perplexities, line
is
in the larger region of the
competing aims,
politic, there are
in the
anxieties, habits, anticipa-
memories, needs, and grievances.
a good one, their clamor
is
body
stilled
because
its
When
the
constituents
are happy, their wants appeased, their aims fulfilled.
When its
the line
is
a
good one, there
meaning which binds the
same time
yet at the
the
noun
has.
line together as
if it
the
way
syllables
to
were one word,
their
down
sounds and a pattern of
path to be pursued deeper into the
like a
and resonating with what has preceded
These
movement
and apportioning
and
or verb, while throwing
rhythm and meaning stanza,
a musical
articulating, weighing,
line’s particular parts
stresses spell a
is
are not naturally
it,
if
anything
harmonious functions: looking
for-
ward, listening back, uniting and differentiating.
Half of life
looks
present,
life
has been lived. Heavy with
its
succulent
down upon its future, but it is a future in which this now past, can only be remembered. The reflection in
the water resembles reality almost exactly, yet picture.
And you and
I
What trim,
it is
just that
—
then, adopting the poet’s position, can
halve ourselves to see what
become:
fruit, that
we
are
now
as well as
what we
shall
illusory.
a beautiful idea: earth, solid
life
full
remembrance,
and accomplished, into image.
48
and
settled, flesh rosy
altering
into
water,
and into
Reading Rilke
Ihr holden Schwiine, /
Und
trunken von Kiissen
Tunkt
Haupt
ihr das
Ins heiligntichterne Wasser.
Upon
this
water swans are swimming so calmly the reflection of
the land they float
upon
drunk from
you dip your heads into the holy sobering
kisses
undisturbed. “You lovely swans, and
is
water." There
is
which exactly
parallels the first (“and full with wild roses
another interruption of the normal order here
the habit of swans to do a bit of necking, and
bill
’).
It is
dipping too.
This information comes to us from some swan watching. That the
swan (most notable
supposed is
to sing a
handed down It is
at
the
is
from myth.
English speakers will have already read Yeats’
"The Wild Swans scape and
scream)
sweetly accepting song at the point of death
to us
likely that
for its raucous, peacock-like
at
Coole,” which opens upon a similar land-
same time
of year.
The trees are in their autumn beauty, The woodland paths are dry, Under the October twilight the water Mirrors a
Upon
still
sky;
the brimming water
among
the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.
And
there
is
no reason
ing Holderlin, everything
Borges has taught us, rary.
all
Great poems are
why we should have we know that came
at all
to forget, read-
after him.
As
the books in the library are contempo-
like granaries:
they are always ready to
enlarge their store. Rilke’s extraordinary
Leda poem
49
will get written later, as well
— WILLIAM
GASS
H.
charming though more modest
as his
“The
tided simply
lyric
Swan.’
We struggle through as
though our
legs
the
undone and the yet-to-do
were shackled, hobbling on and on
with the awkward waddle of the swan.
—
And dying to lose our footing on we daily counted on to hold us is
like the
to the
the ground
anxious swan’s surrender
water which receives him with
drawing aside
like a curtain in the
all
honor,
wind,
receding wave on wave to shape his wake, while he, stately,
remote, assured,
still,
majestically indifferent
condescends
to glide.
and composed,
1
In the Elegies Rilke won’t find death likely to offer such easy sailing.
There
will
be
much undoing
to get
done,
much
past
life
to leave.
Holderlin’s swan, sailing
image riding beside the primeness of
it,
life,
consequence: that the
between earth and water,
its
own
and drunk with the kisses which convey sobers itself by sipping from the cup of first
half of one’s history will linger
on
in
the second half only in recollection.
Translating
The
kind.
reading, reading of the best, the most essential,
adjective “gracious’ barely hides
franker about are
is
dipping
— the poem’s their
heiligniichterne
is
heads
what the German
religious allusions ins
—
heiligniichterne
for the
Wasser.
swans That
one helluva word. Christopher Middleton,
his fine version, says “you gracious
is
in
swans" and then ends “into
the holy lucid water," while Michael Hamburger, in his equally
5°
Reading Rilke
excellent
try,
writes "you lovely swans’’ to close with "into the
hallowed, the sober water." "Gracious,’’ unfortunately, doesn’t
mean
"graceful,"
more. But
and “graceful" doesn’t mean
“full
of grace" any-
the swans are lovely (as I’m certain they are),
if
they’re only lovely,
which
enough. The cool
isn’t
fall
water
will
have a sobering effect, to be sure, but I’m not convinced should be
like a splash in
either. There’s
no place
the face.
I
it
don’t dare do "holy sober"
for that kind of
pun
in this
poem. So I’m
going to take a chance and push the religious undertones up a
And
little.
I
have to remember to hold off on hanging the land.
With yellow and
full
pears, the land,
of wild roses,
hangs down into the
lake.
You graceshaped swans, drunk from
kisses,
you dip your heads into the holy
The swans
are graceful
and
solemn water.
and the water
lovely,
is
lucid
and
sobering and solemn, hallowed and holy. In this case, one does not "opt,” but one It’s it is
must choose
2 .
been frequently said that translation
a traduction, a reconstitution
made
is
a
form of betrayal:
of sacrifice and revision.
One
bails to
give
up everything. Neither swans themselves, nor
bolic
keep the boat
significance,
replace them.
afloat.
However, we don’t have
uniquely German.
is
The season and
its
transported without
can ask one; when low.
The
it
we have loss.
The
a proper hold
When
sym-
won’t have to
meaning, the reflective power
of a pond: these things are easily retained.
the stanza, provided
We
their
to
the
poem
central ideas of
on them, can be
asks a question,
asserts or describes or avows,
we can
we fol-
general shape of the sonnet can be repeated too, but
51
WILLIAM the
poem does
fitting suit;
genes
wing
said,
it
GASS
not want to be squeezed into itsTorm like an
ill-
to flower forth in fourteen Tines as if all
its
hopes
"Bloom." The sonnet shape
as powerful as a right-
is
and
religious group, however, conservative to the core,
snooty to boot. the page,
move
H.
The meter wants
arm swinging smartly up
right at the right time;
to
march
five abreast across
to strike the chest, eyes
rhyme waits
tympanist, sticks
like a
poised above the paper and the tightened lines
it
resonate; alliteration wants to twist the tongue as
nance would soothe long, like "oboe,"
it;
there
the short
is
would make
much
played against those of generously open ends
like “pit," to
like
and undulating beauties such
be
"oboe again,
in print
but short of
sound, or hissies such as “Mississippi," lovely liquids lelujah,”
as asso-
word which sounds
and the thin tight-lipped ones
and of course, "Ohio,” as well as words long
must
like “hal-
as “Alabama."
Moreover, the right sorts of sacrifice are essential.
We
had
poems German sounds and German order, because we are trying to achieve the poem Holderlin would have written had he been English. We can’t make it move too
better lose the
smoothly and go whistling along. Here
is
my version
of
its
clos-
ing seven:
Where
shall
when
I,
winter’s here, find flowers,
and where sunshine and shadows of earth? Walls stand speechless
and
cold, in the
weathercocks
wind
clatter.
Middleton has “weathervane,” but
I
must follow Hamburger
here, not only for a better sound, but because etly for the
I
want
to call qui-
cock who discomfited Peter. The German con
52
Reading Rilke
eludes Klirren die Fahnen, and could /be interpreted as flap,”
but nationalism has not had any presence
in
“flags
the preceding
lines.
What we
get
when
we’re done
by the process of arriving
at
is
a reading, a reading enriched
and therefore,
it,
only the
really,
farewells to a long conversation.
What must tone.
If
not be given up, of course,
first
it is
and foremost,
surely a failure, last
and out of
tricky thing. Recently Anita
lated Rilke’s ple.
quality
—
quality
and
the translation does not allow us a glimpse of the great-
ness of the original,
way,
is
Book of Hours
The poet
is
luck.
for
fail
that
is
a very
Macy
trans-
too,
Riverhead Books. Here his god, but
actually Rilke’s
is
Tone,
Barrows and Joanna
presumably addressing
the divinity in question
and most of us
quondam
is
a
sam-
we know
lover,
Lou
Salome.
Extinguish Seal
my eyes,
my ears,
And without
I’ll
go on seeing you.
go on hearing you.
feet
without a mouth
Break off
I’ll
I
can make
my way
to you,
can swear your name.
I
my arms,
I’ll
take hold of you
my heart as with a hand. Stop my heart, and my brain will start to beat. And if you consume my brain with fire, feel you burn in every drop of my blood with
3
I’ll
I
is
.
feel that the tone of
perhaps more a love
my version
poem now
is
fiercer,
more
than a religious one.
my eyes out: can still see; slam my ears shut: can still hear, Put
I
I
walk without feet
to
where you were,
53
ardent, but
it
WILLIAM
H.
GASS
and, tongueless, speak you into being.
Snap
off
my arms:
my heart’s halt that, my
in
and
if
you
then on
Somewhere amid drift.
longing like a brain will do
set this
my blood many
will usually take
It
hold you hard
I’ll
mind
fist;
its
of
beating,
mine aflame,
carry you
I’ll
away
4 .
readings to arrive at the right place.
various versions like a ghost the original will
Yet our situation
is
no different
if
we
are trying to under-
stand English with English eyes. Hardy begins his great
about love rendered-as-rhyme with
If it’s
poem
this nine-liner:
ever Spring again,
Spring again, I
shall
Down Seeing
go where went
when
the moor-cock splashed, and hen,
me
not,
Standing with If it’s
I
amid
their flounder,
my arms
around her;
ever Spring again,
Spring again, I
Try
where
shall
go where went
‘‘translating’’ I
then.
Hardy’s English into your own.
once saw the moor-cock and
locked in one another’s wings.
me
I
standing nearby with
I
notice
my arms
I
rightness of the original. for there are four in a
more returns
If
I
go
them but they do not see
my own
around
when,” and any change
shall
mate splash down,
his
must not omit the awkward beauty of the where went
“I
I
beloved.”
refrain, "I shall
make
lose the rhymes,
I
go
will reinforce the I
lose the
poem,
row before the couplet, and then three
of the initial sound. There
rhyme scheme which Hardy subsequently
54
is
a reason for this
reveals.
Reading Rilke
If it’s
ever summer-time,
/
Summer-time,
With the hay crop
And
the cuckoos
As they used
at
the prime,
—two—
in
rhyme,
seemed
to be, or
to,
We shall do as long we’ve dreamed If it’s
to,
ever summer-time,
Summer-time,
With the
hay,
and bees achime.
To read with recognition (not just simple understanding) is to realize why the writer made the choices he or she made, and why,
if
the writing has been done well (suppose
done’’?), its
words could not have been
translations will
crush them
all
make
and
value will have been received.
health or couldn’t
its
and
toss
The
them
it
d said “well
otherwise.
and
say:
the hay.”
55
Their real
translating reader reads the
sees, like the physician, either
right out
Our
will not matter,
to the trash.
its
evident
know why Hardy “Someday we have a roll in
hidden disease. That reader
come
down
a batch of botches, but
into a ball
inside of the verse
set
i
will
ll
EIN GOTT VERMAGS
What
lover of poetry has not read the story? Rainer
Rilke, that rootless poet
long
we know
whom
Maria
we’ve followed like a stray for so
the smell of his heels, has been lent the off-
season use of the Castle Duino by the Princess Marie von
Thurn und Taxis-Hohenlohe. The place is huge and stern, alternately menacing and boring, too austere even for a soul sold on austerity. Rilke, as sensitive to
climate trying. Yet
it
work.
Nevertheless,
Duino
it
weather as a vane, also found the
was economical.
It
spoke to him only of
poet would have preferred Capri.
the
was.
Pent up there by a bitter Adriatic winter and, more by the stones of the place
Muse
his
he continues
itself,
so that he feels barren, arid of
into himself like a stake
wooden cuckoo,
meant
for his
spirit,
own
for
to deal
loudly for
its
heart. Sterile as a
him
his
much
handmade
sex,
sham-
this fateful
morn-
and humiliating him, the Poet has had
—
yet driven deeply
months embarrassed
prized solitude with occult visitations and
ing
be deserted by
then, and surrounded like the sea below
by a loneliness which has
ing
to
willingly,
—
with an annoying business letter he feels asks too answer. Preoccupied, he walks along the precipi-
tous edge of the
Duino Castle
wind which buries
his breath.
hollow gourd, he hears
in his
cliffs, his
Then
.
.
.
head what
head bent into a bright then, like the rattle in a will
one day be the
cel-
Reading Rilke
ebrated question with which the Elegies are themselves: Wer,
wenn
ich schriee, horte
announce
at last to
mich denn aus der
Engel Ordnungen ?
Or
(in
phrase?)
the presence of any poet
—
in
is
possible to say the
it
other words:
Leishman. (1939/60)
Who,
if
cried,
I
would hear
me among
the angelic orders?
Who,
Behn. (1957)
if
cried out,
I
would heed me
amid the host of the Angels? MacIntyre. (1961)
Who,
if
among would hear me? shouted,
I
of angels
Garmey/Wilson. (1972) Who,
if
would hear me from
cried,
I
the hierarchy
the order of Angels?
Who
Boney. (1975)
Poulin. (1977)
of the angelic hosts would hear
me, even
if
And
cried,
if
I
I
cried out?
who’d
listen to
me
in
those angelic orders?
Young. (1978)
If
cried out
I
who would hear me up there among the angelic orders? What
Miranda. (1981)
angel,
if
I
cried
out,
would
me? cried out, would hear me Who, if among the angels’ hierarchies? cried out, would hear me Who, if among the angels’ hierarchies? Who, though cry aloud, would hear hear
Mitchell. (1982)
I
Flemming. (1985) Hunter. (1987)
I
I
me
in the
WHO,
Cohn. (1989)
among Hammer/Jaeger.
(1991)
If
I
if
angel order? I
cried out, might hear
me
the ranked Angels?
did cry out,
who would
through the Angel Orders?
57
hear
me
WILLIAM Who,
Oswald. (1992)
GASS
H.
if
cried out,
I
me
would hear
then, out of the orders of angels?
Who,
Gass. (1998)
if
I
me among
would hear
cried,
the Dominions of Angels?
many other words When, in 1975, Ingo Seidler presented In so
.
.
.
of English Versions of Rilke
his "Critical Appraisal
to a Rilke
Centennial
at
Wayne
State University, he remarked on "the astonishing bulk of avail1
able English versions of Rilke’s
in print, at least
according
catalogues. "Five complete translations of the
to publishers
Dnino
work
Elegies are listed”
(Leishman
to
Boney,
tion),
and Professor Seidler says he knows
two."
What must he
think
now when my
in
my enumera-
“of at least
another
catalogue (surely not
exhaustive) finds without trying fourteen complete versions as
many incomplete ones? Nor of course are the Elegies the target of the translators, who have given us new renderings
well as sole
of Rilke’s fiction (both novels and stories), his published poetry, his uncollected
into If
poems,
his early plays, his journals, his ventures
French verse, as well as many of I
receive
some
his countless letters.
our poet peevishly complaining as he picks his
narrow path
to the bastions?),
manners compel me thoughts
like a
game
powers, cry out from
even a nag from a nobody, good
to respond; its silliness will
of cards; but
my
if
I
No
whom
were
little
my
occupy
to entreat the higher
soul, pray to the so-called
poetry to he returned to me, for a
drought,
we imagine way down the
petty request in the post (can’t
gods for
my
rain after this long
would my words reach?
The mountains of the Abyss does not respond. Heaven The ocean holds no intermission. one.
But the voice, of course,
is
heart entertain no echo. is
The
as indifferent as the land.
not heard as the poet’s own.
comes from the clean wind, the
58
It
bora, burning his face like the
Reading Rilke
sun, and
has the same elemental force, the same cold grip, as
it
the streaming air which would
away over the
Thus tioner
is
it
him
like a leaf
not the fastidious, fussy
these words
and although addressed
(it
person of the peti-
little is
everybody’s elemental
to the Angels,
Angels spoke them, because their meaning small, or
the
mean
—earthbound —
as
most of our
most of our thoughts, hopelessly human
are,
and whirl him
glare of the sea.
who wonders
outcry);
lift
poem which
appears
like
is
and worries
we
are;
hence
the wind in our ear must have
the fundamental mystery and breathtaking grandeur
whenever we encounter
the
if
common,
not
fears
as
as
is
it
we
all
feel
and pure correct-
that simple, plain,
ness about the nature of things which only the gods possess.
These are not poems, then. These
must seem miraculous Well, can or, again,
.
him?
How
Why
like a flame.
any sense of sniveling. Yet the child’s. In any case, the Angels,
alone
cupid-like.
not to say heed.
They surpass
What
carry.
then does
the translators
My
empty few
come
cry
is
as the air, a cry
include
scarcely so crude as a shout.
Nor
Gabriel,
this
The
lines, will
more self-absorbed than Narcissus,
listen,
hear or heed
to
write “cry out” then? ... to avoid
this cry, in a
it is
fail
their indifference?
is
surely an inward cry, a cry to heaven as
blown out
the poet cry or shout
and do the angels
deep
they
verniags.
we make up our minds? does
cry out? aloud?
or listen to
Ein Gott
.
.
And
are miracles.
are they
who
l.c.
will
And
not hear,
let
angels, smallish,
has to fetch, Xoot, and
dissonant clamor from the tents of
to?
version has striven for a
tried to reflect the hierarchy
more euphonious
line
and has
which Ordnnngen suggests by
invoking one of the arrangements associated with the traditional
conception of angels, namely their division into seraphim,
cherubim, thrones ties,
—dominations,
virtues,
powers
—
principali-
archangels, angels; but Behn’s and Boney’s “hosts" are
59
— WILLIAM
MacIntyre’s “shout" and again
churchy, while
too
entirely
GASS
H.
Behn’s “heed" are simply misinterpretations.
As
for that preposition:
is it
"amid" them, "from" them, or Jaeger’s “through"
is
be “among the Angelic orders,”
to
“in” or “out" instead?
simply bizarre. Poulin wants the angels not
only to “hear” but to “listen," while
The nature
of Rilke’s Angels
is
would never arrange
design their constellations.
Mitchell and
want
it,
The
an angel
requires obedience.
might find themselves
no more than the
hierarchy
Flemming would have
to single out
Behn
such, as the Elegies will indicate
as they proceed, that although they
order, they
Hammer/
isn’t theirs,
an
might
even
if
Boney and Miranda
so.
it
stars
in
from the herd, while
like a calf
Hunter and Hammer/Jaeger bump “order" and “Angel" awkwardly together. Cohn’s expression “ranked Angels” sounds ludicrous in English (Angel A, Angel
No
one has
B
.
.
).
.
mimic the wenn-denn
tried to
division
—
a discre-
which was no doubt wise, though Oswald puts in one of them while incidentally doubling his “out" (“Who, if I cried out,
tion
would hear dering
me
then, out of the orders of angels?”). Poulin’s ren-
oddest of
is
all,
because the
initial
“And" implies a prior
speech, an earlier communication, although nothing, surely, prior to the poet’s tion,
Poulin
me” has if
me up
wrong
a deeply
tone), but
there").
our voice were
and were thus
isolation. In addi-
far too colloquial for the Elegies (“who’d listen to
totally the
would hear hear
is
profound recognition of his
is
to
These
Young
is
even worse (“who
are not the sounds
we should
echo from the edges of the distant gods
to return to us as a primitive original the
dappled shadow might replace
— might
cast
way
back
its tree.
The
Elegies are
dominated by Angels of an
icy sky
above and
the gravitating dactyls of a declining ground below, with the dactyls by far the
more powerful presence. When,
60
as in the
Reading Rilke
opening question, that meter as thankfully
when
embraced
The
easy tp maintain,
it
should be
accommodating woman. And
as an
the word order, so often a twisting and rocky road,
also straightforward, tell
is
why
us to listen as
hitherto only holy
individuality, the quirkiness, the
every translation
is
The
not be straightforward?
inevitable.
men
is
Elegies
have listened.
bone-headed nature of
see no reason to strive for these
I
qualities.
All in
all,
then,
Leishman must be accounted the most ade-
quate, and perhaps even the only acceptable, version: he has
roughly the right meter (unlike Poulin or Young, for instance);
he keeps the same sequence of words (unlike MacIntyre, Boney,
retaining the
and
Miranda,
Poulin,
Hammer/Jaeger),
especially
Germanic Engel Ordnungen; he maintains the
proper tone (unlike MacIntyre, Poulin, and Young); he has the correct interpretation (unlike
Behm,
mer/Jaeger, and Oswald); even
if
Poulin, Miranda,
Ham-
one might reasonably com-
plain that “angelic” in English carries too
many
inappropriate
connotations. Although Poulin gets generally bad marks, and
Young and Hammer/Jaeger “shout” seems to
Now we
to
'pliitzlich
MacIntyres
awful,
be the most jarring mistake.
reach that
unseemly hurry mich
me
pretty
are
“and”
to get in:
which Poulin was
und
gesetzt seibst, es
in
such an
nahme
einer
ans Elerz: ich verginge von seinem starkeren
Dasein.
Leishman.
And even
if
one of them suddenly pressed
against his heart,
I
me
should fade in the strength
of his stronger existence.
Behn.
Still,
should an Angel exalt and fold
his heart
I
should vanish,
being.
61
me
into
lost in his greater
WILLIAM MacIntyre.
GASS
H.
And supposing one to his heart,
I
of
them took me suddenly
would perish before
his stronger
existence.
Garmey/Wilson. And even heart:
one suddenly held
if
would
I
me
to his
dissolve there from his stronger
presence.
Boney.
Yet granted, one of them suddenly embraced
me,
would only perish from
I
his
stronger
being.
Poulin.
Even
if
heart,
I
one of them suddenly held
me
to his
d vanish in his overwhelming pres-
ence.
Young.
And suppose one suddenly
me
took
I
I
to his heart
would
shrivel
couldn’t survive
next to his greater existence.
Miranda.
Mitchell.
And even
if
braced me,
I
and even
one of them pressed
if
one of them impulsively emd be crushed by
against his heart:
I
its
strength,
me
suddenly
would be consumed
in that
overwhelming existence,
Flemming.
and even
if
one of them suddenly pressed
me
would perish
em-
against his heart,
I
in the
brace of his stronger existence.
Hunter.
And
should
were of
I
some incandescent
would
Even I
plea ascend,
gathered to the glory
my own Cohn.
my
faint
fail
if
would
heart,
flame of being
for the glare.
One
suddenly clasped
me
to his heart
die of the force of his being.
62
Reading Rilke
Hammer/Jaeger, and suppose one of them suddenly pulled
me
to his heart: I’d dissolve beside his stronger
existence.
me
and even supposing one suddenly took
Oswald.
close to the heart,
I
would perish from
that
stronger existence.
And even
Gass.
me
one of them suddenly held
if
against his heart,
would fade
I
in the grip of
that completer existence.
The
who
strength of the Angels
could
is
not the strength of Hercules,
even Antaeus from the earth (although we are
lift
offered a wrestler’s image), but consists in the louder da of
The Angels
a superior Dasein.
what the poet would be
are
he could free himself from human distraction, be indifferent to the point of like
noumena
all
are,
world of the work,
its
and
at
divinity,
absorbed
if
higher
swirling toward
the friendliest
its
—
himself
one with the work and the
radiant perfections, like those twice
phosphorescence: the lower the
he could
in
luminous worms which glow with the added glory of
shout,
if
that
source
like
own
flouncing outward like a
light
rare
their
instreaming
water softly
Rilkean
down
light
a drain.
Thus
hug of these Angels would be more than anyone
could bear.
Most
how
of the hands here hold the right cards, but few
to play
them. Leishman, otherwise excellent, reflecting the
sibilance of the
German, has the poet “fade
wrong preposition for the
know
for this phrase,
in the strength,” the
though the clearly
wrapped-within sense of the
original.
Behn
tries “fold,"
perhaps for that reason. Nevertheless, Leishman’s image
The other temptation embrace. The Angel is not out
one
right
is
too
be too amorous about
wrestlerish.
is
to
the
to
crush us, as Miranda has
it,
nor
is
he seeking a confidant, as Oswald and MacIntyre
63
inti-
WILLIAM mate (“took
me
heart"), nor
is
close to the heart,” “took
he showing, by
warmth, which a word
comes out
Why
GASS
H.
the heart?
To hear
GarmeyAVilson and
beat,
it
in
flatly, “die.”
are compared.
mode, but he uses both
word
suspect
I
is
cle as the reason.
Already
“I
somewhat
Leishman’s “fade” yet
tion.
we
In
“dissolve.
“perish,
MacIn-
though
Cohn
Elsewhere we are “consumed” or "crushed.”
we
Actually,
to feel the
which our own becomes
Hammer/Jaeger we
says
that
“exalt
and Poulin’s versions, we “vanish.” In
Boney, Oswald, and Flemming
.
one presumes,
actuality, against
tyre,
.
to his
some emotional
this gesture,
“embrace" suggests. Behn’s
like
insignificant. In Behn’s
.
suddenly
of nowhere.
power of the Angel’s
No
me
try to
Young
is
right, then, to
in
couldn’t survive” and “shrivel,” a
sexual.
Gass
going to go with
is
suggest something other than mus-
However, Gass “completer"
we can
be
is
an interpreta-
Behn, GarmeyAVilson,
detect, in at least
Boney, Miranda, and Cohn, a serious musical insensitivity. The utterly fatuous religious tone of “were
forces
me
to
Finally:
hope
Denn
I
gathered to the glory
that, for this translator, the
das Schone
Anfang den wir nock grade ,
ist
hunt
is
over.
nichts als des Schrecklichen
ertragen,
und wir bewnndern
es so,
well es gelassen verschmaht, uns zu zerstoren. Ein jeder Engel
ist
schrecklich.
Leishman/Spender.
For Beauty’s nothing but beginning of Terror
we re
adore
it
still
so
is
to destroy us.
Leishman.
just able to bear,
because
Each
it
and why we
serenely disdains
single angel
is
terrible.
For Beauty’s nothing but beginning of Terror
we re
adore
it
still
so
is
to destroy us.
64
just able to bear,
because
it
and why we
serenely disdains
Every angel
is
terrible.
Reading Rilke
Behn.
For beauty
is
only a seed of dread to be
endured yet adored since
An Angel
destroy us.
dread
MacIntyre.
.
.
so because
it
For Beauty
is
we can just admire
calmly disdains to
it
terrible.
is
only the beginning of a terror
barely endure, and what
is its
calm disdaining
Every Angel brings Boney.
in
and we
just barely endure,
destroy us. Every angel
Garmey/Wilson.
misted
is
nothing but the beginning of
is
we can
admire
alone,
.
For beauty terror
disdains to
it
For Beauty
is
we
so
to destroy us.
terror.
nothing but the beginning of
awesomeness which we can barely endure and we marvel
at
it
so because
disdains to destroy us.
angel Poulin.
Each and every
awesome.
is
Because beauty’s nothing but the terror
calmly
it
we can
hardly bear, and
because of the serene scorn
it
we
start of
adore
could
kill
it
us
with. Every angel’s terrifying.
Young.
Beauty can
only the
is
still
because
bear and it
For Beauty
we can it
awes us so
so coolly disdains to destroy us.
Every single angel
Miranda.
it
we much
touch of terror
first
is
is
terrible!
just the beginning of a terror
barely stand:
we admire
it
because
calmly refuses to crush us. Every angel
terrifies.
Mitchell.
For beauty terror,
is
nothing but the beginning of
which we
endure, and
65
we
still
are so
are just
able
awed because
to it
WILLIAM
GASS
H. *
serenely disdains to annihilate us. Every
angel
Flemming.
terrifying.
is
For beauty
is
nothing but the beginning of
which we
terror
endure
are barely able to
and are awed because
Each
to annihilate us.
it
serenely disdains
single angel
is terri-
tying-
For Beauty
Hunter.
only the infant of scarcely
is
and we are amazed
endurable Terror,
when
casually spares us. Every Angel
it
is
terrible.
Cohn.
Beauty
is
we can
as close to terror as
well
endure. Angels would not condescend to
damn
our meagre souls. That
awe and why they angel
Hammer/Jaeger.
is
we re
why
they
us so. Every
terrify
terrible!
But beauty’s nothing but the
we can
terror
is
just
fascinated by
manage it
start of that
to bear,
because
it
and
serenely
scorns to destroy us. Every angel
is
ter-
rifying.
Oswald.
For what strikes us as beauty but
all
we can
it
so,
because
nothing
s
beginning,
it
calmly dis-
bear of a terror
and we admire
is
dains to destroy us. Every angel strikes terror.
For Beauty
Gass.
a Terror
worship
is
we re only just able it
so because
to destroy us.
We which
nothing but the approach of
warn us of the
when we
difficulties to
66
and we
serenely disdains
Every Angel
have barely begun our labors will
it
to bear,
is
awesome.
strike a passage
come. The
fifteen of us
Reading Rilke
poem
have already trampled over the
way and
and
that,
fresh snow, veering this
s
starting fearfully at the least thing.
Now we
have to stop “translating" and ask ourselves just what
German
world the poet can mean.
the
in
obscurities and English
obscurities do not rhyme.
Beauty
We
is
an objective attribute, terror
must not
Cohn
is
a subjective state.
identify them, or even claim they are “close,” as
does. Beauty cannot be the start or the beginning of a
does
feeling, then, nor
it
cause terror the way
when we
cough. Nevertheless,
shall feel terror shortly.
It
we know that we That’s why used the
see beauty
announces
word "approach." Now, however,
I
it.
I
think less of that selection,
and, pushing the Annunciation imagery,
"Beauty
is
When
the herald of a Terror
the voice spoke the
we
of the flutter of angel wings. Yet
come, not
hers,
I
prefer to say that
re only just able to bear."
him, Rilke had nearly
first line to
his Life of Mary cycle,
completed
coldcauses a
a
and it is
head was naturally
his his
barrenness that
and the angels who occupy the Elegies
is
full
over-
will not
resemble any Mary may have known.
Edna
Vincent Millay wrote that “Euclid alone has looked
St.
on beauty bare.” they swoon. Rilke’s
Men
Or
are routinely blinded by the divine.
Or go mad.
In this case,
disdains to destroy us.
"it”
vague pronouns, with their indefinite and ambiguous
referents, are exasperating. Angels are the nearest
we re
ever
going to get to pure Being. They resemble Leibniz’s .monads
more than things-in-themselves.
It is
the intense reality of the
Angels (signified by their Beauty) which the shade.
What we
because they
aren’t
adore
is
terrifies us, casts
the indifference of the Angels,
about to clasp us to their "bosom.” They
simply provide the opportunity for us to
comparison of
make
will
the frightening
their reality with ours.
Angels can’t be are terrible.
us in
The
terrible.
roast
is
Pot-holed roads are
terrible. Terrifying, yes
67
terrible. .
.
.
Times
terrible
.
.
.
WILLIAM “Awesome"
no.
ment, but
mean
I
is
think
H.
GASS
word being given tTe teenage treatstill possible to say “awesome," and not
also a it is
the noise from an electrolouded band.
Beauty, in Angels and elsewhere,
inhuman
perfection, for
grain of nature
art,
the revelation of a wholly
is
as Rilke wrote, goes against the
and transcends man. Just
hension of the Forms
is
as, in Plato,
any appre-
achieved through a deadly separation of
the rational soul from the influence of the body, so in these Elegies a
glimpse of such purity
is
tiginous breach in the self as might be
of earth
—one which can
thought that taken, since
it
is
wrong word, and
lator’s part to
kill
a
of a ver-
mighty quake
opened. Poulin’s
it
us strikes
me
as mis-
the sovereign remoteness of Beauty itself
which prevents our destruction. the
made by
close as abruptly as
scorn which might
is
it
means
possible only by
its
"Kill" is
metaphysically quite
use suggests a basic failure on the trans-
appreciate the
momentous
oracular tone of these
mysterious and magnificent poems.
Leishman improves on which
is
his first try
by replacing "Each
redundant anyway, with "Every.
pay attention
to
We
single,”
should certainly
what Leishman does because he has estab-
lished his authority already; nevertheless, the elisions here ("For
Beauty’s
[is]
nothing but [the] beginning of
help the flow of the line
at all,
[a]
Terror") don’t
although for awkwardness, what
could surpass the swan-like wobble of Flemming’s "For beauty is
to
nothing but the beginning of terror which
endure and are awed because
late us”?
it
we
are barely able
disdains to annihiserenelv j
MacIntyre also suffers from contractions, while Poulin
continues to go for the colloquial, doubling “because,” inserting the contraction, lowering the language, letting a line end slackly
with "with." Prose has begun to creep over some versions vine. Gass, as usual,
wants both the terror and the awesomeness
of the Angels, but the "awesomeness” in Flunter,
like a
Boney
and Cohn have already begun writing
68
is
awful. Behn,
their
own poem.
Reading Rilke
May
"Misted"? “Infant"? "Meagre"?
th?
Muses hurry them
to
their reward.
To
this point the translators’ task
has been reasonably easy
number of them from creating special difficulties of their own the way a drunk will bend the straightest road; and we may be at least allowed the suspicion
which has not prevented
that
is
it
a
the translator’s side of the equation which won’t
which refuses
to
—
total
bother to understand their
own to
creativity
have
said.
and with
agreeably.
Many
That would interfere with
texts.
their perception of
They do not wish
do not
translators
to
become
their
what the poet ought the trumpet through
which another’s breath blows, and indeed the English horn often overcomes
its
notes, so
we
hear
it,
not Wagner, so
it’s “its
sweetness which overcomes us, the way a rich syrup tops a sundae,
and we
sition
easily miss the cool refinements of line
beneath the hot thick flow of tone.
And
they would rather be original than right; they insist on
repainting the stolen horse; sign if
it,
as
if
their
“it’s
my translation,"
work were the work of art.
printers did the same, putting out their
their personalized versions of to the
and compo-
As You Prefer
they say as they
How should we fare own /t?
Lost Paradise,
Love and honor
—one who doesn’t care where
shameless thief
came from,
or even
if it
looks like another’s, so long as
his horse
runs in
it
the money.
Translators are on a par with poets
when
it
comes
to
being
mean-spirited. Walter Arndt, in his arrogant collection called
The Best of Rilke (there are no Elegies), complains bitterly about the efforts of others, and one can enjoy his diatribes, if not the
poems themselves. Considering Arndt says of one esteemed
line 4 of the “Panther"
poem,
translator,
the drugged languor of the stanza
is
spoiled, from
mere
ineptitude, by the indecent hop-and-skip of an anapaest.
69
WILLIAM
H.
GASS
rhymes, moreover, are replaced by assonances. Close
Its
assonances may be unavoidable second-bests occasionally, but to this pains-faking paraphrast they are neither close
nor occasional but part of a cheery what-the-hellitude that Rilke, of
Arndt
is
delicate spirits, has not deserved
all
who
scornful of those
which they
try to translate
and there
are not native,
practice frequently leads to errors,
points out, though
we could
use a
he deals with every mistake as opinion,
it is
if
is
meter and rhyme, and
also,
to
no doubt that such a
some
which he properly
of
little less
gloat
and
glee, since
he has caught a criminal. In
possession of the language into which he is
from a language
my
that the translator have native-like
more important
chosen poem. Arndt
2 .
I
trying to put his
is
think, idolatrous about genre
and
on twisting normal English orders
insists
inside out simply to satisfy a scheme. I’ve
how
already complained of
political
it
anyway. The
all is
poet, while composing, struggles to rule a nation of greedy self-
main
serving malcontents; every idea, however tangential to the
theme
it
may have been
subject beneath
its
variation,
and
wants
fructifying self as
scheming a forty-days whole dance; every
initially,
rain; every jig
la-di-da
and
refrain, every
to
submerge the central
though each
and
drizzle
trot desires to
line length,
were
be the
image, order, rhyme,
well-mouthed vowel, dental
click,
silent design, represents a corporation, cartel, union, well-heeled
lobby, a Pentagon or ests;
NRA,
eager to turn the law toward
every word wants to enjoy a potency so supreme
culate the others
(I
have known the
outrageously); and then there
be
in charge, a fraud like Oz’s
and
trying to
is
little letter
the poet too,
a
it
its inter-
will
emas-
to act just that
who is supposed
to
Wizard, teetering on a paper throne
keep a dozen personal insecurities from finding out
about each other; trying
one poetic demand
at
to
overcome the temptation
the expense of another
70
to give in to
—the
Useful
Reading Rilke
instead of the Alluring, the Alluring rather than what’s Essential
—
which prefer
trying to avoid habits
first
weak ones, encourage the facile, and ruin Thus the completed poem is a series tions, a ally
thoughts, indulge
the work. of delicate adjudica-
peace created from contention, and there are occasion-
moments when every element runs together same end and every citizen cries out, "Aye!
those beautiful
freely
toward the
Must
the translator
such miracles?
He
mimic
this
The
must.
mess, and take the measure of
translator,
of his best self while working in another
guage, must
somehow register
remaining
in
command
unaccommodating
lan-
these decisions and adjustments,
many permissions and denials issued by the poet in the first place. The result, of course, is the record of a reading, and almost never a poem not the economical setting down of a the
—
critical interpretation,
although the interpretation must take
one step beyond that toward the compound, multi-
place, but
spliced and engineered, performance
recording studio.
Still,
to sing Rilke in
machines have gloriously
A god
can do
But
it.
man
how can
a
His soul
is split.
which emerges from
falsified
tell
follow
And
English, even
your voice: Ein Gott vermags.
him through the
lyre’s strings?
at the intersection
of two heart-riven roads, there
is
no temple
to Apollo. •
is
not mere longing,
the wooing of whatever lovely can be attained; singing
is
being. Easy for a god.
But when are we?
And when does he
fill
us
with earth and stars?
Young man, even
if
this isn’t
when
me,
Song, as you have taught,
it,
your yearning,
your voice hursts out of your mouth.
7i
a
WILLIAM Learn
to forget
GASS
H.
such impulsive song.
It
won’t
last.
Real singing takes another breath.
A
breath
made
of nothing. Inhalation in a god.
So find an English song
for these
3 .
words, these phrases, from
Spanische Trilogie," for instance:
“Die
A wind
.
.
der den
.
Schein
Himmels-Lichtung fangt ....... das grosse dunkle Nichtmehrsein der Welt ausatmend hinnimmt ....... aus
zerrissner
schlaftrunknen Kindern an so fremder Brust ite,
.
.
.
.
.
.
You don t have
zusammennimmt.
it:
Nor
.
.
,
wie ein Meteor in seiner Schwere nur die
zusammennimmt. at
.
are
to
A god can’t do
poems approached
my favorSumme Flags or,
know German.
it.
innocence, and with the
in
absence of lubricating forethought. Have we not had those
Many tions as
if
who
direct
The Tempest
as
if it
drive
written now.
a noisy creek;
and direct
Why? The
let’s
to suffer
took place in Central Park?
of our translators have programs
—which
Just look
—organized preconcep-
their labors. Holderlin
cry of the current
is
must sound
continuous
like
have a Hegel for our time, a Kant for the coun-
we throw Racine into a hearty street vernacular, update Dido and Aeneas? Or if nostalgia overtakes us, we can run
try club. Shall
as well in reverse.
Does not MacIntyre
translate
“welkin,” down-dating Rilke in the direction of
Welcome
Weltraum
as
Chaucer?
The second section of this "First twenty feet. Und so verhalt ich mich denn
to the pole vault.
Elegy” puts the bar at
und verschlucke den Lockruf dunhelen Schluchzens. Several words from the opening line find re-employment. A harsh and overwhelming music surrounds these bird-sung meanings, and a to
deforming pattern,
like a
bound
foot,
unreasonably demands
be danced.
Leishman/Spender. And so
I
keep down
my heart, and
swallow
the call-note of depth-dark sobbing.
72
Reading Rilke
And
Leishman.
so
I
repress myself, and swallow the
call-note of depth-dark sobbing.
And
MacIntyre.
so
1
restrain myself
and swallow the
luring call of dark sobbing.
Garmey/Wilson.
So
I
withhold myself and keep hack the
my
lure of
And
Boney.
so
I
dark sobbing.
luring call with
So
Poulin.
I
And own So
Mitchell.
I
my
dark
And
cry.
dark birdcall,
And
i.
2
And
.
so
my dark sobbing.
so
I
so
I
we try to stay German words, a
call of
The
contain myself; choke back the
it.
Thus the
innermost
my
effort,
initial
is
which,
like the
Mother absent
to
costs. is
remove the
light, is so alive
s
deepest nature. The cry
itself is a fear
we worship
pointless, as the
73
famous
lines
is
held
out of fright-
ened gratitude; because the cry comes from the child
anyhow
all
an appealing one on two counts, and one
back because the fear
it is
and we
for instance),
which “The Third Elegy” confirms,
which issues from the poet
because
part.
childhood heart.
luring calls, these dark sobs, at
its terror,
cry
my
master myself and hold back the
that of the frightened child calling for
in
dark sobbing.
nearly vomitous calamity results (consider
controlling image,
darkness with
my
close to the immediate English sense of the
Leishman’s unfortunate
must avoid these
and hold
force myself, swallow
I
appealing outcry of
If
my
my sobbing.
appealing child’s cry of
Gass
choke back
I
hold myself back and swallow the
back the surging
Gass
sobs.
since that’s the case
call-note of
Flemming.
somber
control myself and choke hack the
lure of
Young.
and suppress the
restrain myself
in us;
and
which follow
— WILLIAM
H.
GASS
A
mournfully but selfishly
make use
Youngs casual
prosiness
the case
he
.
.
The
is
is
“call
idea that the cry
effective the
is
meant
smoke and steam. But
tree or a
is
way
Although
habit, as
to be, collide like
its
a child’s sob-
two
I
see
all
the
trains.
Rilke likes to pass through
we ll
s
alluring as the mat-
God, not Angels, not men, not birds
walk or a
like?
the only translator to put Rilke's bird on
ing calls of the bird are
ranks: not
is
again inexplicable (“And since that
bing might be, and the notion that the cry
only
we can
there
is
of?
However, what does Rilke say the
perch.
who
reiterate: alas,
either.
Perhaps a
see, reading on, hut our friends
are few.
Gass
3.
So
I
master myself to
instinctive as a
stifle
mating song. Alas,
we re
animals are aware that here, in this
I
it
Gass
4.
is
because
times, or
is
there
we can
to stifle”
is
home
awkward; ”... instinctive as
an interpretation, but I
not very happily
—our interpreted world.
master myself
mating song”
keep
who
on? Not Angels, not men, and even the observant
call
“So
an appealing outcry
at
the
moment
I
want
a to
think the bird has to be there. Birds coo some-
moan, but they never
sob.
master myself to muffle an appealing heart’s cry instinctive as a mating song. Alas, who is there we can
So
1
call
Not another
on?
“heart,”
many m&m’s. The
I
can hear
my
inner critic saying, and too
pattern of alliteration could be shifted:
74
Reading Rilke
Gass
So
5.
I
control myself to cut short an appealing outcry
instinctive as a
But cut short
fle
there
is
we can
on?
call
We re
mating song. Alas, who
and too temporal
a bit too colloquial,
is
not talking about a vacation. “So
— an appealing outcry
As we advance
into the elegy as into
I
to hoot.
control myself to muf-
some movie
Africa, the
weaknesses of our company become increasingly manifest: the heat is getting to them, the rotten gin, the drums, the flies.
Who
but fish swallow lures? Garmey/Wilson suggest that the
poet withholds himself, and
employs
somber sobs
his
imagine a version
to
Boney
suppress his luring
much worse
pretentious silliness? Poulin is
my first
than
readers to believe that this great
others, as
the poet actually
that
poem
call. It is
try.
Shall
translation
is
cleaner than the
customary with him, and that
is
not a minor merit
s
the unwashed; yet for any poem, song
to its being,
and
all
we hear
Fur den Gott
moment,
we permit
contains lines of such
when among doors.
hard to
for instance,
ein
teristically believe their
essential
here are the squeaks of unoiled
Leichtes.
when
is
the
There
poem
is
that wonderful
asks lovers
(who charac-
arms encircle an exciting and excited
body) to add the actual emptiness they are grasping to the ity ol
space (Wirf aus den
Armen
die Leere zu
total-
den Raumen
hinzu, die wir atmen; vielleicht dass die Vogel die erweiterte Luft fiihlen mit innigerm Flug ),
and Leishman gives us
a
triumphant
rendering:
Leishman. Fling the emptiness out of your arms spaces feel the
we
breathe
extended
— maybe
air in
75
that
to
[sic]
more fervent
broaden the
the birds will
Bight.
WILLIAM Alongside
H.
attempt
this, Poulin’s
is
GASS awkward and
Garmey/Wilson) he emphasizes the
that (like
prosy, except
interior
meanings
Rilke. that apply to innigerm, always appropriate with
Throw the emptiness in your arms out into space we breathe; maybe birds will feel the air
Poulin.
ning as they
fly
that thin-
deeper into themselves.
Poulin has no knack for the right word here.
If
we
are hurling
away from us what we’ve once hugged, isn’t “fling” the only rect name for the gesture which empties our arms? Mitchell
Mitchell.
is
cor-
significantly better.
Fling the emptiness out of your arms into the spaces
we
breathe; perhaps the birds will feel the expanded
air
with more passionate
Gass, a jackal
who comes
flying.
along after the
to
kill
nose over
the uneaten hunks, keeps everything he likes:
Gass
i.
Fling the emptiness out of your arms to broaden the spaces
we
breathe
— maybe then
the amplified air with an inner
Gass
2.
am
flight.
Fling the emptiness out of your arms to broaden the maybe then birds will feel the spaces we breathe
—
amplified
I
air
with more fervent
flight.
obliged to point out that Flemming,
came upon “flight,”
birds will leel
but
whose
rather late in the day, also uses I
wonder
at his
word
translation
fervent
we
expanded
breathe
—perhaps the
air in their
76
qualiK
order:
Flemming. Fling out of your arms the emptiness spaces
to
I
into
the
birds will feel the
more fervent
flight.
Reading Rilke As we pursue these comparisons tediously from line to line and verse to verse, it becomes evident that Leishman, Poulin, and Mitchell have given us the only tolerable versions, and that they are quite different in execution.
I
spirit as well as in
he awkwardness of Leishman
s
the details of their
frequent Germanic
constructions, his sometimes overly noisy line, the
jumbo
mumho
that gets into them, the oh-so-literary faces he makes,
the occasional inaccuracy, the thickets of confusion
be rabbits to run through:
now
qualities
we
else,
to
are certainly as familiar with these
as with the faults of a friend, for
more than anyone
we need
J.
B.
Leishman,
has given us our poet, Bilke, in English
Herter Norton has rendered the prose), and his lines have been impressed on our sensibilities like creases of bedclothing (as
on sleeping bodies;
when
it
is
impossible to remove them, especially
they dent so handsomely, and “immemorial sap mounts in
our arms like this
when we
love.
Yet he will do his derivative dances,
Hopkins jig from “The Second Elegy”:
Leishman. Let the archangel perilous now, from behind the stars, step
but a step
beating, our heart
down
hitherwards: high up-
would out-beat
us.
Who are you?
Poulin, our second, younger, far fresher horse, neatly reduces this to:
Poulin.
If
the archangel, the dangerous one behind the
stars,
took just one step
down toward
quicker pounding of our heart would
us today: the kill us.
Who
are you?
Meanwhile, Stephen Mitchell, presently our most popular translator of Bilke s work, goes back to Leishman, because Leishman is struggling to capture qualities in Bilke s lines that
77
WILLIAM
GASS
H.
are really there, while Poulin quietly erases them. Mitchell
achieves this improvement:
Mitchell.
But
^
the archangel now, perilous, from behind the
if
took even one step
stars
my
pencil angrily through the paper,
through the passage
i.
first this
way, then
I
stumble
that:
the perilous great Angel behind the stars to
Were
down
step
a
single
step
toward
us
now, our
stepped-up heart would overheat and break
Who Gass
2.
Yet
us.
are you?
the archangel, perilous now, were to step but
if
a step
down toward
us from behind the stars, our
heartbeaten heart would burst our chest.
own
to
Who are you?
death.
Gass
own
our
us:
and higher, would beat us
heart, beating higher
Before pushing
down toward
Who
are you?
and Mitchells translations are frequently superior to Leishman’s in terms of what they do not attempt. In “The Ninth Poulin’s
occurs the famous heart-and-hammer
Elegy,” for instance,
image:
Leishman. Between
the
hammers
lives
on our
between the teeth the tongue, which, still
Poulin.
as
in spite of all,
continues to praise.
Our
heart survives between
tongue between the teeth Mitchell.
heart,
hammers,
is still
just as the
able to praise.
Between the hammers our heart endures, just as the tongue does between the teeth and, despite that,
still is
able to praise.
Reading Rilke
Our
Gass.
heart dwells between
between the
teeth,
hammers,
wherd
the tongue
like
remains, notwithstand-
it
ing, a continual creator of praise.
Leishman
lets
the
German
twist his line. Poulin
ter bite, like straightened teeth,
Images
like this
—
s
row has
a bet-
but he finishes too quickly.
of a space enlarged by the emptiness in a
lovers arms; of a bat ricocheting through the air like a crack
through a cup; of a child’s death stuffed in the child’s like
mouth
like
made from
gray bread and
the core of an apple
.
.
.
no
.
.
.
the ragged core of a sweet apple; or the ideas themselves:
that the world exists
nowhere but within and therefore the
springtimes have need of us; that the youthfully dead have a
meaning and
special
life
and death run
through the same tap; that
we
like
hot and cold
are here just to speak
claim the word; that love should give
its
and pro-
beloved an unfastening
—
and enabling freedom; that praise is the thing they belong to no language, but to the realm of absolute image and pure idea, where a simple thought or bare proportion can retain its elementary power; and
it is
the ubiquitous presence of these type-
tropes and generalizing “ideas” in Rilke that
him possible
at all, as their relative
Mallarme makes him Poulin Elegies
,
absence
someone
like
uncomfortable, not with the rough free form of the but with their metaphysical grandeur. The lighter is
to
Orpheus
while Leishman’s tread there
is
too heavy,
most successful moments,
long after the
The
in
translating
shape as smoke.
as difficult to
translucency of the Sonnets
in his
makes
trials
swamp had
as
dried and
if
its
is
more
still
to his liking,
too elegiac, even
he had continued to slog residual dusts
had blown.
of the translator can contain no better testimony
that they are trials indeed than the abrupt
and
of the Sonnets to Orpheus, an opening
which so beautifully
describes the
poems themselves: Da
79
stieg ein
thrilling
Baum.
opening
WILLIAM
GASS
H. *
A
Leishman.
O
ascending there.
tree
Orpheus
O tall tree in the ear!
sings!
MacIntyre. There arose a
Orpheus
pure transcension!
Oh,
^
Oh, pure transcension! Oh,
tree.
sings!
O
tall
tree in the ear!
Somewhere a tree ascended. Oh sheer transcendence. Oh Orpheus singing. Oh tall tree lofted in
Pitchford.
the ear.
A
Poulin.
O
tree sprang up.
pheus
sheer transcendence!
O
Or-
O tall tree in the ear!
sings!
A tree ascended there. Oh pure transcendence! Oh Orpheus sings! Oh tall tree in the ear!
Mitchell.
Flemming. There rose pheus
O
a tree.
And
sings.
magic transcendence! Or-
in the ear a tree!
O
pure transcendency!
O
Or-
Norton.
There rose a
Gass
O tall tree in the ear! A suddenly ascending tree. O pure transcendency! O Orpheus sings! O tall tree in the ear! pheus
i.
Merit
it
singing!
spread pretty evenly here. Except for Pitchford
is
“Somewhere special
tree.
way
a tree ascended.” Actually, this tree shoots
—
it
does not simply
does the climbing
—
it
up
s
in a
Instead of being climbed,
rise.
scales the sky
—and
in that lies its tran-
scendence. Both Leishman and Gass are after a kind of "going up.” Gass,
who
word which would “scaled,”
disease.
someone drowning
flails like
reflect that rising music, but the
and no one wants
“There climbed a
in English.
here, found the
Yet “scaled”
is
to
keep company with flaking and
tree” or
"There scaled
a tree” are silly
so nearly the right word.
ness, this. Poulin puts the
word was
suddenness
while Gass expansively explains
it.
A bitter busi-
in the verb, a
good
idea,
MacIntyres rocky rhythm
prevents any real rising (arose /a tree). Gass, again, defeats his
own
sense with an overlong
seem
line.
Both MacIntyre and Mitchell
insensitive to the differences
80
between "O and “Oh and
Reading Rilke
“Oh,”.
To
is
odd enough, but Flemming
in there. Pitchford
postpones the problem. In
find a tree in your ear
almost sticks
it
“Oh rats!” or “Oh my God!” hut never Oh transubstantiation!” Though "transcendency” goes better
English, one exclaims:
with
“tree’
than
and Norton,
its
difficult to
is
it
other forms do. Between Leishman, Poulin,
natural in English. There
about Norton’s honest
So Orpheus
more
is
nevertheless something satisfactory
literalism.
and
sings,
is
choose, although Poulin
a
tall
tree springs
up
in the ear.
This
pure wand of song creates a clearing into which charmed animals are drawn to listen to Orpheus, who could move the trees as well as the wind.
We
must
forbid the image to
remind us of
Disney.
Leishman.
Creatures of silence pressing through the clear intricated
MacIntyre
wood from
Animals from the
opened wood came Pitchford.
Out
lair
and nest
silence,
forth
.
.
.
from the clear now
from nest and den
of such quiet, out of each
lair
and
Mitchell.
.
wood
.
.
.
Flemming.
lairs
.
.
.
Creatures of stillness crowded from the bright
unbound
forest,
out of their
lairs
and nests
.
.
.
For creatures stepped soundlessly from clearings of forests and left
lair
and nest behind
.
.
.
Creatures of stillness thronged out of the clear released
“Disintricated”
word
.
Creatures of silence crowded out of the clear freed forest, out of their dens and
Norton.
.
nest,
animals crept from their disenchanted Poulin.
dis-
is
replaces
wood from
lair
and nesting place
.
.
.
an inspired Shakespearean coinage, but the gelosten (with
its
twin suggestion of “listen”
and “loosen”), and we are no longer
in those intricated elegies
it
is
where the compaction would have been appropriate. Leish-
81
WILLIAM man and MacIntyre (as
GASS
H.
preserve the rhyme
scheme
they attempt to do throughout), yet
a^strange sort
is
it
ef the original
of preservation which so often forces the English into grotesque
shapes. Poulin and Norton have a better plan. to
They allow rhyme
occur as the sense of the language readily permits
gesting the
sonnet form rather than duplicating
ming’s emphasis (stressing what the animals all
left
behind)
Pitchford claims the
when
exactly the opposite has happened.
fining until Orpheus’ enchanting
in a tight
The
forests are con-
music releases them. Poulin’s
His version
fine.
is
woods have been disenchanted
boot.
is
sug-
Flem-
it.
wrong, and his lines are as painful as walking
"freed forest”
it,
clearly superior in every
is
respect.
Skipping a few
lines:
And where
Leishman. less
than a hut had harboured what
came
before
thronging,
dimmest longing
a refuge tunneled out of
with lowly entrance through a quivering door,
you
built
them temples
sense of sound.
in their
Where
MacIntyre.
scarce a
humble
hut for such reception was before, a hiding-place of the obscurest yearning,
with entrance shaft whose underpinnings tremble,
you made
for the beasts
temples
in their hearing.
And where
Pitchford.
had stood a secret
to receive
and shelter
hardly a hut
this,
you made
burrow out of the darkest need,
an opening on which strung columns vibrate,
you
built a
temple
for
them out
of hearing.
And where
Poulin.
hardly a hut before to take this a
dugout carved from
82
there'd
in,
their darkest desire
been
Reading Rilke
with 3
lintel of
trembling timber
you erected temples
for
them
And where
Mitchell.
inner ear.
in their
there had been
just a makeshift hut to receive the music, a shelter nailed
up out of their darkest
with an entryway that shuddered
you
built a
in
longing,
the wind
temple deep inside their hearing.
Flemming.
And where there was scarcely a hut to shelter them, a hiding place out of their darkest longings,
there you created temples in their ears.
Norton.
And where hardly a hut had been to take this
before
in,
a covert out of darkest longing
with an entrance way whose timbers tremble,
you
built
temples for them
For everyone but Poulin the if
poem
in their hearing.
falls into artificial
the loosened petals of a real rose turned to plastic as they
reached the ground. Leishman’s “quivering door" moreover, the language is
pieces, as
is
always a help for those
animal
is
too
young
den instead of
is
a disaster;
as puffy as a dissipated face.
who need
to ride.
I
a pony, but this time the
would rather Poulin had used
a dugout, since a
canoe doesn’t belong here.
final try follows:
There rose a
O
Orpheus
tree.
sings!
Norton
O pure uprising! O tall tree in the ear!
And hushed all things. Yet even in that silence a new beginning, beckoning, new bent appeared. Creatures of silence thronged from the clear released trees, out of their
83
lairs
and
nests,
a
My
—— WILLIAM and
their quiet
GASS
H.
was not the consequence *
of any cunning, any fear,
but was because of listening. Growl, shriek, roar,
shrank
And where
to the size of their hearts.
ramshackles
to shelter
there’d
been
such sounds before
dens designed from their darkest desires,
just
with doorways whose doorposts trembled
you
built a
temple
The Sonnets
in the precincts of their
hearing
4 .
are written in a light, flowing, yet terribly con-
densed language of incredible musicality, verbal playfulness,
and sudden invention. Metamorphosis
What
tion.
is
one
to
that overpowering
do with
schwieg.
Dock
way
the third line picks
seibst in der
Verschweigung
own poor
ever possible and by whatever harmonious
may seem
and
.
is
Und alles One can do
?
.
iiber-
transcription wher-
means
will I
work.
think, avoid
between earth
a kind of vegetable bridge
immanent and the transcendent. It is a tree like the forest, yet it is made of music. It is this ... It is
sky, the
those of that
.
.
Soon
.
tempted
One and
.
“e” in
up:
it
perverse, but the translator must,
construing: a tree
of opera-
management of “i” and Da stieg ein Baum. O reine
nothing, only try to enrich one’s
It
mode
their
Rilke’s
first line:
steigungl or with the
is
is
let
I
may know
to offer the reader
my own good, and be from my tree of knowledge.
much
too
an apple
generally wise to render the
the poet’s
poem
explain
itself.
for
poem
Generally
2
It
was nearly
from
a girl
this joyful
who went
forth
union of song and
84
as the poet wrote
lyre,
.
.
.
it
Reading Rilke
and shone so
clearly through the veils of her youth,
and made herself
And
slept in
a
bed within
me. And
slept inside her sleep:
all
the trees which had always
meadow-deep distances
my ear.
amazed me,
as touchable as skin,
and every astonishment that has ever been.
She
slept the world. Singing
how could you have made she never wanted to be
God,
her so complete
first
awake?
See: she rose and slept.
Where
is
her death?
O will you find the hidden theme
before your song sings
From me The
first
its
own
grave?
—where does she fade set
of Sonnets
to?
still
nearly a
5
appeared unbidden before the
remainder of the Elegies was given. The second with the exhilarating knowledge that the Elegies 17, for
girl ...
set
exist.
is
written
There’s n,
instance:
Leishman.
Where,
in
upon what
what
ever-blissfully
trees, out of, oh,
watered gardens,
what gently dispetalled
flower-cups do these so strange-looking fruits of consolation mature?
MacIntyre. Where,
what ever-happily watered garden, on what trees, from what tenderly stripped flowerin
calices ripen the strange fruits of consolation?
Pitchford.
Where,
in
what forever mercifully drenched
gar-
dens, in what trees, out of what defoliated budcalyxes,
once so
delicate,
compassion ripen?
85
do the rare
fruits
of
— WILLIAM Where,
Poulin.
what
GASS
H.
what heavenly watered gardens,
in
what
from
trees,
lovingly
in
unsheathed
flower-calyxes do the strange fruits of consolation
ripen?
Where,
Norton.
what ever-blessedly watered gardens,
in
on what
trees,
out of what tenderly unleaved
blossom-calyxes do the exotic fruits of consolation ripen?
Where,
Spiers.
in
whichever
blissfully
watered gardens, on
which Trees, and out of which tenderly unpetaled flower cups
Do
they ripen, the strange fruits of
consolation?
Leishman
is
sappy. MacIntyre
heard of Vietnam. Poulins "heavenly”
ment over fruits of
though
"bless”
and
"bliss.”
I
it
is
—
poems, these
fruits, are
means the
strange, yes, even alien
their trees that are faraway
is
an instant improve-
don’t think Rilke
consolation to be exotic
never
insipid. Pitchford has
is
and
These
foreign.
strange because they are unbidden.
Eden was long ago closed
for repairs. Spiers replaces the
"what” with the word “which”
And
word
—why? However, her “unpetaled
flower cups” seems the most natural and least forced. In Ger-
man, the prepositional march from
an through aus
and yet Poulin (alone) ignores
bly important, to resort to the in
in to
kind of explanation
I
just
it.
One
is
is terri-
tempted
warned about: Where,
what beautifully cared-for gardens, on what inspired
trees,
from what gently unpetaled flower cups do these unexpected fruits of If
consolation ripen?
we had been choosing
chocolates, this last one would have
been a jelly. "Forever mercifully drenched” indeed. partly bitten in
body back and
the row: n,
try
another piece just a
13.
86
Let’s put little
its
earlier
Reading Rilke Leishman.
Anticipate
now,
like
all
were they behind you
farewells, as
the winter going past. For through
some
winter you feel such wintriness bind you, your then out-wintering heart will always outlast.
MacIntyre. Keep ahead of
parting, as
all
you, like the winter that
is
just
if
were behind
it
now
passed. In win-
you are so endlessly winter, you find that, getting through winter, your heart on the whole will ters
last.
Be ahead of
Poulin.
like the
all
Departure, as
winter that
if it
were behind you
one so endlessly winter
ters there’s
among win-
just passed. For
s
that,
wintering
out, your heart will really last.
Mitchell.
Be ahead of
all
behind you,
like the
For
among
though
parting, as
it
already were
winter that has just gone by.
these winters there
is
one so endlessly
winter that only by wintering through
it
will
your
heart survive.
Be
Norton.
in
advance of
behind you For
among
all
parting, as
the winter that
like
winters one
that, overwintering,
is
though just
is
were
it
going.
so endlessly winter
your heart once for
all will
hold
out.
one of the great sonnets, one of the most typically Rilkean in theme, too, one of the most moving Epictetus This
might
is
have
translate.
penned
There
is
it
first
—and of
all
—
a
poem
quite
impossible
the contrast between
to
‘ahead
and “behind,” which MacIntyre and Poulin retain, but their peril because the idea is really best expressed simply
at
as
Leishman does: “Anticipate all farewells.” Four “winters” follow, and in the last line, three iibers. All five of our contes-
87
—
— WILLIAM tants put in every
one of these winters, some more smoothly
than others (Poulin
the strain
Poulin
s
thought thought
is
clearly first), but
two "outs into the
less, forces
is
final line of the quatrain,
motto, and for the Sonnets
simply allowed to have
moon, reducing bollixing the
clearly a
it is
his
rhyme with
rhythms
meaning.
"Be dead forever
is
clearly
good one. His
What can
Eurydice
in
mean?
that
"Remain with Eurydice
—
”
we
following quatrain
the
since you
Possibly:
realm of death.” Mitchell
in the
more
life
your song,” although
into
seamless
the
that’s
looked
then you ought
at resurrection,
dead
arise
circles the
closed the book
interprets the lines plausibly: "Be forever
gladly
it
poor prose, and badly
high time
is
It
a line so long
to those of
back and cost her her chance
to
though
MacIntyre bungles
effect.
its
on him.
to
No Sweat
fear-
clean and direct, and the positive poetry of that
is is
Leishman, always
such that the poem sweats.
things badly, arriving at a
begins.
GASS
H.
Eurydice
in
proclaimed
not exactly Rilke’s wording.
What
do?
Anticipate like the
all
farewells, as
if
they were behind you
among
winter that’s just past, for
winters
there will be one so relentlessly winter that in overwintering
it
Remain with Eurydice
your heart
in the
—among pale shades
harmony
in a fading
be a ringing glass that shatters as
Be is
be readied to
realm of death
singing, praising, to realize the
Here
will
it
in
—
last.
rise there
your
strings.
world
rings.
—but nonetheless know why nothingness
the unending source of your most fervent vibration,
so that this once you
may
give
88
\
\
it
your
full
affirmation.
in
Reading Rilke
To
the store of copious Nature’s/iised-up, cast-off,
speechless creatures
—an unsayahle amount
jubilantly join yourself
1
to
and cancel the count
hate "vibration/affirmation’’ but, so
improve on
it.
This
triplet is
far,
6 .
haven’t been able
I
tough to render
reasonably
in
uninflated English.
For every poet will
to translate, certain
adjustments
have to be made, equivalences found, sacrifices accepted;
and we is
we attempt
have to decide
shall
in
each instance (whether the poet
Valery or Holderlin, Vallejo or Montale
rhythm, verse form, figures, sound, or syntax,
tone
or
idea,
—
diction,
—whether the wordplay— ambiguity,
subject,
issue
weight,
essential that a literal transcription
ambition
what element
secret grief, overmastering obsession) just
must be aimed
is
at;
is
so
what we
when we can impressions and effect; how
dare to seek certain equivalences for instead; afford to settle for similar general to
unpack the overly compacted; and what must be
unless luck
with us, in order to achieve the rest
is
which must add up
to greatness;
think, the poetry of idea
and
must come
in the first,
—
let go,
that rest
case of Rilke,
I
the metaphors he
makes out of the very edge and absence of meaning, the intense metaphysical quality of his vision (as unphilosophically devel-
oped
as
it
yet
is);
in the Elegies that
—and
flame
in
prophetic grandeur
—
not convinced of seer”
while tone and overall effect would be next
in the
some
Rilke’s hubristic ambition, the vanity of “the
Sonnets the quick hot Heraclitean quality of a
which others have been unwilling
without wincing
of his translators are
to hold their
(i i, 12):
Will transformation. Be inspired by the flame
where
a thing
made
of change conceals
89
itself.
hands
WILLIAM
GASS
H.
then the figures, so essential, and some sense of Rilke’s rich verbal music,
complex wordplay, and
intricate complicities of sug-
gestion; so that reaching the last factor,
most cases,
Most
to give
his verse
forms
clues to the all,
nearly every
poem
have been written before
one reason why Rilke
is
poems
Rilke’s
is
be ready,
and the Sonnets do
to
be found
a version of
in
their
in his letters.
many poems
and of many more
it,
I’d
There are certainly many
offer useful notes.
meaning of
think
first.
of the translators of the Elegies
homework and Above
up
I
to follow.
that
This
is
given to poetic outbursts. These sudden
outpourings are summations: the regathering, reclenching, and releasing of a fresh fistful of former themes, images, motifs,
emotions, ideas. Yet in several significant instances, scholarship has failed to
warn
translators
occurs in the
away from
first
errors.
The most outrageous
quatrain of a very famous sonnet from
Poems, “Torso of an Archaic Apollo.’’ In a footnote
Maria
Rilke: Selected
many and Austria
these
ol
Works
7 ,
Leishman explains
in his
New
Rainer
that in Ger-
the word Kandelaber “was the usual word for a
streetlamp: not for the comparatively short post with a single
square lantern, but for the
much
and more elegant
taller
sort
with two globes, each suspended from either end of a wide semicircular crosspiece.
Gas lamps,
in
which the main supply
was turned on by means of a long pole and ignited from a small, perpetually burning bypass, had not yet been replaced by electric.
Rilke had already used the
word
in
the
poem
‘Night
”
Drive.’
This news comes too
late to
help C. F. MacIntyre,
forced into contortions:
Never
will
where the
we know
his fabulous
head
eyes’ apples slowly ripened. Yet
90
who
is
Reading Rilke
candelabrurp set
his torso glows: a
before his gaze which
is
pushed hack and hid
.
.
.
Even Leishman concentrates on the second part of his information (how the gas is turned down), instead of on the shape of the lamps, with their semicircular, hence skull-like, crosspiece and their
He
eye-shaped globes.
writes, omitting
mention of the
Augenapfel:
Though we’ve not known and what
divinity his eyes
his torso like a
wherein light
his
unimagined head
were showing,
branching street-lamp’s glowing,
his gaze, only turned
down, can shed
still.
My own effort tries, perhaps too hard, Never
will
we know
to justify itself:
head
his legendary
where the eyes apples slowly ripened. Yet his torso glows as
above
it
in
if
his look
were
set
suspended globes that shed
a street’s light
down.
The temptation to push past Rilke’s German into the Platonic poem itself, the poem no one can write without resorting to some inevitably distorting language, is sometimes irresistible.
One
should never go,
flirting,
some heavy
I
think, quite
petting,
all
the way, yet a
may sometimes be more
little
than a
pleasant indulgence. Robert Lowell, Ezra Pound, or the gods
may
succeed.
To do
so, the translator
9
1
has to say to the reader:
WILLIAM forget the fact that the
you do
poem
GASS
belongs in
what
in yours; listen to
H.
body
its
as utterly as
going on behin'd
s
my
tongue,
my mind where the Muse was, in your mind where the Muse is. Try to realize the presence of Apollo s decapitated
in
head, is its it
its
absent eyelight shining
torso.
how complete
See
down upon
this
the fragment that
desecrated stone
is,
although
has no face, no smile, once upon a time tight curls of hair
maybe, now armless, no longer wearing phallus like a bit of fatter pubic hair,
its
its
inoffensive
little
well-muscled legs
once extending into a firmly footed stance. They are the same bodily implements you have, reader (excepting, sometimes, the sex), without the necessity to imagine them, and none of
them
ished smile, its
and behold, that absent
stone. Yet, lo
and burns your eyes
bright,
is
body
shine, flashing from this broken
condemn
inner incompleteness and ancient, battered
your
it.
look, that van-
as to
you perceive confront your
Are you as
real as this
remnant of statue? Change, then. Change
life.
Never
will
where the his torso
above
it
we know
head
eyes’ apples slowly ripened. Yet
glows as in
his legendary
if
his look
were
set
suspended globes that shed
a street’s light
down. Otherwise the surging breast
would not thus blind you, nor through the
soft turn
of the loins could you feel his smile pass easily into the bright groins
where the
Otherwise
would not be so complete,
from or
its
seem
this stone
genitals yearned.
shoulder showering body into absent as sleek
and
feet,
ripe as the pelt of a beast;
92
Reading Rilke
nor would that gaze he gathered ,up by every surface to burst out blazing like a star, for there’s
that does not see you.
As the
no place
You must change your
Elegies argue: the beauty of perfection,
granted the doubtful good fortune to grasp
reappearance of our fearful conviction that soul and
body of our being, so much
93
less.
it,
we
life
8 .
when we
are
announces the are, in
both the
INHALATION
The Duino
Elegies
were intended
to
IN A
were not written; they were awaited. They
be oracular and inspired. Their Being was
be beyond the poem. They are addressed then, as like the
if
he
Angels the
will
in
same a
and
if
the reader resists the enclo-
another way, then: they have only an inside. as saying, “Their to
him
mural might
as
They
only to return again as a “you.”
“I,”
never realize their nature. The Elegies are
They came
way
the poet and
radiance of the Angels so frequently invoked, streams
are, in that sense, enclosed,
sure,
first to
to
over his shoulder, to the rest of us. Their language,
from an ego, an
forth
GOD
form
if
exist;
is
the
Which
is
imaginary.”
they already existed
but he sees,
at first,
pieces, obtains a brief glimpse, only to have
They come numbered. They
like
—
all
ten
—the
only bits and
them covered
again.
arrive in shards with little tags as
if
they had been taken out of a dig and carefully brushed off by dutiful students.
Their
arrival
was
inevitable.
The
surprise
was when.
To my mind, the most persuasive explanation of the phenomenon we are pleased to call “inspiration” (pleased because we like mysteries, we like to think ourselves chosen) is the one offered us by the mathematician Henri Poincare in a essay,
little
“Mathematical Creation,” frequently reprinted from his
illuminating book Foundations of Science.
Reading Rilke
The ground must be genetic facility with the
about what
this facility
The ground is an individual’s medium. But we must not he mistaken there.
Poincare
is.
an inborn knack with numbers tions) has ability
little
to
many have
thumbing
(a
is
memory
ready
do with mathematical to pick
up languages
a ride (again, a ready
pains to point out that
at
for
creativity.
as
memory,
if
such opera-
Nor does
the
the languages were
a gift Rilke also had)
give promise of poetry or playwriting or any other creative work.
The ground Poincare ful
connections
the
medium
is
speaking of
is
the ability to
make
fruit-
between otherwise unlinked elements of
— mathematical connections analogies — which
case
in his
—resem-
constitute the synthesizing
blances, parallels,
side of the science or the art; as well as the analytic aspect
deep differences among things
ability to discern
—the
as apparently
similar as twins. If
the ground
is
there,
medium must be
we can
begin to
till it.
The elements
of
The principles of their manipulation must be mastered. Again, we must not confuse the
internalized.
learning a language with the training necessary for precisely because the poetic use tion in ordinary'
(as, relatively,
poetic use,
a radical reversal of
Paradoxically, our
life.
“trained’ to “play.’ If
is
its
its
func-
budding poet must be
both rules and elements are few in number
they are in music, mathematics, and the formal-
ized genres of poetry,
and
as they are definitely not in fiction,
history, anthropology, or philosophy),
then useful results
may be
possible, even expected, by youthful efforts in these fields.
The
training does not conclude with the internalization of
The practice of other mathematicians, or composers, must be studied, heard, consumed. This
elements and poets, or
rules.
listening, this reading,
must be
of the analytical kind
called (in the case of language) transreading. For to creativity
is
what
is
I
have
crucial
the repeated experience, by our young practi-
tioner, of quality of the highest kind. Really gifted people
95
know
WILLIAM that values are as “out there" as
H.
GASS
cows
in a field.
And
a sense for
such significant combinations must be developed. Creativity concerns correct choice. culture can be seen in tory of both art
should say that the whole nature of a
I
its
The entire hisview that some choices
patterns of selection.
and science supports the
are better than others.
What
does one learn? To ask the right question. As
I
noted
the section on transreading, Leibniz’s principle of suffi-
in
cient reason in effect asks
namely,
it:
and not some other thing;
is,
rather than
some
other?
It
why
is
why was
or,
may be
what
a thing
this
it
word chosen
that the nature of the uni-
verse does not provide answers of such completeness, so that
we
are left with half an explanation (what a thing
could not be otherwise), but works of
more
art are
justification for their existence than
supposed
you or
to.
cosmos, but no reasons, or
of IT and the whole of
be accidents. The
artist
must do
a better job
than
why to
it
bear
a fox or
I,
There could be causes
flower or blade of grass, have all
not
is,
for the
WE could God
has,
although, having internalized the reasons for his choices, he
may
not be easily able to articulate them. Nevertheless,
they’ll
be there.
What
proper reading confers upon the right reader
merely an expanded vocabulary or
its
is
not
subtle understanding, or
the ready use of forms and strategies, but also a sympathetic
awareness of traditional attitudes and opinions, feelings and desires.
appear
The young composer, far
young
poet, can, in this way,
wiser than his or her years. Alexander Pope says that
he wrote the following matters to
the
my point
if
poem
at the
he’s cheating
96
age of twelve, and
by a few years.
it
scarcely
Reading Rilke
ODE ON SOLITy DE Happy
the man,
A few paternal Content
whose wish and care
acres hound,
to breathe his native air,
In his
Whose Whose Whose
own ground.
herds with milk, whose fields with bread, flocks supply trees in
him with
attire,
summer yield him
shade,
In winter
fire.
who can unconcern ’dly find
Blest!
Hours, days, and years slide
soft
away,
In health of body, peace of mind,
Quiet by day,
Sound
sleep by night; study and ease
Together mix’d; sweet recreation,
And
innocence, which most does please,
With meditation. Thus
let
me
live,
unseen, unknown;
Thus unlamented
let
Steal from the world,
me
dye;
and not
a stone
Tell
Does the
kid
really
want
to
steal
where
I
lye.
1
unsung, unpraised, and
unheroic from the world? His attitudes are as borrowed as his
forms and phrases. “Happy the man” indeed. But poems don’t have to be sincere. They only need to be good. After training (and Pope imitates the Earl of Rochester,
Waller, Cowley, Spenser, Dorset; he translates Ovid and para-
97
WILLIAM phrases
Thomas
GASS
H.
Intense. Extended. Mindful. Careful. to imitate
him
if
and many others.
practice.
While continuing
necessary, to learn. Rilke’s easy
and he was
astray,
comes
a Kempis), after an education,
to read,
way with words
mastery of Goethe, Holderlin,
late in his
salad days were followed by arid
Rilke’s
stretches, by doubts, difficulties of
all
and these were
kinds,
was
painful for him, but no doubt necessary. Meanwhile, he ing to understand his
remember
controls both.
The
own
body
that the
led
conflicted nature. fuels the
creative
life
It is
And
mind.
try-
important to
that character
of the mathematician
usually
is
over by age forty. Perhaps the emotional problems the scholar fleeing,
by working in a world of
exert the
same
no longer
total abstraction,
fearful pressures. Rilke
needed
is
he
his neuroses,
thought, and he refused, for that reason, to undergo psychoanalysis, although
Once one
has
it
was suggested
become
a
to him.
mathematician, a physicist, a poet,
then what one knows, what one feels and thinks, can be
focused upon a particular problem. “For fifteen tells us, "I
days,’’
Poincare
strove to prove that there could not be any functions
have since called Fuchsian functions.’ Despite his
like
those
own
denials, a sleepless night full of colliding ideas allowed
I
to establish the existence of
represent these series.
new
such a
class.
him
Next, he wished to
functions through the quotient of two
This was a conscious choice.
And
by an analogy with solutions achieved
made Mean-
the choice was
other areas.
in
while, Poincare had agreed to go by bus on a geologic excursion.
Mathematical issues were
moment when came
to
I
put
my
foot
me, without anything
have paved the way for
it,
from
far
his
on the step in
thoughts.
"At
the
[of the bus] the idea
my former thoughts
that the transformations
I
seeming
to
had used
to
define the Fuchsian functions were identical with those of non-
Euclidean geometry.’’
98
Reading Rilke
As
Rilkes ease, the ultimate solution to this complex
in
problem was achieved Verification.
new
Work. Blockage.
stages.
in
Insight.
Followed by the orderly development of the
idea.
Poincare then turned his attention to what appeared to he quite a different set of problems in arithmetic, hut he had a sig-
up
nal lack of success. Giving
in disgust,
he took a few days off
the seaside. Then, for him, the Rilke-like
to visit
“One morning, walking on the me, with just the same characteristics arrived:
and immediate
bluff, the idea
moment came to
of brevity, suddenness
certainty, that the arithmetic transformations of
indeterminate ternary quadratic forms were identical with those of non-Euclidean geometry.” Further verifications follow. That is
to say: proofs. “Naturally
tions.
I
made
set
I
myself to form
all
upon them and
a systematic attack
these func-
carried
all
outworks, one after another. There was one however that held out, whose
more blockage. itary service
fall
would involve
Now he
(Poincare
is
no exception street
day, “the solution of the difficulty
tion for
he did In
same
some
it
whole place. One ’
to the rule of youth).
one seemingly ordinary
which had stopped
to delay writing
was no longer
down
me
sud-
this solu-
a factor. Eventually,
with dispatch.
each stage of Poincare
s
amazing discovery, there are the
factors: initial talent, life preparation, focus, failure, dis-
In Rilke’s case,
detailed in our description.
years rather than
weeks
moment preceded by tal
He had
time, but time
traction, revelation.
more
still
has to leave his work to go through mil-
While he was walking down the denly appeared to me.”
that of the
the
or days.
And
we can be
the delays are sometimes
Not only
is
the inspirational
a lifetime of practice, but
conditions must be fully met
—
99
its
in effect, the
loaded and cocked before the trigger
considerably
is
pulled.
environmen-
gun must be
However, since
WILLIAM one
is
never sure what
by luck as
much
all
GASS
H.
these conditions are, they are realized
as plan.
Rilke has been reading Holderlin again, and studying with
admiration Goethe’s
Roman
Elegies, soaking his soul in the dis-
poetry of the flute, rather than that of the
tich, the
practice will be irregular and free, but the rhythm
fundamentally there: a foot which always (l
w ),
and
a pair of lines
is
loss,
own
nevertheless
falls,
the dactyl
end when happiness
faculty the Elegies invoke
is
memory, since
falls.
six
The
their subject
but this gives them distance, makes them meditative.
The problems is
is
His
which does the same, dropping from
feet to five. Rilke’s Elegies will
human
lyre.
the Elegies address are not removable. Their
mood
one of quiet mourning, of sober lamentation, then, because
they are concerned to sing a sorrow no longer immediate and sharp, but one full of conciliation, acceptance, Rilke’s Elegies
do not weep
for Adonais,
and repose.
and nature
is
too
make mountains frown or the Duino Elegies is the “I” we all are:
indifferent to mankind’s plight to
sky shed tears.
The
“I”
of the
not mankind en masse, but “we” one after the other. Although
some
of the poetic personae of the Elegies are present in
"Lament,” written
in Paris just before the fatal
“heart,” “lament,” "tree,” “angels,”
and not excluding the impor-
—the poem
tant condition of invisibility
than
its
author.
It is
a
grim
Who will you complain
summing
to,
more
futile,
before.
about no one else
my heart? Your forsaken
100
its
aim,
lost.
You lamented? What was
unripe
path
mass of mankind.
perhaps, for maintaining
pushing on toward a future already
Once
is
up, and hardly elegiac.
struggles on through the insensible All the
August of 1914
it
for?
A fallen
Reading Rilke
now
berry of celebration. But
the entire tree
is
being
broken,
by the storm
it is
my
shaken,
slowly grown tree of
celebration.
Loveliest in
my
invisible
made me
landscape, you that
to the also invisible angels
place in
2
we need
mountain
whose
at
down upon the world and try to find our though we stand atiptop while we do. And a tute-
lary spirit of
feminine gender
us while
we
thing
Bildung
Schiller’s
a
shall look it,
is
known
.
For the fully fledged elegy
peak we
better
philosophize. ,
will also
be required to attend
The German name
for this sort of
and perhaps the most famous example
“Der Spaziergang,” an elegy sometimes
the genre. In the tenth of the tutelary spirit
Duino
and our mountain,
bent of the Elegies involves a
far
too,
Elegies
we
is
felt to initiate
shall get
our
however the metaphysical
more general point of view than
Bildung does. Nevertheless (and this
because they resemble with the
moment
is
think a real oddity), the Elegies
I
a revelation, are so utterly identified
of their initial onset that the
and the bora which
,
Duino
cliffs
cleansing the battlements are a part of
is
the poem, are where the voice
is
heard, are where
we
are
when we read and hear them. Mouth them, actually, for these poems are the most oral know; they are meant not only to I
be listened
to as
one
they must be spoken
listens
—not
to,
say,
Wallace Stevens, but
merely by but for yourself, as
if
you were the one who wondered whether you had anyone you could of.
call to,
This
even
anything you could, in your condition,
demand
—
that the reader
in translation, in
become
any decent version,
IOI
the
poem
for the
make use
—
is
there,
voice-making
WILLIAM
GASS
H.
beyond
quality of these lines goes
They
their music.
are an
utterance.
To sharpen my point: James Joyce s
various
Anna
Livia Plura-
on
belles are certainly as musical as prose gets, literally lilting
all
the time, and they, too, ask to be performed, as most great prose
and
great poetry does. But
all
We
them. their
we perform them in order to say
perform the Elegies
in order to hear
them. To make
words ours.
Nor does the wanderer bring down from
mountain slope
his high
a handful of earth
to the valley (for earth, too,
is
mute),
but a word he has plucked from the climbing: the yellow and blue gentian. Are we, perhaps, here just to utter: house, bridge, fountain, gate, jug, fruit tree,
window
but to utter them, remember,
at
most: column, tower
to
speak in a way which the named never dreamed
they could be
And
to
We
speak
.
.
.
3 .
in a
way we never dreamed we could
must add, then,
speak.
such mental preparation
to
for the
final
inundation as the reading of Goethe and Holderlin,
Rilke
s
the
installation in the
Germans
tower
at least,
will call a
on
into the trees,
a
its
and boasting It
a Schloss
slope, lifting
a
three stories, their it
,
its
castle,
but a quadrangular crenellated roof up
lot
of dinky rooms, three to
windows
set higgledy-piggledy
also possessed a tower ... a tower
which Yeats would have been proud. Covered
months by Swiss snow,
at a
though
view across a ravine and down
contained a
across Muzot’s face; yet of
shoebox
mountain
toward a tiny town.
each of
tower of Muzot. Not a
for
many
place not easily reached, in a climate
which forced solitude even on
its
102
atmosphere-, engulfed by a
Reading Rilke
landscape rich and various, fingered fruit trees,
and
at
long
winter surrounded by white-
in
Muzot provided
a security unusual for Rilke,
last.
The season
is
also suitable. January
poets best months. The in January,
and February are the
two Elegies entered him
first
but they were also preceded by the
at
Duino
poems which
constituted The Life of Mary, extending that exclamatory time.
To be followed then by tion
is
anxiety and sadness. Because Despera-
another preparation for inspiration, and Rilke was to have
years of desperation: initially in Paris, in the tolls of his
where he suffered
Notebooks and again ,
in the tens of
it
while
towns and
borrowed rooms where he dwelled during the decade sombered by the war, a decade which began shortly in the scores of
after the Elegies
announced themselves.
The Duino outburst had made
Rilke at
first
fancy he was
like
John receiving the Apocalypse on Patmos (remembering Holderlin’s majestic poem as he would a decade later), only to St.
be cast back into a disappointing silence as he was by the grim castle
most times
and hard
to grasp
in is
any case.
‘‘Near,’
God.” The revelation had been too
when
perhaps premature, and even
seashore, his face in the wind as Elegies did not
Holderlin begins, “Near
it
Rilke ran naked along the
had been on the parapet, the
reannounce themselves. Rilke hid
large but undisciplined library
partial,
in the castle’s
and considered exploring
its
rich
collection of Venetian material in order, perhaps, to write a
biography of Admiral Carlo Zeno, whose great age (eighty-four at his
death
thirty-eight)
becoming
in 1418) invited a long look .
.
.
yet
at
faintly quaint.
as did his desperations. to stabilize like a
your
life
what? His
...
its
not at growing old and
letters multiplied
When
and make
and lengthened,
you have no daily work it
ghost caught in daylight;
tine with
if
back (by a poet who was
useful, especially
when
reassuring tedium to
103
there
lull
is
to
go
when you
to,
are
no protective rou-
the nerves, and no one
WILLIAM about
to get
on them
either;
Rilke found himself in
where
in front of
rooms
H.
GASS
then you go to hell instead; and full
of his previous' pacing, every-
him volumes he’d pulled from
their shelves
but part way; and in some corner that he had neglected, unresolved problems were seated like judges in robes; what to do
how
about his divorce from Clara; lovelife
—
in
Rome
to
with
entangled
escape his enigmatic
Nadherny von
Sidonie
Borutin (“Sidie,” a shortening dearly needed), while in Venice
Mimi Romanelli
beset by his
consciousness of
—and consequently how
guilt
and
distraction; next
sliding further into the generous
to cleanse
how
to avoid
hands of the Princess Marie or
her closing social circle; moreover, what to do or where to go in order to escape those migraines that troubled one end of him
and the hemorrhoids that pained the other; because, if the sirocco and the bora were insufferable at Duino, there was the foehn land,
make Munich
to
and
his neuroses to ruin the rest.
Rilke’s teeth ached. joints.
miserable, not to omit most of Switzer-
According
been squeezed
to
He had
little
Freedman, he
into his blood.
strength.
felt as if
Still,
lemon juice had
and stood staring
at
—
The princess, discerning his difficulties and when he ricocheted between Duino and Venice,
stacks instead.
after a period
stiff
at the suggestion of the
princess, he tried to put her library in order, its
He woke with
driven there by ill-formed plans, drawn back by hesitations
generously offered him her mezzanino in the Palazzo Val-
marana, where Rilke might enjoy
its
luxurious appointments,
its
wide views of the Grand Canal, while practicing much-needed economies. Rilke wanted to be Spartan, and refused. Finally, out of sorts and out of sous, he accepted. His head was soon
clogged with society like a sinus. Rilke
was
the parlor
as restless as
when he
one who hoped
to leave his pain in
enters the dining room, and his worries in
104
Reading Rilke
bedroom when he comes down for breakfast, only to find them spread over his toast and clouding every view. This condithe
tion
was common, and appeared
to
yet before Rilke could flee with his a
friendship with
moon about
Muse
to Spain,
he
flight,
fell
into
Eleonora Duse, whose theatricalized
life
absorbed Rilkes attention time to
announce another
like a
sponge, and allowed him no
the state of his soul.
The Duse,
aging, off
the boards and out of limelight, was struggling to keep an actor
and hopeful impresario, Alexander Moissi,
as well as a
young
playwright, Lina Poletti, in her weakening orbit. Rilke per-
ceived the relation between the young
one which resembled
his
own unhappy
woman and
service with Rodin,
the actress’s plight a forecast for the poet’s aging in
Duse
the
as
and
Caught
self.
her storms, he rocked from side to side, only, ultimately, to
be marooned. The triangle dissolved, and Rilke his own.
back into
fell
After a series of seances arranged by the princess (too embar-
minds
rassing to sane
was beckoned
to
be described here), Rilke’s
Spain by the
to
spirit of
the planchette.
spirit
None-
theless, the country the poet sought existed only in the paint-
which contained angels worthy of the Elegies
ings of El Greco,
,
nor did Toledo, seen through such a framer as the painter, disappoint.
One
night, standing
on one of the bridges that spans
the Tagus, Rilke watched a meteor sear the dark sky, and retained
its
image
for several
poems. Were the Elegies
in a brightness like the meteor’s,
their
own
only to burn up in the blaze of
being?
“The Spanish
poems he manGreat Ten-Year Drought (which wasn t so
Trilogy," three of the finest
aged during the
were written
dry after
all),
The
of these
first
to arrive
poems
for all of Rilke’s orality,
is
in the following
January
at
Ronda.
particularly extraordinary because,
he rarely imposes on a
I0 5
poem
a purely
WILLIAM He
rhetorical order.
will
GASS
H.
often adopt a dramatic form, and
speak from a particular point of view man’s, and so on
—
prayer
but
we
for that
— but he what
is
is
—
a beggar’s,
a blind
only occasionally the orator. This a desperate prayer
it is,
—we
listen to,
cannot, could not, utter. Prayers are too personal.
overhear.
From
this
cloud
hid —which has now shone — (and from me),
—
there
the star that just
from
this
so stormily
look!
dark huddle of
hills
the night-winds, for a while
from
this valley’s
some
all
night,
— (and from me),
stream which reshines
the tumult of the night sky
from me, and
which holds the
— (and from me);
of this, to make, Lord,
single thing:
from
me and
with which the herd, penned in
the feeling its stalls,
accepts with a long slow sigh the darkening departure of the world
from
me and
every glimmer of light
amid the dimness of many houses, Lord:
make one thing; from strangers, since know not one, Lord, and from me, from me, to make one thing; from the sleepers,
to
I
those bereft old
men
in the
hospice
who, with importance, cough
in bed,
from children sleepdrunk on the breasts of strangers,
much that’s uncertain, and always from me, from me alone and all don’t know, from so
I
to
make
that,
both earthly and cosmic
takes for to
the Thing, Lord Lord Lord, the Thing
its
like a
heaviness only the
weigh nothing but
arrival
4 .
106
sum
meteor, of
its flight,
We
Reading Rilke
With the
artistic 'and physical
stand-up desk and a
geography
in place,
stove delivered, with
tiled
with his
housewarm-
ing Christmas gifts of chandeliers and lamps from friends, Rilke
can write a few
letters to his lady loves
become caustic)— to
(it
is
difficult not to
Clara, to his daughter, Ruth, to
Nanny
Wunderly-Volkart, to Lou Salome, Baladine Klossowska to his
new
— —and
yes,
Mouky in private Gertrud Ouckama Knoop, informing
love called Merline
almost by the way, to
now, or
her of his daughter’s forthcoming marriage, inasmuch as she and Gertrud Knoop’s daughter Wera had once been friends.
Wera, who had hoped
to
leukemia and died
two years before.
at 19,
become
had
a dancer,
fallen
of
ill
Now Rilke chooses
to
console the mother, and an exchange of letters ensues, leading to another gift: the diary Wera had kept during her painful
months of
dying.
A
dying which her diary
will, for Rilke, ironi-
cally forecast. If
things constantly
come
terns nevertheless persist
into being only to pass away, pat-
and appear and reappear with remark-
able frequency and stubbornness. In 1913, Rilke acknowledges the receipt of a copy of Paula Becker’s diary, sent to him by her
him
brother, informing
of
what
“Requiem"
for her
had
already said: that this was the death which had shaken
him
more than any The death
other.
of a
beautiful
Allan Poes opinion appropriately tragic
yet
that
uplifting life.
make room
this
—was
poetic
nearly his entire die to
meaning
not
Certainly
—had
Not only did
in the
otherwise
young woman
sad
—
was Edgar
it
the best choice for a great. poem’s
subject.
possibilities along with
she could
his
it
such
a
obsessed
seem
Rilke
that a girl
world for him, but prematurity
death
it
preserved
also
the
—
its
during
had
to
seemed child’s
her innocence. Victimized by death,
be victimized by
life.
The
stoicism
which
WILLIAM made up
GASS
H.
moral character also
a great part of Rilke s
glorified,
who
him, acts of relinquishment and ascetiSm. Lovers
for
loved and lost but like
Gaspara
who continued more
Stampa (an
devotedly to love,
noblewoman who comcommemorate her unhappy
Italian
posed two hundred sonnets
to
passion) were his sort of saint. These were the sentimental reasons. Rilke’s jilted ladies (and of lurch) ought to love
all
him the more
some
sort
for his resistance.
And
were
in
left
they did.
Baladine Klossowska, the painter with
conjugated
at
Muzot
whom
the poet had
few weeks before winter’s onset, had
for a
reproduction
of
Orpheus,
sitting
thumbtacked
a
under a
surrounded by tamely attentive wild animals,
tree
above Rilke
s
postcard
com-
writing desk. Furthermore, Rilke had just
pleted his translation of Michelangelo’s sonnets and was thinking about
experimenting with the form. All the requisite
elements were assembled. them, dedicated
to the
On
February
memory
of a
2,
he began a few of
young woman he had
known (just as earlier he had written a requiem for a poet, Count Wolf von Kalckreuth, whom he had never met). Wera had become a musician by force of fatal circumstance, so scarcely
that the choice of
Orpheus was
certainly appropriate.
As
if
he
were hearing another voice, there, suddenly, the words were: Da stieg ein Baum. And they weighed nothing but arrival. The storm had begun.
“What
is
the cause that,
unconscious
activity,
among
some
the thousand products of our
are called to pass the threshold,
while others remain below?” Poincare asks. His answer icant,
I
think,
More
is
signif-
and sound.
generally the privileged unconscious
phenomena,
those susceptible of becoming conscious, are those which,
108
Reading Rilke
directly or indirectly, affect
most profoundly our emotional
sensibility.
We
may
associate mathematical
work
solely with the intellect,
but this would be to forget the feeling of mathematical beauty, of the harmony of numbers and forms, of geometric
elegance. This
is
a true esthetic feeling that
all
real
mathematicians know.
Of course we cannot
ignore the differences between mathe-
matical discoveries and poetic connections, because mathemat-
problems are well-defined and specific (for the most part), whereas poems can seem to pop up like toast from an empty toaster. Moreover, the mathematician is uncovering laws which ical
are already there; they exist in the realm of
number, where the
pioneer, like a verdant valley, finds them. are fundamentally different.
Making and finding Nor should we make light of the
gap between the preestablished and formal character of Rilke’s recently practiced sonnet, and the loosely shaped and individual
nature of his Elegies. Yet in Rilke’s case these differences are diminished. In a sense the Elegies were there waiting, too.
Whole
pieces were present, and fragments suggested the true
shapes of the other already.
There
is
jars.
Rilke had written
them over and over
scarcely a line, an image, an idea, that
we
can-
not find, slightly rearranged, in earlier work. Better than almost any other poet, Rilke understood that rela-
between elements, not the elements themselves, were at the heart of any art, and that these relations made up its tions
and were the source of a poem’s “geometry. "What are the mathematic entities to which we attribute this character of space,
beauty and elegance, and which are capable of developing
in us
— WILLIAM a sort of esthetic
are those
GASS
emotion? Poincare asks. Ai\d answers: “They
whose elements
mind without
H.
are harmoniously disposed so that the
can embrace their
effort
totality
while realizing
the details .” 5
Mathematical and other conceptual blockages are often the result of the thinker’s
remaining with a strategy or set of similar
which he seems wedded. He needs to start off in a fresh direction, but is unable because most first efforts form a track into which the pencil-end of the mind slips, over and over. strategies to
Hence
the helpfulness of the distraction.
to appear.
I
It
allows another idea
do not believe the completion of the Elegies was
delayed for a decade for purely poetic reasons. Rilke, first of
all,
could not satisfactorily
fill
suspect that
I
out his metaphysics,
and second, could not find the language which would provide that metaphysics with its justification, and third, was not yet the poet to
The
whom
the
Elegies
were
work could be
to provide us with a
or attitude toward the world it.
We
tions,
and
comprehensive outlook
in particular the poet’s role in
should not ennoble ideas that are
made mostly
of
emo-
moods, and attitudes by calling them philosophical. Nor
were they ally)
revealed.
at all religious despite
of the Angels.
arguments, so
The
the presence (or absence, actu-
Elegies present us with conclusions, not
—again— they cannot be
philosophical.
And
they
are not revelations supported by a Faith. Their justification
—
their proof
is
poetical
language they arrive
and
in. If
lies in
the persuasive power of the
Rilke could not resolve the opposi-
which were everywhere in evidence in his outlook, he could not find the language which would allow him to affirm a tions
solution. In short, he in
had not yet found the
right
metaphors;
or,
those cases where he had them, he had not yet reached their
inner nature. In the in
first
poem
of
“The Spanish
anguish to be allowed, just once,
no
Trilogy,”
in just
he had asked
one thing,
to achieve
Reading Rilke
the
unity of
Lord. In a
world with himself: from me, from me,
the
poem
“The Great
called
[ofr
perhaps Vast] Night,”
written a year later, in the Paris to which he had returned, the earlier alienation
but
in a
statement of
fact.
window
suggests that the
now
expressed again,
is
not in a petition,
The poem’s beginning
is
startling.
represents a larger, more spiritual
opening.
Often
I
gazed
at
you
in
wonder, stood
started the day before, stood
I
The new and the as
if
I
city
still
seemed
to
warn
at
you
in
wonder.
away,
darkened
weren’t there. Even things close by if
I
didn’t understand them.
leapt to the top of the lamppost.
Over there
—
I
a room, empathetic,
The
street
saw how strange lit
by
its
it
was.
lantern
begin to take part; they’d notice, clap shut the shutters.
I’d
stood.
I
me
window
at the
and gazed
recalcitrant landscape
didn’t care
in the
And
then a child cried.
I
knew what
the mothers
surrounding houses could do
and the inconsolable source of all sorrow.
Or
a voice sang, exceeding expectations,
or downstairs an old as
if
his
body had
it
Then an hour was and
it
got by me.
man coughed
right
reproachfully,
and the gentle world was wrong.
struck, but
— Like
a
began
I
new boy at
to
count too
late
school,
when he’s finally allowed to join in, who can’t catch the ball, and is a bumbler at all the
games the others play
so he just stands there
and
so easily,
stares
—where?
and suddenly saw that you had befriended me, played with me now, grown-up Night, and I gazed I
stood,
at
you
in
It
wonder. While towers threatened,
while the city surrounded me,
its
iii
aims
still
a secret,
WILLIAM
GASS
H.
and unfathomable mountains pitched
their
camp
and strangeness prowled
in tightening circles
around the random
my
great Night,
fires
senses set
you weren’t ashamed
to
Your breath passed over me. Across spaces, your smile spread to enter
Now
Rilke
knew what
1
12
it
^
was then,
know me. all
me
the glue was.
—
against me,
6 .
those solemn
SCHADE
One might
sentimentally imagine that Rilke’s separation from
break with Rodin, especially his rejection
his wife, Clara, or his
by Lou, would be decisive Elegies
was one such
in his life. Certainly, the
stroke,
onset of the
and not altogether salutary
in its
character either. Taking a more prosaic tack, one could be prac-
and suggest
tical
that the surprising popularity of his youthful
poem The Lay
prose
of the Love and Death oj the Cornet
Christoph Rilke, which furnished him a much-needed income after
it
was published
very significant.
War
I
in a
cheap pocket-size edition
The dismal
early Paris days
were
in 1912,
critical.
was
World
threw Rilke into a profound and enduring gloom
—
for
both personal and humanitarian reasons. That might reach the
Top Ten.
In lives,
it is
hard to measure such things. Vital factors
are sneaky and, like our internal organs,
out of sight. With Rilke, however,
accept the cliche and cherche z
such a
la
however suspect such
I
do most of
think
we
their
work
always need to
femme. So near the head of
wounds and awards are, should want to place the death of Paula ModersohnBecker, the blond painter of Rilke’s Worpswede journal. list,
lists
of
I
In the early days of his acquaintance with the colony’s artists, it
is
fairly
obvious that Rilke was most taken by Paula Becker,
and that she responded had grown close
to
to his interest
is
also clear; but Paula
Otto Modersohn as he waited out his wife’s
n3
WILLIAM death through a lengthy tation,
mostly for work
which aimed
direct.
whose
a painter of
Nature but the venera-
relation to the soil
right:
some repu-
was calleckNaturlyrismus,
Modersohns sentiments and
sohn got several things
art
He was
in a style that
and tunic would find much
paintings,
GASS
at not only the adoration of
tion of the peasant
and
illness.
H.
was simple, noble,
Rilke’s
to talk about.
As
Russian boots
a suitor,
Moder-
he was enthusiastic about Paulas
which few others were; he found her
attitude toward
—“charming,
admirable; and he thought that her personality
sweet, strong, healthy, energetic”
own. Had Rilke wished
wrong
foot, for
woo
to
—
filled in
her, he’d
the blanks in his
have gotten off on the
he took no notice of her work, nor did he discuss
Worpswede monograph. with a manner some called “magisterial,”
either Paula or Clara in his
Older, established,
Modersohns wife could passively,
it
greatest advantage
elicit for
was the sympathy
his ailing
him. In any case, Paula soon, and rather
appears, found herself framed for marriage. Since
her middle-class
Bremen
tion as a governess, she
family was urging her to find a posi-
may have thought
that marriage to a
painter would be a good escape. She’d have a
husband knowl-
edgeable about, and sympathetic with, her aims. To his credit,
Modersohn
did
sincerely encourage and support his wife’s
how little understanding feels she has, and how frequently she weeps. writes, does not make one happier. And now
work, but Paula confesses to her diary
from him she Marriage, she
Worpswede is no longer a cozy enclosure. She pines for Paris. From 1903 to 1907 she will make three trips lasting a month, several months, finally a year. Marriage did not make her happy.
—
Paris did.
Because Paula found sohn’s tutorial eye
still
it
increasingly irritating to have
Moder-
following her brush, blocking her
way
more and more often with cautionary words; and because, at some indeterminate point, she realized that her husband was
u4
Reading Rilke
mediocre and could not
claim
lay
to
artistic
superiority;
woman, no one expected much of her as an artist; because when she showed her work, it was castigated; because when she painted, she felt she entered her real self; because, as because, as a
pleasantly vibrant in society as Paula appeared, she was sensi-
and shy by nature; because ordinary hausfrau
tive
deeply unsatisfied and bored; because causes, for however
many
reasons,
when Heinrich Vogeler and were surprised
dio, they
to find “a
her
From however many she became an artistic loner, .
painting in private and for herself, so death,
life left
.
.
much
so that after her
her husband entered her stu-
wealth of work” of whose
exis-
tence they had been unaware.
Because motherly
.
.
.
life,
become so absorbed in her wifely, she had no room in the arms of her intimacy for Clara had
her formerly close friend, and in a letter Paula complained of the
way
“the old
gang” (as the song says) had been broken up.
was Rilke who wrote back didacticism,” as
Freedman
It
Frau Modersohn (“exuding
oily
says), suggesting that the Rilkes
had
to
1
reached a higher plane. Actually, the couple’s plane had crashed, and they were scat-
tered about like baggage on incongenial ground. Later, after Rilke and Clara had rid themselves of Ruth and established
themselves
in Paris,
Paula came to
visit,
but the once happy
trio
couldn’t play well together anymore, and Paula found both of
them
—sewn
Paula’s
like
button to sleeve
work was slowly seeping
—
to
be bores. Even though
into him, Rilke
was
preoccupied with Rodin, with the unsteady state of riage,
its
mar-
pages with exquisite gloom and pain. About this
— the poet could not have
failed to perceive
merly high opinion of him sank out of sight sism she
week.
his
with the alienation and self-doubt that would fever Malte
and pave time
painfully
felt
now enveloped
it
—
Paula’s for-
in the sea of narcis-
him. Both fled the city in the same
”
WILLIAM Three years Rilke
later, in 1906,
GASS
H.
they met again in Paris. This time
was breaking up with Rodin, and Becker had
officially left
her husband. They got on better now. Paula was at her best,
nude
painting odd
One
of herself.
portraits
particular
in
impressed the poet. Called Self-Portrait on Her Sixth Wedding
Day
has a background of pale splotchy wallpaper, and shows
it
,
Paula, naked to just below the waist, standing slightly sideways
and looking askance. The faces she was making
time
at this
were becoming more and more Coptic. Hanging around her
neck and
falling
between her breasts
The beads
beads.
portrait
show up
will
in a
a necklace of fat
is
much
amber
happier, even finer
from the same year. In the Wedding Day painting, the
colors are
washed out and,
with her future
fate;
prophetically, Paula
belly swells
s
but in the later one her characteristic earth
tones return, she becomes a Gauguin native, her lower thick and red, she hair
and flowers
in
is
lip is
holding flowers, there are flowers in her
an Henri Rousseau background of
tall
leafy
stems.
She painted tomatoes, chestnuts, tery jugs,
and
sitting beside a
meet
for
green
dinner
Cezanne
the spirit of
fruit in
glass.
The
several
selected, hoping that the asparagus
plump, the
tips tender.
—
2
a plate of apples
restaurant
would had
Rilke
would be delicate and
Paula began a painting of her friend
own
about the same time Rilke was writing his
from the Year 1906.
with pot-
painter and the poet
some vegetarian
at
still lifes
The background
drab, the paint thick throughout
—
that
paint in
fills
“Self-Portrait
hers
which a
is
olive
pallet knife
leaves marks like icing tracks. Rilke wears his hair in a cap, his
are
Fu Manchu mustache, as brown as his hair,
eyes
—
have long ago
and
spade-shaped beard,
his goatee, his
his shoulders,
featureless except for wide red rims
like orbits that
at
and
his featureless
which
circle
them
hopefully continue to spin although their planets
left
them. In both
poem and
it6
painting the
mouth
is
Reading Rilke
"made
as a
mouth
is,
wide and
mouth
the jaw has dropped, the the pink ears, pink
lips,
The pink-rimmed
gapes.
—worn
become streaked and
the surface of the paint has ors faded, like the side of
brown and worn
eyes,
Her
are a Paula Becker trademark.
ures have grown blocky and
From Worpswede
straight,” but in Becker’s painting
fig-
because
flaky, the col-
an old barn.
calls
came which were
answered, so Otto Modersohn, the husband
not satisfactorily
who was
support-
ing his wife in her separation from him, arrives to implore her to return. Paula’s refusal to leave Paris, her insistence
frightened
ducked
—
who stopped
Rilke,
as
some
guilty of
if
sitting
his
portrait
and
—out
of sight.
The
for
indiscretion
on divorce,
poem sugsigned PMB,
painting remains as unfinished as his self-portrait gests his great
work was. Nevertheless,
M in the middle
the
still
like a river
it is
boldly
between towns. As long
Paula stayed tied to Modersohn the poet
felt safe,
as
and he bound
himself to Clara, in a similarly loose yet protective way. Neither
could
But
drift off.
now he began
to
put his customary distance
between them. Rilke, as
if
he were Achilles
nearer to each of the
women
in Zeno’s
my
if
Paula
is
husband,” and
will stay clear of
don’t
her
grow
remains a space no spark can
going to declare to Otto: "I
race, will
he fancies, reducing the difference
to a hair’s width, so long as there
jump; so
famous
"I
don’t
want you
as
want any child from you,” then Rilke
company
3 ;
but when, pressured by her
husband, family, and friends, she reconciles, and the couple’s return to
warm
Worpswede
regard,
is
announced, Rilke reappears
full
of
with photos from his latest journey and an
inscribed copy of Book of Pictures, his most recent publication. If
the person of the poet has betrayed his friend, the poet has
betrayed his principles. Because he situation.
one
— not
He
knew
...
he knew Paula’s
should have supported her separation. But no
even Paula’s
sister,
Herma,
whom
she loved
—not
WILLIAM even her friend Clara,
one
—
whom
GASS
H.
she’d' counted
on
— no one—no
*
did.
Most women were married
in Rilke’s day, unless
off early
and sent
into a
they were barren or rich, life
of loveless broodmar-
ing that led, after an interval that demonstrated their decency,
and the burying of
to the bearing, the nursing, the raising,
dren
—
six, eight,
gain, as well as
ten
—
losing their health
any chance
fying bosoms,
and children,
too,
figure in the bar-
achievement. Paula
at
motherhood, and painted
attractions of
and
chil-
the
felt
satisfied babies at satis-
with awe and warmth. But, in
down payment on the child’s life you were making how many years would each cost, and bluntly, how many paintings? when you gave birth, you courted Death, who often said, “Come with me.” Had not Paula Becker, relinquishing her addition to the
—
art to
tion?
—
perform a customary social service, cast away her voca-
Had
she not allowed her husband’s lesser talent to domi-
nate and destroy hers? Rilke, but
them
if
its
grip kept
The
family
may have
women home.
It
felt like a fist to
held them
down and
often.
Ultimately,
money
Modersohn
didn’t support her?
thing but
art;
settled the matter.
uled; Paris
How would
She had no
Paula
for
to
Worpswede); and suc-
cess for a female in her field was unlikely indeed.
The
forced an accommodation. Economics was the other
own momentum. Giving up
pregnant during the March of Modersohn’s
November
husband with 1907.
regularly
It
situation
fist.
goes beyond the given that has been intended. Paula
gifted her
women
them were few and unsched-
was expensive (compared
Reconciliations have their
live
training in any-
the social status of unwealthy divorced
was shaky; job opportunities
was
hit
always
became
arrival in Paris,
a daughter, Mathilde,
and
on the 2nd of
hadn’t been that easy, but a prolonged rest
prescribed.
The new mother (and now
118
the
Reading Rilke
madonna
was
of the restored family)
be bedridden
to
until
the 20th.
Paula Becker had always believed her
As
one.
life
would be
early as July of 1900, she writes in her diary:
Worpswede, As
a short
July 26, 1900
was painting today, some thoughts came to me and want to write them down for the people love. I know I
I
shall not live very long.
bration is
But
I
wonder,
more beautiful because
is
that sad?
lasts longer?
it
if
I
keen
at present.
My
me. And depart;
if
and
now
only if
I
love
I
take,
I
I
get a
suck everything up into
would blossom
my hair.
me, before
for
I
Crowned by
pinned
freshly
to her dressing
I
shall
4
After three weeks, Paula Becker gets out of bed for the time.
be
linden tree, of ripened
can paint three good pictures, then
go gladly, with flowers in
to
still
to
unbelievably
is
With almost every breath
wheat, of hay, and of mignonette.
life
were supposed
sense of smell
new sense and understanding of the
a cele-
And my
absorb everything in the few years that are offered me, everything.
I
My powers of
a celebration, a short, intense celebration.
perception are becoming finer, as
Is
I
combed and braided
hair,
first
with roses
gown, she walks slowly from her bed-
room, flanked by her husband and her brother
in
case she
should suffer a sudden weakness, into another room, where
dozens of candles have been
You
sat
up
in
lit
and placed about.
your childbed
to confront a mirror that gave
Now that
image was
all
back everything.
of you, out there,
WILLIAM inside
H.
GASS
was mere deception,' the sweet*deceit
of every
woman who
tries a
smile while
she puts on her jewelry and combs her hair
Seated
in a chair,
This
done.
is
she asks for her baby to be brought to her.
"Now
tries to elevate
5 .
it is
almost as beautiful as Christmas.” She
her foot, perhaps to place
on a
it
“
dies then of an embolism.
said she said
It’s
footstool.
Schade !"
And
—what
a
shame.
A too,
year
later, after
the death of the Countess von Schwerin,
and then, suddenly of typhoid
Alice Faehndrich
—
in short,
wrote a requiem to a
was, of course,
umbrage Paula’s
one
I
he would not name.
there to be hurt,
what the work would
at
poem was completed,
for a suicide he’d
say.
still
— Rilke
Unnamed
Modersohn
suspect, because Otto
alive, still
still
Capri hostess,
with death the atmosphere
woman
even on her monument,
fever, his
there to take
Almost the moment
Rilke wrote another requiem, this
never personally known, Count Wolf von
Kalckreuth, but in this case the identity of the dead
is
promi-
nently displayed.
Paula Becker’s stock as an years, but at the time (though
artist
has risen some over the
one thinks the thought wryly and
without vainglory) those
who knew
climax of her brief
was the death which occasioned the
life
her had to believe that the
composition of Rilke’s "Requiem for a Friend,” one of poetry’s eternal triumphs. "I’ve
had
my
prised to see
dead, and
them
I
let
them
go,”
it
so consoled, so soon at
begins, "and
home
in
was
sur-
being dead,
so right, so unlike their reputation.” (The Elegies will argue otherwise, deciding that
“it’s
difficult to
be
dead.’’)
Becker assumes the mantle of the traditional continues to trouble her friend.
What
back from the dead
visit
if it’s
only to
120
is
Only Paula
restless spirit
the point of
and
coming
the dead, because every-
Reading Rilke
thing in this so-called
disappears
life
in
the very
moment
of
its
brief appearance?
poet promises to do the things, see the things,
Bitterly, the
which the painter
feel the things
he blames her
didn’t live to enjoy; bitterly
acceding to custom, abandoning her
for
demanded by an undeserving
dying a death designed and
system she should have opposed;
society, a
own
her of eating the seeds of her
path from
her proper end; and
beg
return, to
for
no more be given
now
bitterly
he accuses
death, bending her
true course, upending, as
its
art,
if it
own
were an enemy,
she has rejected her death as well, to
something from the her; bitterly the
life
poem
she
left
which can
accuses, not Moder-
sohn alone, not merely Rainer Maria Rilke (who hides now behind the universal), but
The
departure. selves
is
Men
in general for Paula’s
social condition in
which women find them-
partly to blame, but the opposition
which society
demands an
also insists
on
is
premature
between
life
and
art
Love
a considerable factor.
increase of freedom for one’s lover, and jus-
tice asks that
we measure
command
by the amount we
it
in
ourselves.
“Don’t
come
back,” the
same command
to
poem
ends. Later, Rilke will issue the
Orpheus: remain with Eurydice
of the dead. “If you can stand
it,
dead have their own concerns.” resignation
which does not
stay
No
relieve
in the
realm
dead with the dead, the
longer bitterly, but with a
him
of his obligations, the
poet promises to carry on the task she should have stayed here to perform, but at all,
and
“since, in line, in
if it
now he
if
won’t distract her from her
me, what
German,
Doch
asks for her help,
is
hilf
is
she must
new
come back
responsibilities,
most distant sometimes helps.” The
even more revealing:
mir
so,
dass es dich nicht zerstreut,
wie mird das Fernste manchmal
121
hilft: in
mir.
final
WILLIAM That
mir placed as
in
at the
it is
,
GASS
H.
end of both
line
and poem (and
creating, for any English version, an intolerable awkwardness),
suspends the entire
text
behind the colon, and makes
(as is cus-
tomary with Rilke) the poem even more deeply personal. Paula Becker’s ghost remained
A
despite his poem’s pleas.
selection from Paula’s journals
been assembled by her brother, Kurt, and published zine,
was
Giildenkammer
in 1913. Rilke
,
the poet
at large to trouble
maga-
in a
had read these pieces and
sufficiently impressed to suggest to their editor that
made
Paula’s manuscripts should be
and behold, when,
cry out, "Lo,
’
available.
in the
autumn
We
he edit them and see
again.
Schmargendorf
of
of 1916, Paula’s letters to
to their publication,
because people were always sending such intimacies
and would
all
should not
mother sent a packet of her daughter’s journals and Rilke, requesting that
had
to him,
own Florence and Lou Salome’s eyes. The practice was
Rilke had written his
diaries for
common.
On
this occasion,
however, after a delay that extends to the
day after Christmas, and
worm,
Rilke refuses
to
lengthy letter which squirms like a
Frau Becker’s request, and repeatedly
insists that these letters
by the family
in a
and journals (picked over and selected
be sure) do not do Paula Becker’s achievement
justice,
because most of them
level of
her early work, whereas the painting she did in her final
Paris period,
reflect her earlier views
which establishes and defines her genius,
and the
is
inade-
quately reflected by the written materials that Rilke has in
hand.
Whenever one evokes
the
name
of Paula Becker, one
has implicitly to assert that in the power of her later work
she produced an extraordinarily personal will
never
come
closer to this “personal
122
style,
and one
essence than by
Reading Rilke
realizing that
it
resides in that most astonishing tension
between
validity
between
a validity already
entered state
ol
and grace. For precisely
in
the middle,
remote from her and
liveliness, already
a
newly
grown modest, there
stands and endures her pure, free, sacrificial achieve-
ment. 6
These sentences are stuffed with phrases of postponement and evasion, just as the entire letter is. Yet Rilke may have been right.
There
Who will When
is
no better hiding place than behind the
truth.
part that drape?
the publisher
Anton Kippenberg accepts the
editorial
task that Rilke has refused, the poet writes, opposing the project
same reasons he has earlier advanced: that such a volume would tarnish rather than enhance her reputation: “It may for the
simply be that her final years were too short to permit any articulation whatsoever alongside the breathless progress of
her
art
.” 7 .
What
.
is
the critic
most distant sometimes helps.
Hermann
which became
a
Many years
later,
when
Pongs, in a questionnaire about the Elegies
major source
for their understanding,
asked
Rilke for his impression of Paula Becker’s late paintings, he
shamefully answered,
“I last
saw Paula Modersohn
knew little of the work she was doing then work I don’t know to this day ." 8 1906 and
If guilt
can write a great poem,
for Rilke also
to
brought his
be borne upon him
—
own
his
so despite the fact that he
children supplanted in
in Paris in
or later
been accomplished here,
it’s
wife to bed with child. That had
resemblance felt
to
Modersohn. He did
(somewhat inconsistently)
women
that
the need for creativity. Clara
survived her pregnancy, yet soon had the burden of a baby and another’s
life to
manage
all
alone
,2 3
.
.
.
yes, alas, since her hus-
WILLIAM hand, having become bourgeois,
succumbed begged then
—
—
against
when
crime,
that
all
—
he said he loved, the
finally,
artist
and having
to, if
Clara had
for a child)
the poet’s aims and principles
.
.
.
had
—inseminated
he claimed
to admire,
Modersohn would Paula
life (as
s)
.
.
.
and
attempting to escape the consequences of
he finds he faces yet others
common
couple’s joint entrapment in
new
Paula was
Modersohn must have
thus endangering her again,
as'
custom, as Paula would (even
as, later,
woman
the
to
GASS
H.
life
—
—he
the
principally
selfishly flees his
family, seeks refuge in Rodin, suffers as a substitute the
poverties of Paris
.
.
actions and attitudes
yes
.
.
.
well
.
.
.
.
alas
which redoubled
.
.
but these were
.
his guilt, troubled his
conscience, and disturbed his sleep, because the poet’s very real very sordid very ordinary weaknesses were always threatening to
appear before the its
fair
public figure of the Poet Personified, take
place, and, as he said he feared Paula’s journals would, dis-
grace the work of a
life.
Under her changed and
circumstances Clara
straitened
could only hope to continue with her sculpture. But hope lone evil those evils
Pandora’s box. For
band
—
left
Toward
how much
of Clara’s imitation of her hus-
them
responsibility, having set the tone
— must the hus-
and
led the
way?
Paula, too, at the end, the poet had been ambivalent,
unhelpful, distant
—quadrupling
with most apparitions, guilt
is
reader, openly with “You
the counts against him. As
the ghost that walks within the
“Requiem.” Whenever a poem of
Rilke’s
seems
must change your
through the poem’s example, self
the
behind when they popped out of
leaving her child as he had both of
band accept
is
we can be
has failed the charge.
124
to
admonish
life,”
its
or tacitly,
certain that Rilke him-
Reading Rilke
REQUIEM FOR
A FRIEND /
had
I’ve
my dead, and
and was surprised so soon at
home
l
let
to see
them go
them
so consoled,
being dead, so
in
so unlike their reputation.
right,
Only you,
you come back, brush by me, move about,
bump
into
something that
will betray
your presence with a sound. Oh, don’t take
me what was
from
you
if
feel
homesick
We alter all of
it;
and
is
for
anything here.
whatever
instantly reflected
is
I
slowly learning. You’re mistaken
I
perceive
from ourselves,
no longer there.
thought you were farther
me
we
that
you should
stray
off. It
bothers
and come
this
way,
you who managed more transformation than any other woman.
That we were frightened by your death
—no
.
.
.
that your harsh death darkly interrupted us,
dividing what-had-been from what-would-be: this is will
our concern; coming to terms with
accompany
it
our tasks.
all
But that you too were frightened, and even tremble with terror that
when
terror has
now
no cause;
you are giving up some of your eternity
to return here, friend, here again,
where nothing
yet
is;
and confused by your
that, half-hearted first
encounter with Totality,
you did not follow the unfolding of as
infinite natures,
once you grasped earthly things;
that,
from the
circle that received you,
I2 5
—— WILLIAM some
the stubborn pull of
GASS
H.
past discontent
has dragged you back into calibrated time
me
this starts If
I
from sleep
—
'
like the break-in of a thief.
could say that you only
come
out of your
abundant kindness, that because you are so sure
and self-possessed you can wander childlike here and
unaware of any
risk
from harmful places
but no: you’re beseeching. That’s what
bone and cuts
to the
A grim
me
like a
me
rebuke, borne to
into
chills
me
saw.
by your ghost,
me at night when withdraw my lungs, my guts, the emptied chambers of my heart
might weigh on into
there,
I
such a protest would not be as grotesque as this pleading
is.
me, should
Tell
What do you want? I
travel?
Thing behind that runs Should
I
though
it
I
Did you leave some
after
you now
country you never saw,
set out for a
was the other
half of
shall sail its rivers, search
about
its
in vain?
all
its
you knew?
earth,
oldest customs, speaking with
and ask
women
in
their doorways,
and watching when they I
shall see
when I
how
they wrap their world around them
be brought before their king,
and bribe the I
may
priests to take
But then, when shall
me
to their temple,
prostrate myself before their
and have them leave
I
children home.
they work the fields and graze their meadows.
shall ask to
so
call their
I
me
most powerful
there, after latching the gates.
have learned enough,
simply watch the animals until
something of seeps into
my
their serenity slowly
limbs;
I
idol,
shall see
myself
Reading Rilke
held deep inside their eyes until gradually, calmly, indifferently, I’m released. I
have gardeners recite to
shall
the
many
flowers so
in the pots of their
some
trace of a
And
shall
I
buy
I
me
can bring hack
proper names
hundred scents. fruits, too, fruits in
a country’s earth will rise to join
For
You
fruit
them out
set
and on
you understood: ripe
sky.
fruits.
bowls before you,
in
a scale of colors
You saw women,
its
whose juice
weighed
their worth.
too, as fruit; children as well,
since they grew the shapes of their existence as
if
And
from a seed inside. finally
you saw yourself so
—
as a fruit.
Peeling from your clothes, you brought
your nakedness before a mirror,
and waded in front,
in
up
to
your gaze, which stayed wide-eyed,
and did not
say: I’m that; no: this
You looked with such so impersonally
is.
a lack of curiosity,
and with the poverty of the pure,
you weren’t attracted even by yourself: now I'd like to
in the
holy.
keep you where you put yourself
deeps of the mirror, away from the world.
Why have you come in this different way? Why do you deny yourself? Why do you want to
make me think
you wore
in
that in the
amber beads
your portrait there was
still
a heaviness of the sort that can’t survive in the serenity of
peaceful pictures?
your posture seem to show an
What makes you like lines
evil
Why does
omen?
read the contours of your body
on the palm of
a
hand,
12 7
— WILLIAM so that
I
Come
GASS
H.
cannot see them otherwise than Fate?* into the candlelight. I’m not afraid
dead
to look the
When
in the face.
they have a right, as
much
they
*
come back
as other things,
to the hospitality of our gaze.
Come; we ll be together silent for a Look at this rose on my writing desk: isn’t
the light around
as that It
it
just as shy
which shines around you?
ought
It
too has no business here.
have bloomed or perished
to
while.
in the
garden
out there quite apart from me, yet here
it is,
unaware of
Don’t be frightened for
— — oh!
I
feel
it
if
must grasp and grant
I
must concede
I
feel
finally
I
it,
understand,
me;
rising in
I
Just as a blind
my awareness.
even
I
if
can do nothing I
else,
die in doing so.
that you are here.
man
touches something,
your Fate, although
I
cannot name
it.
Let us grieve together that someone
withdrew you from your mirror. Can you
You
can’t.
still
cry?
Long ago you turned the strength and abundance of
your tears into a richly ripe gaze,
everything
vital that
was flowing
into a
more powerful
rising
and
circling,
and were transforming in
you
reality
poised but wild.
Then chance drew you
back, utmost chance
drew you back from the
last
step needed to advance,
back into a world where the body’s blood
Not
all
of you at once, but bit by
but when, around these like
bits,
bit;
the world,
pus around a wound, grew,
rules.
Reading Rilke
then you needed the whole self you no longer had, and, against the rules, broke yourself further,
into painful
fell
fragments, as
you had
to,
because you so needed you.
Then, bearing yourself away, you grubbed from your nightwarm heartsoil the green seeds
from which your death was meant yours, your
And you as
own
ate,
death, the proper
outcome of your
grain, ate
them
all,
an aftertaste of sweetness
you hadn’t expected, lurking, a sweetness on your
who
you:
life.
you ate the kernels of your own death
you would eat any
to find
to sprout:
lips,
inside the sensations of your senses
were so sweet already.
Ah
... let us lament.
Do you know with what
what reluctance, your blood, when you called
it
hesitation,
back,
commitment to an incomparable circulation? how confused it became when asked to take up
gave up
its
once again the restricted how,
full
circuits of the
of mistrust and astonishment,
body? it
flowed
into the placenta again, exhausted suddenly
from the long journey home?
You drove
it
on, you
you dragged
it
and wanted
it,
pushed
showed
despite
all that,
a flag
it
it
to
herd to be sacrificed,
be happy.
was happy;
and surrendered. You believed,
because you’d got used that
ahead,
to the hearth like a
Finally you conquered: it
it
to those other
would remain only
for a time.
But now you were in time, and time
And is
measures,
is
long.
time goes on, and time adds up, and time
like a relapse after a
lengthy illness.
How short your life
seems
if
you now compare
129
it
WILLIAM
GASS
H.
with the hours you sat before your overflowing
and
overflowing future, diverting their course
its
to stir the
seed that would become your child,
and, once again, your Fate.
A bitter business.
Labor exceeding strength. Yet you performed
Day
art
after
day you dragged yourself
and pulled out
its
lovely
to the
it.
loom
work and rewove
threads into another pattern.
its
And
had energy enough
still
When
it
was done you wanted
like children
that
for a celebration. to
be rewarded,
who’ve drunk the bittersweet tea
was supposed
make them
to
well.
So you rewarded yourself, since you were so far
away from everyone, even
still
after this, that
no one
could have guessed what reward would please.
But you knew. You
up
sat
in
your childbed
back everything.
to confront a mirror that gave
Now that
image was
all
of you, out there,
was mere deception, the sweet deceit
inside
of every
woman who
tries a
smile while
she puts on her jewelry and combs her
And
women
so you died as
died in your
own warm
used
hair.
to die,
house,
died the old-fashioned death of childbearing
who
try to close
women
themselves again but cannot do
it,
because that darkness that they also bore
comes back again and Even a
so,
shouldn’t
if
when
otherwise
We
all is
way
in like a callous lover.
Women who will weep for money,
well paid will howl for you
Customs! All
its
someone have rounded up
few wailing-women.
and
bullies
all
night,
quiet.
haven’t nearly
gone and out of use.
enough customs.
Reading Rilke
So
that’s
what you had
to
come back
Do you
the mourning that was omitted.
should
I
like to
clothe you in
for:
my
hear mine?
cries,
cover the sharp shatters of your death,
and tug
till
would have
the cloth
is all
to shuffle
in rags, so
my
poor words
around
shivering in the tatters of their sound as
if
lamentation were enough. But
not the one (I
who withdrew you from
If,
I
accuse ...
I
accuse
like all the others),
all
men.
from somewhere deep inside me,
there were to arise a childlife
I
hadn’t been aware
perhaps the purest childness of wouldn’t want to
I’d
accuse:
I
yourself
cannot find him hereabouts, he looks
but through him
I
now
make an
of those
For
know
angel of
it,
my childhood,
Without
it.
hurl
it
of,
looking,
into the front
row
weeping angels who remember God.
this sort of suffering
and no one’s learned
has gone on long enough;
to bear
it; it’s
too hard for us,
the insane suffering of spurious love that,
upheld by the precepts of custom,
calls itself
Right and prospers from the Wrong.
Where is the man with the rights of such possession, who can control what cannot even possess itself, but will now and then happily catch hold, only to toss
As
little
itself
away again
as a captain
like a child’s ball?
can keep the carved Nike
facing forward from his ship’s
when
prow
the inner lightness of her divinity
whisks her away on a wave of wind; so
little
can one of us
call
back the
who, now no longer heeding on the wire-thin
strip of
woman
us, sets forth
her existence
— WILLIAM
GASS
H. *
without a misstep, as
by a miracfe
if
unless our pleasure and profession
For
wrong,
this is
anything
if
is
—
*
to
is
wrong.
wrong:
not to increase the freedom of a love
with
all
the inner freedom one can muster.
We have, where we love, only this: we must comes
allow each other to grow great, because diminishing
easily to us
Are you
still
and doesn’t need
so
much, you did
You passed through and
life
suffer; loving
artists in their
where they
distorts far
as daybreak.
lonely;
is
need
You began both; both Oh, you were
open
as
much;
so
work sometimes sense,
love, the
which fame
be learned.
there? In what corner are you?
You understood
Women
to
for transmutation.
live in that
by taking
from
all
it
away.
fame. You were
inconspicuous; had gently withdrawn your beauty as
one lowers a
festive flag
on the gray morning of
a
You had but one wish,
for a lifetime of
which If
is
not done: despite
you’re
in this
working day.
still
there,
if
all,
there
darkness where your
work
not done. is still
a place
resonates
spirit
with the shallow soundwaves that a voice,
by
itself, in
the night,
stirs
hear me; help me. Look, slip
up
we
in the air of a lofty
inadvertently
back from what we’ve labored
into routines
we weakly
we never
Anyone who has
to attain
intended, where
struggle, as in a
without ever waking.
room:
No
dream, and die there
one
will
be any wiser.
lifted his heart for a
lengthy task
Reading Rilke
may
discover that he can
of the
work
is
t
too great, so
keep on, the weight it
falls
of that weight, worthless.
For somewhere there’s an ancient enmity
between ordinary
life
and extraordinary work.
To understand, to express it: help me. Don’t come back. If you can bear it, stay dead among the dead. The dead have their own concerns. But help me, since
—
in
me
if
you can,
—what
is
if it
won’t distract you,
most distant sometimes helps
!
33
9 .
%
THE GRACE OF GREAT THINGS
In 1919, at Soglio, Salis
summers
end, while staying in the Swiss town of
where he was given access
and was able
Salis family past
to the library of the Palazzo
to acquaint himself there with
(it
was Rilke
s
hideous days
mind
in the Military
inventive physics teacher
of the
habit to look into the back-
ground of the families and the houses guest), Rilke allowed his
some
in
back
to drift
School of
who one day
which he became
set
to those allegedly
Polten,
St.
and
memory
is
up an experiment
as a
works
At
The
it
enough
well
to include
sample of his prose when he gave public readings from
—
at
to
one of the strangest and most
revealing of his pieces, and Rilke liked it
an
to
teach his pupils a few things about the nature of sound. essay inspired by this
a
his
Winterthur, for instance.
their instructor’s direction, the
young
bricoleurs
found a
piece of pliable cardboard, which they twisted into the shape of a funnel.
Over the narrow end they fastened
paper normally used vibrating
brush platen,
membrane
bristle. I
A
to close
into
up
fruit jars.
a piece of wax-like
This was to be the
whose center they
thrust a clothes-
small cylinder about the size of a typewriter
imagine, and equipped with a rotating handle was then
coated with candle wax and brought in contact with the
When someone scratching the
spoke into the funnel, the
wax on the slowly turning
!
34
bristle
cylinder.
bristle.
bristled,
The
exact
Reading Rilke
character of
its
course, Rilke remembers, was preserved by a
coat of varnish.
Miraculously, as
must have seemed, when the needle retraced its previous path, “the sound which had been ours,” Rilke writes, “came hack to us tremblingly, haltingly from the it
paper funnel, uncertain,
infinitely soft
out altogether in places.”
He
and hesitating and fading
thought he would remember that
tremulous whisper forever, but what really remained
mind were the grooves on the
cylinder.
The
would
later
use the relations
among
his
lesson Rilke learned
should be of immeasurable importance to stein
in
all
of us. Wittgen-
the musical score, the
performance, and the phonograph to express a similar point. Rilke had heard, then seen, how a few spoken words could be transformed (one of his talismanic terms) into a modest physical groove a line which so preserved those sounds that they
—
—
could be recovered again. The matter was, of course, more complex than that. Movements in a larynx had set the air to vibrat-
The vibrations in the membrane and hence wiggles upon the slowly revolving wax. ing.
This process into a groove
—
air
became
vibrations
in the bristle,
in
the
which wrote them
of transforming and detransforming a sound
and back again
passed the form along; that
—was possible because both media
is,
the media retained the relations,
although they expressed them differently. Galileo, as
if
he were
the most divine of magicians, represented a moving body as a point, the time
and distance of its
rectangle might be constructed.
travel as vectors
The formula
traveled at a certain speed over a fixed time
the formula for the area of a rectangle: a
=
from which a
for the distance
was
xy, or
identical with
d =
vt.
When
Descartes discovered analytic geometry, he transformed geome-
and mechanics was consequently also drawn into algebra’s abstractness. There are two kinds of transformatry into algebra,
tions, then: material (vibration of the
*35
brush into wiggles of the
WILLIAM
GASS
H.
groove) and conceptual (geometry e'levated into algebra). a
move
It
was
of this conceptual sort that Poincare had performed.
Rilke regularly achieved such conceptual elevations in his
poems by having one metaphor
And
another.
then
another
.
.
upon, swallow, and digest
set .
the
like
traditional
of
line
increasingly large-mouthed and voracious fish.
Many
years later, in Paris, where Rilke was attending
anatomy lectures
ond of skull
.
his .
.
made
the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, he
at
the sec-
important connections. “The coronal suture of the
has ... a certain similarity to the closely wavy line
which the needle of the phonograph engraves on the rotating cylinder.
directed
some
it
on
.
.
What
.
if
receiving,
one changed the needle and
return journey along a tracing which was not
its
derived from the graphic translation of a sound, but existed of itself naturally
.
.
.
along the coronal suture, for example." At the
present time technicians have done something similar for the
movement
of the heart, so that death
is
seen as a straight
line, or
heard as a continuous drone. It is
of course a fanciful project: to
needles that will
let
only a poetical idea
fill
the world’s cracks with
us hear those cracks speak.
—
a bit inaccurate, too, since
but the wiggles in the crevice that matter.
The
it
isn’t
to order their
If
appearance
.
.
.
the line
line exists only to
allow the vibrations to change, to provide a place for
and
only
It is
new
ones,
in time.
one can transform the dance of a groove into the sound of a
waltz,
and
the sound of the waltz can similarly excite the
if
atmosphere so that every ear bles,
and
if
— space —
in so if all
room sympathetically trem-
bursts of energy are then sent along
until brain cells light
heard
in the
many
up
like
many
nerves
Vegas signs and the sound
places at once
it
seems
to
have
is
filled its
these changes in one chain of cause and effect can
take place (go back and forth, actually, like a fan in front of the face), then, Rilke
wonders, wouldn’t
it
be possible to translate
Reading Rilke
sound
taste into color, color into sound,
amorous that
linger along a thigh, for instance: “Is there any contour
one could
experience
another
That
dots.
complete
not, in a sense,
as
it,
makes
it
itself
what we have people
is
way and then
in this
thus transformed, in
felt,
sense?”
field of
reduced
into the run of an
to its linear contours.
Descartes
like
These
Each dot has an address.
If
information are required to
lies
body
is
compactions of
lines are
the line
A
for.
on a plane, two lies
on a
cube or sphere, three pieces are necessary: the location on
axes,
bits of
x-i, y-2, z-3, for
Thus any line can be expressed as a set mind is far away from this sort of transfor-
s
mation, yet his model
not inappropriate. European poetry, he
is
dominated by the sense of
is
phy, as well as
its
science).
“And
sight (so
yet the perfect
materialize on condition that the world, acted levers simultaneously,
is
like a
is
simultaneously, but
it
is its
philoso-
poem can
upon by
only
all five
seen, under a definite aspect, on the
supernatural plane, which
The poem
it
instance.
of numbers. Rilke
observes,
fix its points; if
is,
in fact, the
plane of the poem.”
Persian garden, affecting every sense
does so by putting
itself at a
distance
advantageous for observation, and placing the various vectors of
awareness
in the
same
arena, the area of the
poem. The
lover, in
contrast, because he rushes toward the center of his desires, in
closing in
—cleaving
skin to skin
—
loses sight of things.
with our eyes closed because there there were,
we
sary to touch
wouldn’t want to see
and
taste are
isn’t it.
his
is
Then
to see.
kiss
And
if
the rubbing neces-
soon replaced, as the blood
warmth which overwhelms every other By the time he
much
We
rises,
by a
sensation.'
ready to write “The First Elegy,” Rilke has
epistemology worked out.
The
material world has scattered about in
tifully in
some
it,
apparently plen-
places, less in others, transmitters of various
kinds. Signals are constantly being sent by
137
means
of air and
WILLIAM
GASS
H.
*
light
out into the surrounding spade, where, from time to time,
they are picked up by receivers, for there are receivers, too. receptivity
Our
determined by the extent and quality of our sen-
is
sory equipment, by our ability to integrate separate signals into a
and by the width and
single coherent experiential "message,
generosity of attention
and pain are the
we
are ready to allow ourselves. Pleasure
result of transmissions, too, as are feelings of
joy and fear. Strong and/or threatening
narrow our focus
communications can
to a single source. Persistent interests will
cause us to scan the world for certain things rather than others.
A person s
character can be frequently read through
choice of signal to search
use of what
it
number and
cues to
tell
habitual
to experience,
and
its
receives.
Not only do we miss in
openness
for, its
its
quality
us what
things because our receivers are limited
and narrow
we have
in
in focus,
but
we
our consciousness;
use sensory
we
typecast
those clues immediately, conceptualize them, interpret them,
and respond, not
to experience,
which we allow
but to concepts, to ideas and theories
—
to disappear,
easier to hold
on
to
and generally furnished with predetermined evaluations and automatic responses. Both Schopenhauer and Bergson were particularly mistrustful of concepts.
For Schopenhauer, the
replacement of experience by accounts of
created a "corrupt
it
consciousness/’ For Bergson, concepts falsified experience by dividing
its
continuities
up
blocks the
into discrete
motion-picture camera cuts action into a set of
These take,
fears are legitimate, but only
common
enough, and certainly
of the conceptual systems
we
characteristics of experience
German language alles
was der Fall
to talk
ist ,
or
if
a
stills.
we make
critical.
way
Not
a prior mis-
all
properties
use to describe experience are
itself.
Obviously
we can
use the
about the world, to say Die Welt
employ arithmetic
to
measure
a
ist
room, or
use a thermometer to take the temperature of the roast. But
Reading Rilke Nature does not speak German, the space of the room is not infinite just because between any of the numbers used to measure
it
there are an inlinite
as hot as exist in
io°C
amount more, and 20°C
to the leg of
Nature, only
is
not twice
lamb. Logical connections do not
And
in Logic.
poetry
is
merely
.
.
.
merely
poetry.
Duchamps may have moved the urinal out of the john and onto the floor of the museum, calling it a Fountain, but that act of defamiliarization will not cause the concept to flee
Quite the contrary. Nevertheless, label
(it s
a urinal, that
s
detachment would be more difficult
detached and formal
state,
I
a bottle rack)
is
Fountain as a sculptural object.
more
If its
and contemplate the
basin were awash in piss,
With
difficult. still.
I
merits esthetic appreciation.
it
s art.
Found
art,
or
I
say
butt
can decide whether the Fountain
Duchamps,
the projective or label theory of art If
a cigarette
Yet possible. Then, in that
of course, had another
agenda, and was making a different point.
impossible to know.
mind.
can mentally peel off the a bicycle wheel atop the kitchen stool,
the spiky thing over there
afloat there,
my
it s
art,
He was
—with what
it
Ready-Mades,
s art.
as
If
it
s
advancing
sincerity in a
Duchamps
it
is
museum,
called his,
are at best only interesting, or they have local shapes
and
patches of real quality which you must focus on, ignoring the rest. Occasionally, however, a bit of rusted metal or a once-
working
tool will allow neglect to turn
into art.
it
As photographs
Fountain was more menacing than pleasing. Contemporary urinals have far more style and grace: those, that is, attest, the
whose enamel,
like a
Animals, Rilke
openly out
at the
than man. This
white
ball
gown, flows
to the floor.
unencumbered by concepts, could look world and were more at ease at one with it felt,
—
is
Nietzschean. This
even more “interested” than we
is
romance. Animals are
are, alert to
food signs and dan-
ger signals. Rats remember. Squirrels learn. Raccoons adjust.
H9
A
WILLIAM herd can grow uneasy
the
at
H.
GASS become accus
of a leaf, a pride
stir
human presence, a flock of geese turn aggressive. However, only we have the potentiality for that detachment
tomed
to
self that yields the
from the Rilke
was prepared
quite charmingly
princesses
far,
to
purer eye.
push
in a letter of July 15, 1924, to the
he does
as
Mary and Antoinette Windischgraetz:
Dame
In the great cathedrals, in Notre
Marks,
metaphors
his transformative
or
on Mont
St.
Michel,
I
in Paris, St.
often brought myself to
waves of believe that over the centuries the ever-swelling the organ music have had some influence on the curv es of the more arches, the intertwining of the ornaments, or customary smoothness of the pillar fluting and of the col-
umns.
...
not iron filings form figures
Do
when
a string
is
2 bowed near them?
Rilke
makes breathing
apart from
itself,
olfactory duties,
its
—
another of our sensory organs. The air we inhale which is the materiality of space itself, ticularly
—
night air par-
we
alter,
then,
Moreover, the into the space that shall serve our inner world.
spoken poem
is
made
of nothing but the poet
s
breath.
Breath, you invisible poem!
The continuous pure exchange of our existence with the world’s space.
Counterweight
Single
to the
rhythm
in
which
wave
through the slowly forming sea of me;
among
seas the most frugal of
conserving such space.
140
all,
I
am.
Reading Rilke
How many of these me
In
Some winds
already.
seem my
waves have been
son.
Do you know me now, breeze, made of my You, who once were the smooth bark and foliage round my words
breath?
3
.
Although
this
to let
lead oil the second part.
it
poem
was the
"breath”
at the
From
of the sonnets to arrive, Rilke decided
He
then placed another
conclusion of the entire series.
Silent friend of
how your
last
many
breath
distances, feel
enlarges space.
still
the dark tower
let
your bell peal.
Whatever feeds upon your face grows strong from
this offering.
Transform matter into mind.
What If
is
the source of your deepest suffering?
drinking
is
bitter,
become wine.
In this limitless night, be the magical force at the intersection of
the
meaning of their intercourse.
And
if
what’s earthly no longer
say to the
To
We
your senses,
unmoving
earth:
I
the rushing water speak:
have already heard Rilke
tell
knows you,
flow. I
stay
4 .
lovers to
out of their arms to broaden the spaces
we
throw the emptiness breathe, but
now we
WILLIAM know
that our
own
breath broadens
becomes
Elegy,” the poet’s face
when
Night,
resides, feeds
GASS
H.
a wind,
on our
The
Likewise, in
it.
First
*
“Oh, then there
a pasture.
s
the space where the world
made from
faces.”
breathe, to see, feel, touch, taste, hear, smell, realize the
To
world, widely, without judgment or repudiation: this was the first
task
—
world
to allow the
in.
To
inhale
all,
to
swallow
to
all,
become the place observed. For no more reason than its recognition. Such openness permits the initial transformation that the Elegies demand; for when we breathe, when we see, feel, touch, taste, hear the world, we alter its materiality profoundly.
What was simply an emitted signal, the outcry of a thing to let us know it was there, becomes a quality in consciousness. The object
is
message
visible
because
its
itself is invisible;
messages can be received, but the
it is
nowhere;
or, rather,
it is
now
in
an inner space, not the space between our ears, but the space
between what our ears
He
hear. Rilke called
innerworldspace.
it
liked to imagine that the material world of flux was, with
signaling,
beseeching us to become conscious of
fully, free
it
You
from
its
earthly things
—
is
this not
if
it
what you want,
your dream
be one day invisible? Earth!
What,
to realize
grave.
to arise invisible in us? Is not to
it,
its
—
—
things!
not this deep translation,
is
invisible!
your ardent aim ? 5
Yet Rilke was Mr. Fastidious himself, and that squeamishness, Rilke knew, had to be overcome see.”
if
Contemplation was possible
likely to
occur
in front of a
“new” poems, supposed
to
he was for
him
at last to learn "to
— but
it
was more
Cezanne. Most of the revolutionary demonstrate
objects, are about animals in zoos
142
this saintly
and Rower beds
openness
in parks,
to
pho-
Reading Rilke
tographs in books, works of
art in
the shelter of their
figures in myth, icons of the church.
museums,
/
Here we encounter more romance. Animals and
birds
make
communicate with one another, flowers use attract pollinating moths and bees. But many of
noises in order to their scent to
the signals they send are inadvertent.
through the
lion slinks
tall
However
no
is
sway
grass, the grass will
whisper of the predator’s presence. Light surfaces and
stealthily the
falls
a
little,
on unconcerned
reflected back to us unsent by any solid, bearing
petition.
As Rilke knew, and knew better than he cared experience
is
is
normal
interested, not contemplative. People don’t per-
ceive an IT, they perceive what that IT means.
person
to,
The poet
as a
no exception.
Yes, the springtimes have
needed you. There ’ve been
stars
your seeing. In the past, perhaps,
to solicit
waves rose
to greet you, or out
an open window,
was giving
as
you passed, a
to
someone. This was a different commandment.
violin
But could you obey
it?
itself
Weren’t you always
anxiously peering past them, as though
they announced a sweetheart’s coming? (Where would you
have hidden her, with those heavy foreign thoughts
tramping
When we
in
and out and often staying overnight?) 6
perceive
fully,
and do the work assigned
world becomes glorious. Then
"it
is
.
to us, the
breathtaking just to be
here.’’
However,
I
feel obliged to say,
ourselves a favor, not the world.
*43
when we
perceive
fully,
we do
WILLIAM doubt
I
Rilke ever read a
if
when two
shouldn’t they
ence
word
minds” are
“great
seem
GASS
H.
right
interest,
Kant’s, but
why
about something,
same thing? The
to say the
not mediated by concepts.
is
Immanuel *
of
esthetic experi-
displays disinterested
It
and appreciates purposiveness independently of any
purpose.
how
Rilke does not understand into
the transformation of matter
mind works, but we should not blame him
for that.
does. After several thousand years of wondering,
know. Although materialists
will
we
we
explanation, as marvelous and detailed as
shall
it is,
don’t
still
how
confuse
this
with an account
and how consciousness came
of the character of consciousness
to be, they are not a step closer to crossing that threshold.
may
not
know how our awareness
he knows what
purpose
its
is:
to
—the
make
invisible visibly invisible,
When we
experience things as
if
we
the signals
We
are
nowhere but It
moment”
We touch.
what
E.
in his excellent
like.
at least
left
A
Neither of us
is
any longer
calls
exists
lonely.
“the privileged
7 .
is
its
is
not a cancellation.
selfishness, but not
Nor could we
does demand selection,
utility,
and
all
of us
.
.
.
its
has to
particular
“a kind of
144
if
we
could, because
action.
Nevertheless, this saintly acceptance of
upon
What
afford to prolong such states of
awareness or increase their frequency even
laid
disap-
study Proust and Rilke: The Literature
union
out of the self
quality of mind.
living
sometimes should,
should not imagine that such moments involve the can-
cellation of the self.
he
you
invisible, manifesta-
N. Jephcott
F.
of Expanded Consciousness
We
receive
what we perceive, and what we perceive
in us.
constitutes
we
them and ourselves
the psychological distance between pears.
We
got here, but Rilke believes
from external things into inner, and hence tions
one
to us
be happy to explain
the nervous system functions, and hope
No
life is
an obligation
commandment.
In
Henry
Reading Rilke
James’ version the injunction
nothing
is lost.
try to
is:
James, however,
and deep about interpreting
is
be someone on
whom
asking us to be quick, clever,
social signals;
he
advising us
is
not to enjoy the look of haystacks in the rain, but to catch signs of adultery in an eyelid, doubt in a pause.
Austen/James/Wharton point of view, Rilke he just visited
ety;
Rilke ever,
it
from time
though
it
the
lived little in soci-
to time.
inwarding does have a
s
From
level of ‘interpretation,’
probably wouldn’t satisfy James.
If
how-
the world
human mind, then the which would mean it, too,
awaits realization by an accomplished
world should have wants and wishes,
has an interior, so that the expressions on the faces of things
might allow us
to read the state of their inwardness, as if they
too were alive.
We
habitually infer the contents of another’s
innerworldspace from his or her outerworldactions. In a Sherlock Holmesian
mood we may
also read anger or impatience in
the forcibly stubbed cigarette butt, haste in a
weariness
in signs of
tear,
meanness
fulness in a twitch or
much animism
tic.
in the root that
The Notebooks of Make Laurids Brigge
of this kind throughout
its
early pages.
Furthermore, the use which clothes receive fer,
of gravel,
us up, loneliness in the atmosphere of a rented room, will-
trips
has
wear and
spill
—and books
suf-
and pots and pans undergo, and windowsills and stoops
endure
—
this
use wears and
soils
and
pits
them, mars and
creases and scars them, so that gradually, and over time, these effects will shape a surface that resembles their
there
all
that history has
done
it
creates character
most playwrights. Aging delights
To observe the brook wood with trepidation, to
reflecting
them, everything they’ve
to
labored to achieve. Rust destroys, but surely than
life,'
more
in lines.
gurgling happily, to enter a gloomy feel the
melancholy of a motel room,
to appreciate the sturdy character of a scar-faced loading-dock
door, to shudder
some
in front of a
r
45
broken window, does not
WILLIAM mean one
H.
has returned to a state of
GASS mana
worship, or even that
one has simply made an emotional mistake,
seem menacing even
to a positivist
who
but bets both top and bottom dollar on has an expressive surface, and
when we If
the
its
not only knows better,
For Rilke the world
it.
“look”
transformation
first
is
is
should not be ignored
everyone’s obligation, the second
more pointedly
a task for the poet.
guage of ordinary use suffers the same tional things
—
after the
The
lan-
fate as those of func-
silverware, tea service, pin-striped suits. Paul
Valery’s distinction
its
mountain can
look.
transformation
is
for a
between dancing and walking (not
same game. Customarily, we look
referent, or into the
word
past the
we
for its idea. If
strolling)
word
to
reach the refer-
we again look beyond, this time at its importance to us; and when we dig out the idea, we take it, like a nugget, to be assayed. Normally, we do not listen to the music the syllables sing; we don’t appreciate the conceptual connections a word has made in its life; we don’t understand why Adam was asked to “name” the animals for we don’t know that naming is knowing. According to the Elegies, we are here just to utter. To sew ent,
—
concept
to referent like a
button on a coat ... a button meant
not to button but to be.
You might think we were on the stage, we’ve been asked to make so many changes. Well, of course, we are, and in “The Fifth
Elegy”
(Change fully
we
shall
watch our own
our self must become
i):
and unreservedly
to
heart’s
selfless, in
curtain
rise.
order (Change 2)
accept the world, making matter into
consciousness, and following these (Change
3)
medium
ready to serve a
of
what
will
be an artwork so that
it is
to alter the
purposeless purpose. Think, as Thales did, of stream and steam, lava
and
ice:
one substance having many modes of
life.
as Heraclitus did, in the perpetual flux, in unceasing
146
Believe,
metamor-
Reading Rilke
phosis, in the caterpillar’s pupal slee^,
its
nymphhood, and
its
butterflying form.
Will transformation. Be inspired by the flame
where
a thing
made
informing
this
Change conceals
of
master of
spirit,
all
itself;
that’s earthly,
more than the moment of turning. What’s heartset on survival is already stony; loves nothing
how
safe
Look
is it,
out,
feel the
hid in
from afar a
approach of
Whoever will
its
innocuous gray?
far
a
harder hardness warns
hammer
it:
held high.
flows forth from himself like a freshet, Knowledge
acknowledge,
and lead him, entranced, through her wondrous world,
where endings
and beginnings ends.
are often beginnings
Every fortune-favored space you wander through, astonished, is
the child or the grandchild of Change.
as she leafs into laurel,
Language restored
wants
you become wind
to feel
to its purity
metamorphosis requires the poet
is
ready to praise.
make
to
the previous transformations, and insert
an object
will, in a
invisible. Its
Mont
Even Daphne,
it
8 .
The
fourth
a verbal object
from
into the world.
Such
sense, be material again, public, no longer
reason for existing will be
its
own
inherent value.
Sainte-Victoire will have passed through the painter’s
gaze into immateriality only to return through his art to the canvas.
It
is
no longer a mountain.
It
is
a
mountain seen. Seen
superbly. Seen from Les Lauves, seen from
Seen not by Cezanne the man but Gertrude Stein) by the
human mind.
H7
(to
Bibemus Quarry.
adopt the formula of
It will,
however, be more
WILLIAM
H.
GASS
than a mountain so supremely seen, 'because
it
will
transmogrified by the painters paints, the painter’s art itself.
Now
it
will
no longer need
have been
artistry,
to resemble. If the easel
has to be brought to the mountain, the mountain must
move
toward the easel. In the case of the poet, the perception have soaked for a long time
in a
marinade of mind,
of language, in a history of poetic practice.
not be like other objects;
will
it
will
The
will
in a slather
resulting object
have been invested with
consciousness, the consciousness of the
artist.
Then we,
as
read, see, hear, shall share this other superior awareness. shall
the
we
We
be Bach, be Keats, be Cezanne, again, not as they were as
—
—
men who desires that? but as they are as artists. And when Auden watches Icarus fall and completes his poem about it, we shall be able to read the poet weighing Breughel as he weighs the world. ings have let the poet have.
And
It is
a perception
which
so the indebtedness proceeds,
threatening regressions in both directions. Let
them
be.
are benign.
BLUE HYDRANGEA Like the green that cakes in a pot of paint, these leaves are dry, dull and rough
behind
this billow of
not their
is
in a mirror
as
if it
blooms whose blue
own but reflected from far away dimmed by tears and vague,
wished them
to
disappear again
the way, in old blue writing paper,
yellow shows, then violet and gray;
a
washed-out color
as in children’s clothes
which, no longer worn, no more can happen
how much
it
makes you
to:
feel a small life’s brevity.
148
paint-
They
Reading Rilke
But suddenly the blue shines quite renewed
we can
within one cluster, and a
touching blue rejoice before the green
This sonnet
one metaphor conclusion
which
is
see
the
is
made
of
many
observations,
more
for the leaves, three
in the first triplet.
name
9 .
some
information,
for the petals,
When we
and one
translate Hortensia
,
these flowers have in Europe (so called after
the mistress of a French botanist),
we
lose
one meaning and
gain another (which the ‘water cup” shape of the seedpods supplies).
This plant
blooms are likely to
is
likely to
like
litmus paper. In alkaline soils the
be pink; under acid conditions they are
be blue. Aluminum sulfate
will
provoke the plant
blue direction; lime will intensify the pink.
My
in the
grandmother
buried nails near her hydrangea, and they bloomed blue as jeans.
The
petals
do fade toward
a dirty beige, with a little yellow
appearing, a bit of purple, too, as the
poem
says.
Here we have
a
namby-pamby soil, and this is what the distant mirror reflects. The color is “washed-out.” The blue shade of old writrather
The poem proceeds
ing paper also pales in a similar way.
through three fades: a teary mirror, a faded dren’s clothes.
and
all
The
they stand
brevity of a small
found, and the blue as
is
more than
worn-out
is
a
poem
fertile for
the flower it
flowers are giving
this generosity, to
away
rejoices
another Hortensia
poem. This plant bears pink blossoms, perhaps because
The
is
of consolation.
a year later, Rilke writes
a sonnet, but the roles of the petals
chil-
petal, paper, child
suddenly renewed, whereupon
one risen might. This, then, Little
more
Until a spot
for.
life:
letter,
it is
not
and the leaves are reversed.
their scent,
hoping perhaps, with
escape a decolorization. However, the poet
observes that underneath the pink of the petals, the plant’s leaves have grasped the situation. Their green
J
49
is
going, as
WILLIAM though they wanted
GASS
H.
be a reminder of what must come,
to
because the leaves understand the inevitable. here, only a
memento
Do we need
to
No
consolation
mori.
be told? No. These are simply
poems.
It is
counts.
The teardrop
.
.
.
simply
the quality of the awareness encapsulated here that in a distant mirror
which speaks
vanity perhaps or beauty’s loss; the billet-doux
to us of
whose ink has
probably faded, too; the folded children’s clothes about to be buried in an attic hamper: advancing stages of delicately invoked, so sadly sensed,
little
then,
is
memories, rhythms, words verbal “thing’’
really
know
we become aware again
.
.
things
The poem’s
—precepts,
final
facts, feelings,
—and represents them.
—an object unlike the
leaves,
It is
which are
nothing; an object which
human awareness
bit of
most
both positive and pathetic.
The poem transforms many
know” but
that are
losses everywhere to
brighten by contrast one sudden blue renewal. line,
life
a
is
.
.
.
and then again
.
.
.
a
said “to
complex
of the world, an awareness of
ourselves
now
which
and then
.
Many grow
impatient with what, in Rilke, they see as an
escapist view of
art:
this
emphasis on Being rather than on
Doing, on relinquishment rather than retention, on acceptance
smacks more of moral indolence than them; and its radical subjectivity is offensively
rather than revision; saintliness to
antisocial
The
it
and indifferent
to the collective.
desire to improve the world,
of the people
who occupy and who
and therefore the condition despoil
it, is,
however com-
passionate, an impulse born of ignorance and arrogance.
To wish
to better a person’s situation
presupposes a degree
of insight into his circumstances that even a writer does
not enjoy regarding a character born of his
150
own
imagina-
Reading Rilke
tion. ...
means is
To wish
to give
change, to better a person’s situation
to
him,
in
exchange
which he
for difficulties in
practiced and experienced, other difficulties which
find
Here
him even more
is
helpless
another example of
truth (or a partial truth)
may
10 .
how
cleverly Rilke hid behind the
and concealed
his
unconcern.
\et the Elegies, over and over, denounce the times, most particularly their
Squares,
cheap pleasures and
O square in
their
Paris, ceaseless
commercial culture.
showplace,
where the modiste Madame Lamort weaves and winds the restless ways of the world, those endless ribbons, into ever
bows,
frills,
new
designs:
flowers, cockades, artificial fruit,
each cheaply dyed,
to decorate
the tacky winter hats of Fate."
Surely, in these sentiments, Rilke Elegy’’
is
is
not out of
line.
“The Tenth
particularly fierce.
Oh, how completely would an Angel crush underfoot market of cheap comforts, with the church
at its side,
purchased ready-made,
as swept, as shut, as disappointing as a post office
Sunday.
.
.
on a
.
Especially worth seeing, but for adults only: coins in copulation, right there
on
stage,
their
money’s metal genitals
rubadubdubbing. Educational, and sure to stimulate multiplication
.
.
.
WILLIAM
H.
GASS
Denounce is all he does. Rilke has no program for social reform. Our problems are basically metaphysical and cannot be voted out of office
it
ated,
heads on pikes, paraded through the
Again reflecting Rilke’s stoicism, the
streets. (as
or, their
come
has
to
human
condition
be called) can only be understood, appreci-
and endured.
We re not in tune. Outmoded, which
let
Not
like
late, in haste,
us
down upon
migratory birds.
we
force ourselves on winds
indifferent
ponds
12 .
We are not at one with Nature the way the animals are. Actually,
we surround
ourselves with ourselves (farms, towns, cities,
nations, education, technology, art) to blot Nature out, only to find
no soul
And
it?
is
reachable, touchable, knowable, but our own.
Left begging to belong. Rilke suffered, as Nietzsche did,
and many others before him, from an envy of the animal. The grace of the big cat, the eagle’s easy soaring, the spider’s
patience
—
qualities
we
so desperately desire
—
are granted to
these creatures along with their furs and feathers as a birthright.
And
the bees hive, starlings flock, cows herd, geese
north to south, reading the
air,
for us, as Plotinus wrote: life
fly
together
knowing towns and times. Alas is
the flight of the alone to the
alone.
This
is
not the worst of the Elegies mistakes, though
baked ideas of
this
kind which lead
poetry as merely poetry. blind repetition
change;
it
—
is
They know
many people
that instinct
a species of stupidity.
it is
half-
to dismiss
—the source
of
Instinct opposes
cannot cope with difference.
Nor does one need another ideology to reject Rilke’s view that life and death are in the same continuum as though one were infrared
and the other
ultraviolet. Plato, in the
l
52
Phaedo, strug-
Reading Rilke
gling with the idea of significant contraries
and the problem of
relations, tries to argue for the immortality of the soul
gesting that
connected
life
dependent upon death the way warmth
is
continuum
to cold; that the life/death
matter of degree; and that without death (as “right"
and
“left”
or possess
life.
by sug-
is
therefore a
is
the case with
and “high" and “low") we could not understand
One
is
made from
or
comes out of the
other: the
cold can be said to “cause
warmth, and short things make
ones possible. Rilke makes
this point repeatedly.
ment
confuses a condition
first
of degree) with dying (which
ing
still,
my
death (which
like
is). If
am
I
tall
But the arguis
not a matter
not running but stand-
stationary condition should not be understood as
very slow running, or standing.
is
my
The argument
running,
when
it
assumes that
also
occurs, as very fast
if
two terms must be
defined jointly, because our understanding of one requires our understanding of the other, then the existence of these states or equally interdependent.
qualities
is
fact that
good and
is
that
if
cannot infer from the
terms
evil are correlative
Paradise, in order to be Paradise,
we can conclude
We
must have
(if it is its
a fact) that
The most
snake.
there were a perfect place, the people
there
would be unaware of
says.
Adam and Eve know
perfection, just as the good
its
neither good nor evil until they’ve
eaten of the apple.
Plump speak I
apple, banana, gooseberry, pear,
life
and death
into the
have seen them there.
on a
child’s face
when
This comes from far
.
I
mouth.
swear
.
.
.
eating them. .
.
from
far.
What’s slowly growing nameless Freed from the
book
in
your mouth?
fruit’s flesh,
where words once were, the juices of discovery
*53
are.
WILLIAM
How can you
call this “apple.” ^
This sweetness that feels
clarifies,
it
dense
at first so
and reluctant, yielding slowly
until
GASS
H.
to the tongue,
becomes awake, transparent,
doubly meant, sunny, earthy, wholly here:
Oh, such touching, carnal knowing, joy Dying
is
indeed a diminished form of
realm of the dead where the dead dwell underworld.
It
also believed,
“way” of
may be
— immense
possible to die your
3
but there
life,
like
.'
is
no
shades cast into an
own
death, as Rilke
by making your death a clear consequence of your
living,
and
in that
sense growing your death inside you.
Moreover, one could refuse the ministrations of doctors and the help of hospitals
—dying on your own—
Chamberlain’s death howls
in
alone. Howling, as the
The Notebooks of Make Laurids
Brigge.
The seed image fruition,
and
realizes the
As the
Rilke well.
serves
purpose of
tree
reaches
growing; as Rowers
its
flower and exemplify theirs; as couples couple, too, to produce
anew; so pods and life
between
fruit
appear, only to
fall
a child’s greedy jaws, or,
and
rot or lose their
shaken by a breeze,
reseed the earth for another season, populate a
Queen Anne’s body
lace
to another,
and we
are coming; yet
in a
son or daughter, to it is
with
and goldenrod. Life thus passes from one
who
eyes, no,
meadow
to
all
it is
not
my
life,
rise again
just life as life
Thomas Hardy, who
must make way
is
—
life
for the vast
numbers
nor yours, that seeds
itself
and look out with refreshed
that has
no
single owner.
also a very great poet, tackles this kind
of transmigration, as he always tackles his topics, head on, in
whom
some
lines written after
on as
a boy, died well along, at seventy-two.
Louisa Harding,
*54
he’d been sweet
Reading Rilke
Portion of this a
Is
yew
man my grandsire
Bosomed here at its This branch may be
krfew,
foot:
his wife,
A ruddy human life Now turned to a green
shoot.
These grasses must be made Of her who often prayed, Last century, for repose;
And
the fair
Whom May be
girl
long ago
often tried to
I
know
entering this rose.
So, they are not underground,
But as nerves and veins abound In the growths of
And And
upper
air,
they feel the sun and rain, the energy again
That made them what they were!' 4 Like so
many
of the sentiments expressed in the Elegies,
these thoughts are more than a bit balderdashy. In this poem,
nothing asserted or surmised can possibly be
ment expressed
is
so.
Yet the senti-
everywhere splendid. Nor may we imagine,
even for a moment, that Hardy believes that a portion of
yew
is
a
man
his grandsire
he pick the rose his
How
is
one
knew. So what does he believe? Will
fair girl
may have
take to be the excellence of the it
entered,
to reconcile the facts (false)
(goody, they are not underground,
pose,
appears,
is
to
this
make
what
poem
—
mow
the grass?
and the sentiments
a comfort!) with
a
poem whose
what
I
sole pur-
the poet momentarily feel better?
*55
WILLIAM Can is
the poet really wish his
H.
fair girl
GASS were entering a rose? What
genuine here, beyond the rhyme?
Why are
poetry ihe elevation of
sublime? Speaking of the
silliness into the
risk blindness
Is
and take
silly
sublime,
a look at the Angels.
the Angels of the Elegies so fortunate, so superior, in
the poet’s eye? Each one
is
that streams out of
them
through the realms of
life
difference. If
we
sufficient unto itself. Everything
They pass
returns like an echo.
and death without feeling a tweak of
joined Leibniz to Berkeley for a
moment, we
might imagine the Angels as monads possessed of a
power
to perceive.
He
picnic), then
God
first
makes us
directly
We
deity’s
anticipates our existence (we plan a exist
then afterward he remembers the way picnic).
us
let
(we have our picnic),
we were (we
recall the
could say, then, that we’d always been, and would
always be, so long as God, our Author, continued to plan for and
A
expect us, steadily perceive us, and faithfully remember. novel does no
Everything
less.
mirrored in a monad’s mind would exist on
that’s
that single plane
—
one kind of perception or other
as
whole history could unroll
umphant bered
—
pillar,
become
influences like to the sage
who
ing on his
like a tapestry or the carvings
or simply be read
words of
like the
sits in
a text.
—anticipated
“self-sufficient,’’ as the
front of his
ously desirable up to a point,
ways that are quite obvious.
on a
a
tri-
and remem-
Countries which fear foreign hermit does,
mountain cave slowly ruminat-
gnomic wisdom; but individual
recommend them
—and
self-sufficiency, obvi-
becomes dangerously
Rilke’s Angels, that
as ideal states for
human
is,
antisocial in
have
little
to
beings. However,
they are models of perfection which a formalist esthetic might
advance as admirable
A
work of
art,
for
from
this point of view,
contained. That does not world.
Monads
works of art.
mean
that
it
complete and
makes no reference
are worlds in themselves.
156
is
It
does not
self-
to the
mean
that
Reading Rilke
the work cannot depend upon information that must be found
elsewhere.
The
explanation of every word in a
where: the nature of hydrangeas, for instance.
poem lies elseThe poem does
not require every quality these plants possess, but
some, and pulls them into observation,
its
but the accuracy
because otherwise
it
The poem
orbit.
displays
it
on
calls
it
practices close
necessary only
is
would draw the wrong information from
the reader. Called “Blue Asters,”
it
would
fail
the litmus
test. If
the flowers are fictional, as characters in a novel are, the exacti-
tude of observation (number, closeness, aptness of instance) need only be mimicked; tional as the rest;
its
details, for
precision can be as
however, here, the point of the
poem
is
fic-
that
the flowers are not fictional, but appear and reappear in our lives like lacy Victorian valentines
Formal perfection
someone fire; if
is
crowded
cries “Fire!”
and the
if
someone
If
theater, there’d better be a firing
be an order to appeal to to justify the son to find; and
quaint, but prized.
equivalent to internal justification.
cries “Fire!” in a
someone
—maybe
squad does, there
will
not so easily a rea-
killing,
recites
This ae nighte, this ae nighte,
Every nighte and
alle,
Fire
and
And
Christe receive thy saule
fleet
and candle-lighte,
then a belief in God, God’s Son,
in sin, in
having sinned, and
consequently the need and yearning for salvation
may
explain
the occurrence of the prayer, but the formal order of the dirge will suffice for its nature.
Then
I
may
sing these lines, in Ben-
jamin Britten’s harrowing setting of them, any time
though a pagan, unneedy and unshriven.
And
I
wish, even
their feeling will
be never more genuine or “meant” or necessary.
When
the animals emerge from the forest to hear
*57
Orpheus
WILLIAM form a magic
sing, they
H.
GASS
and suffer
circle
They
a sea change.
enter a peaceable kingdom very unlike the warTilled world they just
If
left.
bring a revolver onstage during a play,
I
Beckett’s Winnie,
murder
as real as the a prop
pull
I
it
it
my bag,
out of
might occasion
even though
fake bullet to
inflict
fly,
tended consequence, an
goes
it
wound
only a simulated
like
may be it is now
it
in ordinary life,
and can make only prop noise when
or,
cause a
off,
and, in pre-
actor’s feigned collapse into a role-real
death, followed by a life-real rise at the curtain’s
The space
fall.
poem is similarly transformative. Words are not just changed there, they are made. For what
of the
the world does
ond
‘
fleet’’
mean? Well,
there
is
a "brig” in the sec-
stanza.
From
Brig
o’
Dread when thou may’st
Every nighte and
How
does
it
help, this brig?
gested “sleet” should take
pass,
alle,
To Purgatory fire thou com’st at And Christe receive thy saule. I
its
last;
think: not at
all.
Some have
place, or “salt.” Salt? If
I
don’t
were
its
I
etymology
ming past the “fleet” alone.
and
sug-
make a substitution, it would be “flight.” Fortunately, have to. Confounded curiosity leads me to look the word
forced to
up:
in
is
brig I
o’
know
probably
“float” or
dread on
my way
“fleet”
with awe
I
fear fire, fleet,
— though
I
to hell,
am swim-
I
when
.
.
I
Leave
?
.
no better than “wabe,” yet
after repeated recitations,
wabe, and
“swim.” So
in time,
happily gyre and gimbel in the
am
and candle-lighte, and
perhaps perversely think
this
know
the
dumb
won’t clinch the argument. As with “wabe,”
“fleet”
means
meaning of should be spelled
“flete.’
in this context. "Everything fleeting
158
stricken
word Still, I
I
don’t
playing
know what
concerns us,
Reading Rilke
we most however are a
fleeting >of
—
whole
a
wondrous
Such space everything
is
trio is
all.”
means more than
“Fleet”
more. “Fire and
lot
fleet
—creating one another
Angel space, such
experienced
life
daydream
like
"fleeting,"
and candle-lighte”
as they go. is
Angel
life,
where
theater, self-enclosed
and without consequence. Daydreams can have consequences,
Some
of course.
of
them
which might actually take
are rehearsals for a seduction (say)
make money or fold. imagining that some wooden
place. Plays
Consequences? Not when one
is
O holds the vastv fields of France. j
Attempts stage, it),
push
break out of the frame, extend the apron of the
to
into the audience (plant actors in
it,
enlist
it,
attack
or use illusion or other ruses to heighten verismo, to jour-
nalize:
each demonstrates the power of the
becomes
as elastic as a rubber face,
little
art’s
domain.
It
dotted lines rush out
and around every extension, and the audience
isn’t
insulted or
actually frightened, the planted actors didn’t pay their way, nor
do Celine’s raging pages hurt our hands. The reader magic
circle, too.
is
in the
There he may entertain the most sublime, the
most harrowing, the most merry, the most morose, of ideas he were serving tea
Who makes or leaves like the
The shock
it
as
if
to friends.
the death of a child out of gray bread,
there to harden in the round
mouth
ragged core of a sweet apple?' 5
of these lines
“Out of gray bread,”
“to
core of a sweet apple.”
is
mock
harden
Words
shock. Admiration
in the
like
]
59
genuine.
round mouth” “the ragged
these set the
mind
world. Free to see and feel afresh the very world
from.
is
it’s
free of the
been freed
WILLIAM However, as
I’ve
previously indicated, Rilke* didn’t want the
Elegies to be self-contained
begun
GASS
H.
Dinge
his career as a poet of effusion,
a poet of reception;
now
Night”) he needed to
(it is
become
New^Poems. He had
like the
then trained himself to be
1914, the
same year
all
the material he had stored like
he saw
it,
and
work on himself
to
compost
have already quoted a few lines from the this necessity as
“The Great
a poet of internal intensity. Before
he could pour forth again, he would have
and
as
for a garden.
poem
his forlornness
I
that expresses
and blind
self-
absorption in front of a war he was probably unaware was coming.
The poem demonstrates,
as his laments so often did, that
Rilke had really nothing to complain about.
He was
actually at
the height of his Orphic power.
TURNING-POINT The way from an intense inwardness
to greatness
passes through sacrifice.
For Rudolf Kassner
For a long time his gaze had achieved Stars
would be brought
to their
it.
knees
by the force of his upflung vision, or he
would kneel himself
and the fragrance from
would drowsy till it
to scrutinize,
this insistence
a god,
slept in the smile that
Towers he would
it
smiled
at
him.
stare at so
they were startled from their shapes restoring
them suddenly
in a
But how often the landscape,
160
storm of stones!
Reading Rilke
worn down by
came
daylight,
to rest in his quiet perceiving, at evening.
Animals entered like a
meadow,
his
open look
trustingly grazed there;
even the imprisoned lions
peered
though on a strange species of freedom;
as
in,
birds flew straight
which
and easy through a space
felt their flight;
flowers gazed back at
him
as large as they are for children.
And
the rumor that a Seer was about
stirred the dimly,
more dubiously visible
women.
stirred the
How long had this looking lasted? How long had his soul fasted? gone begging
When
he,
in the
depths of his glance?
whose profession was Waiting, stayed
in strange
towns, the hotel’s
bemused and preoccupied bedroom morosely contained him, and the
room presided
and,
later, in
in the
avoided mirror
again,
the tormenting bed,
yet again
where in a
this adjudicating air,
manner beyond understanding,
passed judgment upon his heart barely be
through
its
—whose beating could
felt
painful burial in his
161
body
WILLIAM and pronounced to
be lacking
GASS
H.
this hardly felt heart
in love.
(And denied him any further devotions.) For such looking, you see, has
And
its limits.
your simply gazed-over world
wants
to
grow greater through
love.
The work of the eye is complete now; work next at the heart s work on those images you’ve captured within you, led in
Look
and overcome and
—
inside bridegroom
so superbly
unknown.
—on your
inside bride,
drawn out of a thousand natures:
a beauty thus far
won,
but thus far never loved
If
left
.'
6
the persona of the poet plainly presides in most of these
lyrics of
lamentation and self-scrutiny (as one might expect),
while a universalized
“I” is
the speaker of the Elegies, most of
the Dingegedicht (“The Panther," "Torso of an Archaic Apollo,"
"Blue Hydrangea,” and “Death nets to Orpheus,
emerge from
”),
as well as
life,”
or indirectly, as
"And you should have seen,
of the Son-
a voice not unlike that of a
moral and esthetic conscience: either
change your
many
felt,
if
directly,
"You must
the poet were saying,
thought
this, too."
Does
eat-
immense joy? No. But perhaps it ought to. In a machine-made world, in a world of multiplying masses and increasing commering an apple (even in special circumstances) give us
cialism,
where heads by the millions
are filled with vulgar
images, stupid thoughts, and crass pleasures,
on those of us who wish
to "rise
it
is
incumbent
above ourselves" (and hence
Reading Rilke
above others)
to
perform
the hard holy work of the eye and
first
then the painful hidden work of the
We
he'art.
praise the Lord, hut to praise the world, to things
are not here to
show
the Angel
.
Praise this world to the Angel, not the unutterable one.
You cannot impress him with the splendor you ve for in the
heaven of heavens, where he
feels so sublimely,
Show him some
simple thing, then,
you’re but a beginner.
been changed
that’s till it
lives in
in its
human
passage through
ages
our hands, in the shine of our eyes, as a part
of ourselves. Tell as
felt,
him
He Rome
things.
you stood by the roper
in
11
stand more astonished, or the potter in Egypt.
Show him how happy a thing can be, how innocent and ours; how even Sorrow, in the midst of lamenting, is determined to alter, to serve as a thing, or fade in a thing
into beauty is
beyond
to
escape
These things whose
violining.
a constant leaving, they
—
know when you
praise them.
Transient, they trust us, the most transient, to to their rescue; they
wish us
to alter
within our invisible hearts, into
Whoever we may By now, First,
state of
in
—
us!
life far
should be
more than
it
fairly clear.
can -possibly
any regular way. Second, he consequently enters a
dismay and disappointment. Third, he requires of the
order to lead that elevated
life
life, is
same ordinary world he began by In short, an absolute intimacy
found
utterly,
so endlessly
Rilke’s psychological patterns
poet that he lead an elevated
is
come
finally be.' 7
he expects of ordinary
produce
—
them
life
to
anyway. Fourth, the poet,
in
forced to accept and praise the disdaining. is
demanded. Then, when
be impossible, the effort to love
is
this
redoubled. Love
WILLIAM
unrequited, love without any physical involvement, love
that’s
which soul,
GASS
H.
because
will last
almost a private unseen state of the
it is
becomes the higher
obligation. Everything
is
in flux, there-
—
we should embrace change. Why? in order "Who speaks of victory? To endure is everything.’
fore
And
what’s earthly no longer
if
unmoving
say to the
To
of a
shall call
tus, so
we
parents
each
I
stay .'
8
we
shall celebrate
it;
life
has really begun,
childhood
is
misery, so
deny our Czech
past, refuse to
sta-
is
be labeled a Ger-
that everything Austrian disgusts us, regret that our
live
man
flow.
wonderful, innocent and open. Heritage
it
shall
man, find
knows you,
young woman, before her
awful, therefore
we
I
the rushing water speak:
The death is
earth:
to remain.
is
on
like
monsters inside
a multitude
primeval slime
—we
—
us, and,
because we believe
of ogres and urges going back to the
shall require, in its stead, to see
Unity
.
.
.
may sound German. Using our carefully created higher awareness, we should seek the simple openness of the animal. Aloof from the mob, we nevertheless Oneness: Maninkindness,
join
it
—
if
to cancel the count.
celebrate distance. Practice
I
Hoping
makes
And
if
we
observe our
own
itself to
we boo and
if
even
all”;
drifts
even
things,
we do
lift
ster-
to display a
in the fourth),
catcall?
Hey! I’m waiting. Even if
all
be empty and
heart’s curtain
thoroughly bourgeois performance (as shall
merge with
perfect, but as “The Fifth
Elegy” warns, perfection soon shows ile.
to
I’m told, “That’s
the lights go out;
even
if
absence
me like a gray draft from the stage; if none of my ancestors will sit silently by me toward
164
anymore,
Reading Rilke nor a woman, nor the boy with the squinting brown eyes: stay in
I’ll
my
Over and over
seat.
One
can always watch.
away with one hand, and gives with another. What he takes away may have been a gift, but what he gives is always a task. Life is not a song, he says, so again, Rilke takes
sing!
sum: we
In
we
live
only once, and everything that
have only once
shall
fills
this life,
—once and no more. And what
this
is
but our awareness of ourselves and our awareness of the world? Alas, most of this consciousness of ours is narrowed, life
perverted, and wasted by the burdens of daily to save ourselves to
one
s
If
someone
to possess
flux (love
freedom.
me
forever!),
ity
to
is
try
but also to obstruct the loved
the world awaits our seeing,
pear with bitter quickness, for
what
can
or something, to hold
our duty
if
consciousness to things, that consciousness
to give
We
through love, which turns out only too often
be an attempt
back the
life.
we
are the
most
is
will disap-
fragile of
all.
So
be done? Leave that consciousness behind as a qual-
of our created things; deposit
it
in the
forms and textures
give to objects. But our created things are mostly crushed
we
and
tossed away after use like daily newspapers or concert pro-
grams.
war
We
for
care only for power, and, having
more, consume the
cups from which sweet
to drink
to
make paper
our Todlos, “the dark bitter beer so they swallow
it
while chewing
Those few attainments which display the we must take into ourselves and save from
an indifferent multitude. Because of a pleasant
more, only out with
Go
distractions.”
grace of great things,
gift
do what?
fruits of the earth,
to the addicted, so long as
on fresh
it,
life,
to destroy
comes
to
all
our knowledge, even the
nothing
if
we know more,
enjoy
more. “The Seventh Elegy” comes right
it.
l6 5
WILLIAM
My love,
GASS
H.
the world exists nowhere but within us.
The outer world dwindles, and day fades from day. Where once a solid house was, soon some invented structure perversely suggests itself, as at ease among ideas
Withinwarding
as
if it still
is
everything.
stood in the brain.
The Present has amassed
vast stores of power,
shapeless as the vibrant energy It
has forgotten temples.
has stolen from the earth.
We must save in secret
such lavish expenditures of Yes, even
it
spirit.
where one thing we served, knelt
prayed to survives,
Many have
it
seeks to see
ceased perceiving
the chance to enlarge
it,
add
itself invisible.
and so
it,
and
for,
pillars
and
miss
will
statues, give
it
grandeur, within.
These
but that
is
apart from
is
him (and
indifferently),
of awareness, but
our consciousness
is all
we
are.
About
not “improving"
not an end in
is
this,
it.
remains true
our only proof we I
believe, Rilke
pointless,
retain a
inwarding of
ment from
is
it
and he knows that there are
live
was
that, for
—we
each of
live in
it
—
it
right. “Doing’ that
and “improving"
is
illusory
if it is
itself.
The reader must Rilke’s
solipsistic,
a misreading. Rilke realizes the material world exists
modes
other us,
could be, and have been, understood as
lines
It is
not
life
head clear enough
depends
“living” life
entirely
he asks
for
to realize that
upon
but
its
a
detach-
contempla-
tion. “Living" paradoxically requires ignoring things, forgetting
things, enshrining partiality, obeying interest, situation, not simply observing
ing
is
change; living
willful, heedless, fearful; living
living excretes; living
teeth.
it
is
as brutal
absorbs
changing your is
life;
and indifferent
wanting;
liv-
living feeds;
as
chewing
Reading Rilke
There
is
much-quoted passage from
a
during the early days of the First World
Marie von Ihurn und
I
quote again. In a world real
a letter Rilke
War
axis-Hohenlohe which in
which
gods worshiped, where are
Mammon we
wrote
to the Princess feel obliged to
I
and Moloch are the
to find consolation? Ironi-
the inherent capacities of mankind.
cally, in
certain that the divinest consolation
It is
humanity
itself
—we would not be able
to
is
contained in
do
much
with
the consolations of a god; only that our eye would have to
be a trace more seeing, our ear more receptive, the taste of
would have
a fruit
would have
to
to penetrate us
endure more odor,
being touched be more aware and
more completely, we and in touching and
less forgetful
—
:
in order
promptly to absorb out of our immediate experiences consolations that ant, to
more
would be more convincing, more preponder-
true than
all
the suffering that can ever shake us
our very depths .' 9
“The Seventh Elegy" wonders whether we have anything to
show the Angels, anything which
tence, or
will justify
rape, plunder, murder,
is it all
pointless consumption? If
we
are
all
and thoughtless,
alone here,
going nowhere else but underground,
our exis-
if
we
are
we shall never even enter a rose again, then what have we done}- what have we done to justify the life of man our sojourn, our abiding here
—
—
for
for accounting,
cides
.
.
if
it
s
not been our service that offers
but our wasted opportunities, our sui-
.
There stands Death, a blue residue in a
itself
cup without
a saucer.
167
WILLIAM An odd
H.
GASS
spot for a cup:
balanced on the back of a hand.
One can
clearly see along
its
glazed
curve a crack showing where the handle snapped. Dusty.
And hope on
The one who was spelled
it
its
side in
washed-out
letters.
to drink this drink
out at breakfast long ago.
What sort of specters are these, then, who have to have a poison push them
off?
Otherwise would they remain? Would they gnaw on this
food
full
One must from them
of hindrance forever?
pull the harsh present like a set of false teeth.
Only then they mumble. Mumble
.
.
.
umble
.
.
.
umble
O shooting star, seen from a bridge once, a penetrating
Never
Never
to forget you. Stay
to forget, either
.
.
.
ray:
20 .
our homicides, our patricides and
matricides and fratricides, our infanticides, our genocides, and
our incessant gnaw and natter, our ruin of the world its
—even
outer edges.
But one tower was great, wasn’t
even compared
to
it?
O Angel,
you? Chartres was great
168
it
was
to
Reading Rilke and music rose even higher, flew far beyond us. Even a woman in love, alone at night by her window didn’t she reach your
Congratulations are
.
.
.
knee ? 21
in order.
Reaching an Angel’s knee
stretch.
169
is
a
ERECT NO MEMORIAL STONE
Singing
is
his bones. ald’s
Being. This
The
is
what Rilke knew
marrow of
paper, the ink, the fingers, moving as in Fitzger-
sappy Persian poem. Having
writing.
to the inner
Knowing
that his
writ, they
move on
to other
words cannot be canceled. Because,
and
believe, Rilke felt himself to be a failure
I
a fraud except
when he was writing. Then he was the writer who he wished was the man he wasn’t. Then he was the lover he hoped could commit. Rilke understood his shortcomings so as we say now
—
thoroughly that his knowing was a shortcoming. But on the page, in a poem, the contradictions which were his chief tion could be reconciled.
with
There he could answer every question
“I praise.’’
Tell us, poet,
what do you do?
—
I
praise.
But the dreadful, the monstrous, and their ways,
how do you
afflic-
stand them, suffer
it
all?
—
I
praise.
But the anonymous, featureless days,
how, poet, can you ask them
to call?
— What chance have
you, in so
I
praise.
many forms,
Reading Rilke under each mask,
to
speak a true phrase?
— And that the calm as well as the know you like star and storm?
praise.
I
crazed
— because
praise.'
I
Those dashes read to me like replacements for “nevertheless. Through gritted teeth. Nor, of course, did this poet always praise.
Tell us, poet,
klage clangs to life
he must
mark each passing
He
lead.
—
what do you do?
laments the
hour.
I
lament.
The poet laments
women
he writes
whose friendship he has formed, whose
ters to,
He
forced to harden.
poem whose
The word the
his love let-
hearts he has
laments the death they bring ...
in a
stanza also dwindles.
first
Man must
die because he has
known
them.’’
Die
of their smile’s evanescent bloom. Die of their delicate hands. Die of
women.
The word comes again.
Even
in a
to his rescue.
it
has in the past. As
world where the word
breathtaking to be here? painless
As
moment redeem
How,
is
imperiled.
in a life of suffering,
the rest? Are
all
it
Why
will is it
does one
the disappointments
and duties of love worth the exuberant feeling of both power and need in lust’s overswollen opinion of itself? Let the young
man
sing of these bringers of death
while they soar through the space of his heart.
From let
his swelling breast
him
sing to them:
the unattainable! Ah,
how
far off
they are.
WILLIAM
H.
GASS
'
Over the peaks
»
of his passion they glide and pour
^
a sweetly transfigured darkness
into the forsaken valley of his arms.
The wake
of their rising ruffles the leaves of his body.
His streams run sparkling into the distance.
man
But the grown
and
shivers
is silent.
pathless, has
He who,
wandered through the night
in the rocky ridges of his feelings: is
silent.
As the
sailor is silent, the old-timer,
and the rattle
he has endured
terrors
around inside him as though
Shivering and silence. First
body which
women
ruffle;
man, who remembers deep
old sailor,
in
his
it
is
then
in
it is
its
too, his terrors
forsaken valleys and
poet
falls silent,
love,
he
will
last
to pieces.
So unless the
the poet will not praise
Why
mountains of the
he’ll
hands
shall not
terrors of
have a
—hands which
are both
let-
tore
young and dead,
blame.
women as death-bringers acceptwomen are the bearers of life, and
the description of
is
able here?
therefore
—
women
the
hamlets of feeling, the
no longer sing of women; they fare well at their
it is
trapped inside him.
“the
ter of his praise.
him
finally
because once he has experienced the
Orpheus did not
s
the shivering of the mature
confused wanderings;
memory
2 .
the layers of the young lover
In the familiar interior landscape of heart,” with
shaken cages
Is
it
because
make death
possible?
Is it
172
because of the
little
death
Reading Rilke
we are alleged to suffer in sexual transports? Is women, domestically inclined, hold men back from est triumphs, tethering
Or
tence? flesh,
them
to the earth
and
their great-
to day-to-day exis-
because, in front of them and the lure of their are disarmed, confronted with their own infantile
is it
men
yearnings? the poet at the breast?
Or
is it
because, in failing to
some men realize a divided attraction? mothers, must you mistrust all the others? perform,
Women women
because
it
If
you mistrust
are carriers of Christianity. Enslaved by the system,
Women, learned how
represent the system.
ness of the world, have
who manipulate
barred from to
all
the busi-
manipulate the
These thoughts could be from Nietzsche might have made. it.
a
men
speech
Just ahead of the composition, in 1915, of “The Fourth Elegy,” Rilke wrote seven so-called phallic poems. Their inadequacies are sufficient to
form a parade. The vagina
a garden, a grove, a heaven, a soft night into will
fire
his
in
which
it
will rise
ing,
"womb-dazzling rocket,” and
his cock,
now
at last, to die
it
variously
which the poet a tomb, too,
is
a stiff corpse, will be buried.
again, this stiff corpse, but
death alive
it
is
will
Of
course
be death
ris-
once more. "Already your unwit-
command raises the column in my genital-woodsite,” John Mood was apparently not embarrassed to write when ting
he translated these
really
wretched pieces
Rilke on Love and Other Difficidties
umn, pillar.
3 .
for his collection
The penis
is
a tree, a col-
a tower, a rocket, a stiff corpse, a rising god, a
The poet here
male, but sometimes,
is
much
when he
his vitality," “the gentle
the forthrightly
Hermean
demanding
"grasps suddenly the full
bud of
garden within her shrinks.” As the
reader does. Irony might have saved these poems, but Rilke ironic.
A
is
rarely
dash of skepticism, a dollop of sarcasm, could have
m
WILLIAM
GASS
H.
helped refresh a few of these euphemistic cliches; however again If
— Rilke can be angry
poetry permits the poet to express his feelings and formu-
problems,
late his it
or contemptuous, but not sarcastic.
can
it
paper over them:
also, quite literally,
can toss conflicts into the den of metaphor, where, impossi-
bly,
and the
Daniel
mate
lions
produce well-adjusted
to
cubkids. In Rilke
think
I
women
are
condemned because women can
become mothers. In a Freudian vein (and Rilke learned his Freud from Lou Salome), Rilke believes the womb to be an ideal place and the world we enter, when we are expelled from it,
and unfriendly realm. In the extraordinary “Eighth
a foreign
Elegy,” Rilke produces another
one of
his continua.
upon the warm and watchful animal there lies the weight and care of an immense sadness. Because what often overwhelms us clings to him, too:
And
the
yet
remembrance
we were once disparity
After the
that
what we reach
tenderly tethered
and distance, there first
to.
now,
for
Here
all is
was heartbeat and breath.
it
home, our second seems uncertain and
cold.
Oh
the bliss of those so small they can remain in the
place where they
Oh even
came
to be;
the pleasure the midge must know,
its
wedding dance
in the
who
same world
in
will
which
dance it
was
conceived.
Observe the
less certain bird,
almost aware of both, souls yet
who
where
like
from birth
one of those Etruscan
has flown the corpse which was its
hovering figure
How confused yet be called
still
to fly.
As
if
come from
in flight
U4
nest,
forms the coffins
the bat must be: to
upon
its
from
a
itself,
lid.
womb,
Reading Rilke
it
zigzags through the air like a crack through a cup.
In the
same way
its
wing, at dusk, crazes the porcelain
surface of the sky.
At the high end of
this
continuum of self-consciousness
interior state of Rilke s Angels, creatures
is
the
who have completed
and know no change, since in them every change remains. At the low but equally favored end is the their inwarding
who
who lives, who dies, in the same world, and knows no wrench. Somewhat worse off is the bird, because, insect,
born,
is
breaking from the egg, which
even while
it
flies,
Theodore Ziolkowski appears,
to
fly.
needs a nest,
senses,
it
the ultimate difference. Then, in what ’
Rilke’s
calls
confused because
upon
called
itself
it
4
“weird zoology,
comes from
a
the bat
womb
but
There are further stages developed
is
in the
which Professor Ziolkowski expertly lists: young children, whose self-consciousness is not yet fully realized, and Elegies
unrequited lovers, whose tender attention to the world has not been narrowed by a beckoning promise, as well as heroes, never sufficiently dipped, and consequently destined to die young.
The poet
is
just another middle-ager, as alienated, as blinded
by interpretation and theory, as every other person interested and preoccupied as a tradesman of his self and transforms
it
until
into the seer I’ve
Then he becomes
(not unlike
the world which
in constant flight
is
—
Our
—
he takes hold
spoken of before.
Savior) a mediator
from
as self-
itself
and the
between glorious,
complete, and indifferent Angels. If
we
could
tell
Angels anything, what would
there anything they don’t
we
tell
them?
know?
Praise this world to the Angel, not the unutterable one.
You cannot impress him with the splendor you’ve
l
75
felt,
Is
WILLIAM for in the
till it
feels so sublimely,
Show him some
simple thing, then,
been changed lives in
in its
passage through
human
ages
our hands, in the shine of our eyes, as a part
of ourselves. Tell as
GASS
heaven of heavens, where he
you’re but a beginner. that’s
H.
him
things He’ll stand .
you stood by the roper
Show him how happy a
in
Rome
more astonished,
or the potter in Egypt.
thing can be,
how innocent and
ours;
how even
Sorrow, in the midst of lamenting,
is
determined
to alter, to serve as a thing, or fade in a thing
into beauty
beyond
A billfold. Show
—
to
escape
violining.
the Angel a billfold that has ridden in a rear
now
pocket on someone’s rump, the creases
it
money and
and
credit cards
once
slid
in
contains,
sofa, shiny
all
worn
short
those days he’s whittled away; or a mohair
where the man wearing
curled, or love
and
out, as oiled
stained as a fielder’s glove; or a boy’s pocketknife,
and thin from
where
that billfold sat, or the cat
was made.
Could there be
a
continuum of continua?
In any case, here
is
the beginning of another. At the low end of the scale (and they
have no redeeming feature) are the glassine drinking cup,
swatches of Kleenex, maybe Band-Aids, objects whose every intention
is
to disappear into their function;
and furthermore,
while functioning, to resist becoming in any sense prized or
worthy of attention or reuse. Not interesting
to
any Angel. Next
are useful things, such as wrenches, purses, flagons,
which sustain nicks and
become around
soils
and cracks, stand
as brittle as old bones, break, film with dust; until they start to
show an
“expression,”
and so on; idle,
which
rust,
stay
and therefore
begin to bear, like a stretch of sand, the footprint of a consciousness.
Next we
arrive at objects created to caress
and fondle;
to
Reading Rilke
help out our memories: money, of course,
dance cards, pillows, a mostly
dolls
Things we animate with
Pu'p'pen.
is
satins,
and souvenirs, but
skull, relics
— the German word
and
silks
our feelings. Objects of sentiment, mirrors for our moods.
we
Finally,
reach those items which express an awareness,
though they be practical implements, such as newspapers and journals, medical illustrations, cartoons, band music, and those thingamajigs, in addition, which are
made merely
amuse-
for
ment: the performances of marionette theaters, for example puppets, enlivened by the puppeteer’s actions, who impose their purely behavioristic life
ence. At
last,
upon
there are works of
their purely passive audi-
indicative of the presence
art,
of a totally individuated yet universal consciousness concerned solely with ends,
In
what was
and achieving
to
become
that status for themselves.
on
a notorious essay
dolls that Rilke
wrote in the pivotal year of 1914, he differentiates between the doll proper and the marionette (the word in German bears both
meanings, as well as a
motion limited,
fixed, its
—
way
it is
a face of
hugs or kisses
When
it
fertile third, 'pupa”).
it is
its
and
is
likely to
be treated
doll,
like
it
like a child
ghosts, like spiritual frocks, long after
The puppet stringed,
left to live
what’s
fascinated
puppet
is
Rilke.
hand-worked, mute
ance, nothing but toddle and
left
—
is
The
it
of
The
feelings
hang around
has been set its
leftover
it
down
like
for
life.
The marionette
—
stuffed,
nothing but external appear-
mime,
a thing
among
neither easy nor anxious about being a
177
accom-
by the child regardless of represents.
it
same
its tossed.
imaginary realms.
a magnet, the doll attracts
the last time and
if
is
becomes the receptacle
trips into
the nominally real figure which
which,
face
return the
it
a player in her daydreams,
panying her mistress on her doll
—nor does
there resentment
is
functions properly as a
for a girlchild’s affection,
doll’s
gaze aimed always in the
one hardened feeling given, nor
The
The puppet. The things.
WILLIAM puppet
the hinge between two worlds: that of the puppet
is
whose hands the puppet
master, in
audience
mance,
GASS
H.
it
it
faces; for
if
literally is?
the puppet “comes to
and that of the only in perfor-
life’’
never sees the strings, the moving fingers, or
its
The puppet’s success depends upon generates in its audience. The puppet, with
master’s omnipresent eyes.
the illusion of
life it
materials as dead as any bolt of cloth or cleverly shaped papier-
mache, and usually shrunken
down
as well,
to dollsize,
must
mimic the manners (however grotesquely burlesqued) of the audience that watches. They also dance and sing and swing their
swords, but they do so because they are the hypocrite, the
thespian,
clever-fingered master
tend that what “acting”
is
sincere, even
desire to deceive
One
self,
makes him
not ...
is
liar,
is,
if
or
feigner,
a
act the
deny or
what
comes from
is
alive.
too,
way he
inside,
but no
does, or pre-
alter the truth; no, his
pretends to show
it
The
it is
as
meant
is
as
not; his
cement.
removed and hidden, has created another, the
which the world
allowed to see
is
— the
idol,
the
star,
self
the fairy
prince.
poem
In a remarkable
written in Paris in 1907 which
author chose to cut from his
first
collection of New
its
Poems Rilke ,
displays not only his ambivalence about puppets, but his disap-
own
proval of his
psychological makeup.
which he never gave
a reason, but
because fell
it
5 .
It is
was an excision
one which W.
L.
was too
Graff exam-
Maria
Rilke: Creative
revelatory. “Marionettentheater”
promptly
through criticism’s cracks, although there was enough
dence elsewhere cal fiction,
same
(in
"The Fourth Elegy,”
Ewald Tragy and
secret:
,
that
for
Anguish of a Graff’s opinion that Rilke omitted the poem
ines expertly in his Rainer
Modern Poet
It
in the
evi-
in the autobiographi-
essay on dolls) to suggest the
Rainer Maria Rilke was Napoleonic, not
seraphic.
The poem was occasioned,
as Graff points out, by a peniten-
178
Reading Rilke
tial
parade that Rilke witnessed
in Furness,
West
Flanders.
It is
a
Catholic custom on certain sacred days to carry large statues of saints through the streets (clumsily, in
my
experience), often in
order to reach a pilgrim-like destination, where
they’ll
be ritually
placed in order to be properly revered before being returned to base.
A
robe-end
be
will
made
available to be fondled, or kisses
be placed on the back of an indifferently extended plaster hand. Patient queues of the faithful, like the lines at Lenin’s
will
tomb, ratchet forward toward the kissing spot, which is wiped after each offering, as loo ladies do, though here by solemn children wielding a
rag.
But Rilke saw, he thought, two
pets, the statues being carried,
conned by
and the
carriers
and manipulated by
their faith
scene became the source of an allegorical
more personal matters than he I’ve
made my
for clarity’s sake,
translation a
and
partly
poem
little
because the poem rhymes (though
is
not theirs,
though they swing
arms and swords
with great variety
catching an outcry
as
if
to
copy while on the wing.
Their limbs have no joints,
and hang awkwardly in their rig of wires,
which doesn’t prevent them from
that refers to
freer than elsewhere, partly
they pile up their behavior;
their
being
at first realized.
bars, like beasts,
their voice
who were
pup-
their priests. This
with reason) relentlessly.
Behind
sets of
killing or dancing,
179
WILLIAM or
H.
GASS
bowing and scraping
like a courtier to a king.
With them, memory has no
point;
they wring their awareness dry;
and
all
they retain inside them
they generally employ
upon
to beat till it’s
their breast
unable
They know
to resist.
all
breasts
are beaten so.
Their large and formal faces are there for
all
to see,
simpler than ours, more
and
ideal;
as eyes
seem
forceful
open
when awakening from
A sight which rise
from the
for those
how
makes laughter
pit like
the puppets pound,
and collapse dead of
frighten one another, in loose heaps,
their exertions.
anyone were
and
steam;
on the benches see
wound, and
If
a dream.
fail to
to
understand
it
differently,
laugh at their consternations,
the puppets would replace their play to reenact a Last
Judgment Day.
They would yank on
their wires
to pull before the painted
porch
the hands that, hidden high above,
180
Reading Rilke
had danced them into their desires /
hands hideously
no longer
red, gloved
and they would pour from every door, and climb those wires and cardboard walls former land
to set their
afire,
and assassinate those hands from
If,
escape
its
your inmost self had cried out to
earliest youth,
circumstances;
6 .
you’d looked about and wondered
it
why your presence had been needed even you were; and
if
meant you had
that
moment where
for a
to disappear into
an inner
distance, leaving your face and figure to fend for themselves,
seeking a realm where you could claim an absolute autonomy; if,
somewhat
to
your shame, considering your abject and unac-
complished condition, you had immortal longings
knew without being
in you;
if
you
without having seen any evidence,
told,
without therefore knowing, that you were unique, that inside
your small delicate body, behind your heavy-lidded eyes, a wide
world was contained, and every house there was haunted by dreams, dreams of greatness, ambitions that Ewald Tragy, your
namesake, gave away
lawmaker and
God”
king,
in a petulant
he’d said, “nobody
—and furthermore,
to write,
you had
first to
sublime stuff come from fatal division of
the self
remake both actor and So
his
childhood
ing, at
name
Lou Salome’s
is
his
nature,
with the worry that
is
—
above me, not even
be a great poet
(for
you meant
where would
this
not from a sublime soul?), then the
if
is
set;
role
then that hidden ruler must
and push them onto the
eventually altered; so
suggestion, though that
change (in
am my own
“I
to write the great poetry
if,
through the persistent efforts of his
change
moment
his
will; life;
is
his handwrit-
accomplished
is
consequently he must
change
.
unhappy harmony with
181
stage.
.
.
change
.
.
.
his mother’s
WILLIAM
GASS
H.
would not improve the cheap wine
practice) a fine label
had been decanted down the
bottle’s
that
slenderthroat to create a
successful deception. Henceforward the poet will be nothing
but a Poet, and wander
if
he must, free
to find his inspiration,
Muses’ touch, despite
free to wait for the
life’s
temptations,
despite the need for the crowd’s applause, because
he’ll
be
Orpheus, singing though he seems only a head now, floating downriver in the furious flux of things, for really
head and heart
be
will
at last one.
sibility that he’ll fail in is? that
fect
Yet in
all
he’ll
this there
be whole, is
the pos-
the role he has assigned himself: which
the perfect self (an Angel) must play the part of a per-
appearance (the puppet);
that the poetry won’t
in other
come, and
he’ll
words, in the
first
place,
be an ape or a mimic,
or, in
the second place, that the audience will not be there to
applaud, will see the puppet
is
a puppet,
and
that, in the third
place, the puppet, full of resentment at having lost a normal for nothing, will turn
upon
this inside
strings, the strings once, solely in his
from on high (since as the
show
Angel and pull upon
hands, and haul him
life
his
down
he’s not as on-high as all that, not as perfect
imagined Angels of the Elegies); whereupon the whole
will
be over, Doctor Serafico
—and there
self
will
will
have failed to heal him-
be no Angel, no poetry, and no poet.
Erect no memorial stone. Let the rose
bloom each year just There Orpheus is
in this,
is this.
on other names.
when Isn’t
a
is.
enough
His metamorphosis
We don’t need to take It is
there’s song.
it
for his sake.
that
always Orpheus
He comes and
goes.
he can be with us
few days longer than a bowl of roses?
Reading Rilke
Oh, he has
to vanish so you’ll
though he dreads
his disappearance.
Even while
his
he’s already
where we cannot
The
Vindication
word transcends our
lyre’s strings
And he obeys came
do not bind
while breaking
could be called
an immeasurable
to,
who
his hands. all
the bans. 7
and the inside Angel
in the guise of
who
could come, and
relief. Yet,
souls,
go.
that February of 1921,
and the puppet poet came together
who
know,
Orpheus,
did. Rilke felt
during his career, as he thought
about what he’d written and would write, Rilke realized that if the puppet, who had sprung into an unpuppetty life to become a person,
had written these poems
—not
he was
just the Elegies
struggling to complete, but his entire oeuvre
—
that puppet-
poet-person could not be Rainer Maria Rilke. Even in his laments, his singular outcries, as local as their environment was, as
momentary
life;
as their occasion, as different
even with these,
them, not
if
it
from others as
could not be Rilke
who was
his
writing
they were going to appeal to the world, not
if
a
reader was going to be willing to put Rilke’s words into his or her
own mouth, thing, as
if
to
beg the Lord
to
be allowed
to
make one
single
they both were in Spain, at Ronda, in anguish, in
despair.
On
July 29, 1920, before the great storm has burst, Rilke
writes to
one poet,
Nanny Wunderly-Volkart: “Ultimately there is only that infinite one who makes himself felt, here and
there through the ages, in a
mind
that can surrender to him.”
have already interpreted Rilke’s esthetic position
in
I
Kantian
terms, and one could continue that perspective to include even
Ewald Tragy’s boast about autonomy, since
183
it
could be consid-
WILLIAM ered as a claim to be a noumenal the
fall
same
of that
poetry issues
it
center,
it
certainly gets
reaches the suburbs. Although
difficult to tell a cubist painting
poem by Dryden from
by Picasso, or a
Rilke writes in
art,
year, to another correspondent, “can issue
individualized by the time
sometimes
“True
self.
anonymous center .” 8 from an anonymous
only from a purely If
GASS
H.
a
it is
by Braque from one
poem by Pope,
it is
nev-
ertheless generally true that works of art reveal the individuality
of the artist in their every brushstroke this
anonymous
and semicolon. Where
when we
center, especially
access to this humanly shared nature, he it.
is
is
more compelling
not simply at those
not simply governed
its
ambassador.
may be found in the poetry itself. It times when there is a dialogue between
reply
Angel and Puppet that the problem of poetry
is
confronted.
occurs at every intersection: heart roads, lyre strings.
know
that
when
command,
Rilke issues a
commanding. Such
is
it
the case with the sonnet
is I
call
Wait ...
you
.
.
.
that tastes
A little girls
Dance
are silent,
the orange.
it
its
.
.
a
you are
Who can
in its wealth,
forget it
humming girls,
tasting.
it,
grew
sweetness. You have possessed
transforms the delicious into you.
184
it,
is
"Dance the
But already gone.
you radiant
taste of the fruit
how, drowning against
.
music now, a tapping,
who
dance the
good
It
And we
himself he
Orange.
as
unique.
can and does sometimes demand an audience, and
He
then he can and sometimes does become
A
is
Rilke might reply that the poet has
“There’s no one like me.
by
are considering a
Romantic poet? Ewald Tragy says he
prototypical
is
—
Reading Rilke
Dance
the orange. Fling
sunny clime
its
from you, so that ripeness may shine in native breezes. All aglow,
peel perfume from perfume! Share the relation that the supple pure reluctant rind
has with the juice that
Wait? There
is
no waiting room
know, speaks win and the taste
is
loss into the
—who
are called
transformation, whether
drawn across our
skull,
or out of a bitter taste
it
is
9 .
Time. And
for
fruit, as
mouth. Like everything
gone before you know
Madchen
again
the joyous fruit
fills
It
it.
upon
is
the young
we
else,
women
perform the familiar
to
hearing the line that Nature has
and shivering
making wine,
as
though suddenly cold,
or, like
Daphne,
at
her
father’s wish, turning into a tree, already leafy, awaiting her
breeze and the embrace of Apollo.
It’s
not the reputed apple
Adam
somehow handing back to Eve, but the orange symbol of a rich warm southern life. Dance the sweetness that has become you so that this from the tree of knowledge which
is
—
northern world will feel the sunshine, too. Crucially, the young
women
are to express the relation
between
a protective outer
appearance and an inner worth.
The
rind conceals
and protects, but
pretending with
its
rind
When
is
also real.
peel that the orange
the world, which had
not merely an actor,
it is
is
a rock,
because the
the poet dies, the praised-over parts of
become
because he had so
his face
intensely looked at them, will disappear
the soft inner core. Rilke,
I
—
dissolve to reveal
think, liked to believe that the world
he so often watched from a distance, through a window, was a kind of skin, all” is
and had
its
core, too, as he
had
his.
"Ripeness
something he would surely have been willing
.85
is
to repeat,
WILLIAM and of
own
did, in his
way, often. T'he poem,
and death together
life
GASS
H.
—indeed,
as
he
J:oo, lets
us speak
s£ys, in the
same
breath.
The poem
made of air. It vanishes as the things it speaks about vanish. It is made of music, like us, "the most fleeting of all” yet it is also made of meaning that’s as thus a paradox.
is
It is
immortal as immortal gets on our mortal earth; because the
poem
will return, will
begin again, as spring returns:
sung again,
said again,
when
immediately
much many
as
it,
to
it
like a
places at
becomes
don’t have
I
for a violinist to get in key,
poem
it
can come
— my mind because my poem yours — because, song, can be sung once — and danced because the poem mind
to
is
it
want
I
can be
our only answered prayer; the
is
can be carried about more easily than a purse, and to wait,
it
as
is
in
it
as well,
a condition of the body,
it
enlivens our bones, and they
dance the orange, they dance the Hardy, the Hopkins, the Valery, the Yeats; because the (the soul
we once
and these and even
poem
is
a state of the soul, too
had), and these states change as
states mingle
and
conflict
all
else does,
and grow weak
or strong,
moments of consciousness suggest or untrue when mistaken for state-
these verbalized
if
things
which
ments,
when
absolutely as
are unjust
rightly written they are real; they
we
themselves are as
achieve the Real in this unrealized
life
are with a vengeance; because, oddly enough, though
been celebrated brant,
may be
is
over,
and one’s own
over, the celebration
is
life,
the
not over.
life
of the cele-
The
celebration
THE DEATH OF THE POET lay.
His pillow-propped face could only stare
with pale refusal
now
at the quiet coverlet,
that the world
and
all
186
his
—
what has
goes on.
He
are
knowledge of
it,
Reading Rilke
stripped from his senses to leave
had
fallen
back
to
an indifferent
Those who had seen him
living
how completely one he was for these: these
deep
bare,
ye'ar.
could not
with
valleys,
them
all
know
that flowed;
each meadowed place,
these streaming waters were his face.
Oh,
his face
embraced
which seeks him
now
still
this vast
expanse,
and woos him
yet;
mask squeamishly dying there, tender and open, has no more resistance, his last
than a
fruit’s flesh
spoiling in the
air.
* *
THE DU1N0 ELEGIES OF RAINER MARIA RILKE Among
the papers of the
Duchess Marie von Thurn und Taxis- Hohenlohe
THE FIRST ELEGY Who,
if
cried,
I
of Angels?
held
me
would hear
And even
if
one of them suddenly
against his heart,
I
of that completer existence
endure, because
and we worship to destroy us.
And
so
heart
s
we can
I
it is it
—
so because is
master myself and
call
would fade a
beauty
in the grip
we can
nothing but terror
Every Angel
cry that’s
me among the Dominions
it
s
barely
herald;
serenely disdains
awesome.
stifle
my mating song.
the beseeching Alas,
who
is
there
on? Not Angels, not men,
and even the observant animals are aware that
we re
in this
some
not very happily
home
here
—our interpreted world. Perhaps
tree
on a slope remains
for us, allowing
our look,
day after day; perhaps yesterday’s walk,
and
an aging retainer,
a habit that liked us, like
loyally stays,
Oh, then
and never gives notice.
there’s Night,
the world
when
a wind, full of the
is,
feeds on our faces:
who
could refuse her,
189
hollow where
WILLIAM when
gently
she’ll
let
us down, though so long longed for
by our heart’s solitude?
she lighter for lovers?
Is
Ah, they only hide their loneliness Don’t you
know
in
one another.
that yet? Fling the emptiness out of your
broaden the spaces we breathe
to
GASS
H.
—maybe then
birds
will feel the amplified air
with more fervent
Yes, the springtimes have
needed you. There ’ve been
to solicit
arms
flight.
stars
your seeing. In the past, perhaps,
waves rose
to greet you, or out
an open window,
was giving
as
you passed, a
to
someone. This was a different commandment.
violin
But could you obey
it?
itself
Weren’t you always
anxiously peering past them, as though
they announced a sweetheart’s coming? (Where would you
have hidden her, with those heavy foreign thoughts
tramping
in
and out and often staying overnight?)
But should you long
like this, sing of love’s
the fame of their feeling
Those
is
ultimate lovers:
not yet immortal enough.
— the forsaken —you envied them almost, they
so
outstripped all
love-appeased lovers in loving. Begin
continually to accomplish their unachievable praise.
Think: the hero endures, even his fading is
a
phase of renewal, he burns fresh each day.
But weary Nature gathers back her as
if
lovers,
she had no second strength to send them forth again.
Have you thought so that any jilted
fashion of loving,
sufficiently of
Gaspara Stampa
maiden might, from feel:
can
I
become
Should not these ancient sorrows
190
that
like
finally
yet,
more praiseworthy
you?
be
Reading Rilke
more
fruitful for us? Isn’t
time that
it
we
lovingly
freed ourselves from our lovers and, although shaken,
endure
it,
as the arrow stands in the string to
momentous release, something more than itself? For Voices, voices. Listen, Oh,
holy
men
lifted
become, upon
staying
my heart,
is
nowhere.
as hitherto only
have listened, listened so the mighty
them
straight
these magicians
its
call
from the ground, although they kneeled on,
—and paid no
attention,
they so utterly listened. Not that you could bear
—
God far from it. But hear the flowing melancholy murmur which is shaped out of silence wafting toward you now from those youthfully dead. Whenever you entered a church in Rome or in Naples, the voice of
did not their fate speak insistently to you? or a lofty inscription
impose
as lately the tablet in Santa
What do
they want of
me?
itself
upon you
Maria Formosa? that
I
should gently cleanse them
which hinders
of the tarnish of despair
sometimes, the pure passage of their
True,
it is
a
little,
spirits.
strange not to live on the earth any longer,
no longer follow the folkways you’ve only just learned, not to interpret roses and other promising things in
terms of a rich
human
future;
then to be no longer the one in ceaselessly
who once
lay
anxious hands, and to have to put aside
even one’s proper name
like a
broken
toy.
Strange, to wish one’s wishes no longer. Strange, to see all that
was one time
loosely in space.
And
it’s
related, fluttering
difficult to
191
be dead.
now
WILLIAM There’s just a
that catching
all
little
mistakenly
up
H.
GASS
do before one
to
feels *
eternity. All of the living, though,
make
Often Angels
these knife-like distinctions. said)
(it’s
cannot say
with the living or the dead.
The
if
they linger
eternal current
carries every age through either realm
forever,
and drowns
their voices with
In the end, those taken early
they are tenderly
its
roar in both.
no longer need
weaned from worldly
us;
things,
even as one gently outgrows the breasts of a mother.
But we who have need of such sacred secrets; we, for
whom
sorrow’s so often the source
of our happiest progress; could Is
a
we
survive without
them?
the legend useless that once, in the lamentation for Linos,
few adventuresome
and
in the startled
first
notes pierced the barren numbness,
space this almost godlike youth
had suddenly forsaken the vibration which
forever,
now
vacancy
first felt
carries us, comforts,
and
helps?'
THE SECOND ELEGY Every Angel
knowing
awesome. And
is
that,
I
still
sing
yet, alas,
my welcome
almost deadly birds of the soul.
to you,
Where have
the days of Tobias
gone,
when one
of the
most fiery-feathered could stand on
a simple
threshold (disguised for the journey and no longer appalling,
but a youth to the curious youth Yet
if
who peered
out).
the archangel, perilous now, were to step but a step
192
Reading Rilke
down toward heart
us from behind the stars, our
would burst our
Lucky from the
own
heartheaten
Who are you?
chest.
cradle, Creation
s
chosen darlings,
mountain ranges, ridges red from the
first
sun’s rise,
the pollen of a blossoming godhead, crossroads of
light,
corridors, staircases, thrones,
space breathed by Being into being, shields of delight, storms of uninterrupted rapture, and, suddenly, isolate, mirrors drawing back, as ,
whole
an echo,
as
the beauty that has streamed from their face.
But we, when
we
feel,
evaporate; oh,
we
breathe ourselves away; from coal to coal
we ‘
cool as perfume fades.
You ve
is
tell us:
into this room, the springtime
What good
He
can’t
keep
us;
disappear within, on either side, of him.
And
those
who
rich with
we
my blood,
got into
Though someone may
beautiful,
you
.
.
.”
who can
is
that?
are
capture them? Expressions go forth from
their faces
only to be reabsorbed. Like
we
relinquish
what
is
dew from morning grass
ours as easily as steam from a
warm
dish.
O smile, where are you going? O upturned glance: gone
in the glitter of a fresh splash,
the heart
.
.
and
its little
ripple across
.
nevertheless, that’s
what we
are.
Does the
great world
we
dissolve in taste of us, then?
Do
the Angels really
recapture only the radiance that’s streamed out from them, or sometimes, by mischance,
brought back?
even so
little
Do we
is
there a hit of our being
ever figure in their features
as that light
vague look
m
— WILLIAM which pregnant women wear? a as they pirouette
Lovers,
they
if
we
knew what Angels know, might air.
For
it
fly freely all
by things
they?)
write
seems everything houses
to conceal us. Look: trees exist, the
live in still stand.
And
lire not notiqed
upon themselves. (Why should
strange words on the night
wants
GASS
H.
We alone
like loose
exchanges of
air.
conspire to keep quiet about us, partly
out of shame, perhaps, and partly from wordless hope.
Lovers, satisfied by one another,
about
us.
it
happens that
one another, or that This yields
me
You, though,
I
am
my
my weary face
hands grow
know
to
seeks their shelter.
a slender sensation. But
who from one
until, quite
who
dares to believe he
like the
who may go
.” .
.
another’s groping swell
grapes of a vintage year;
like a
bud
asking you about us.
you touch so
another’s passion
overcome, you plead: “No more
who beneath one
with juice you,
asking you
because of that?
exists
you,
am
You embrace, but where’s the proof?
Look, sometimes
grow
I
blissfully
I
into another’s blossoming:
know
because your touch survives such
because just below your
finger’s
end you
feel the tip of
bliss,
pure
duration.
So you expect eternity
And
yet,
to
when you have
the longing,
later, at
entwine
itself in
your embrace.
dealt with your fear of that
the window, and your
first
first
look,
turn
about the garden together: lovers, are you any longer what you
were?
When you
lift
yourselves up to one another’s lips
chalice
194
—
chalice to
Reading Rilke
and
slip
soon
is
wine into wine
like
an added
flavor: oh,
how
strangely
each drinker’s disappearance from the ceremony.
On Attic
gravestones, did not the discretion in each
human
gesture
amaze you? Weren
t
love
and parting draped
so gently on those shoulders they
Remember
of a different stuff from ours?
how
lightly
they
lay,
These disciplined this is
our
If
only
we
be made
the hands,
figures understood: ‘‘We can go
down on
pure, modest and secure
but that
us,
river.
—
no nearer,
touching; the gods can
could reach something
between rock and
to
despite the power in the torsos.
limit, this tentative
press confidently
seemed
is
the gods’ affair.”
human
that’s as
a strip of fruitful land
For our heart
still
overreaches, as hubris did those others.
And we can no
longer follow
or into godlike bodies is
where
granted a greater calm
into chastening carvings,
it
its
very
enhancement
2 .
THE THIRD ELEGY It is
to
one thing
hymn
to sing the beloved; another, alas,
that river
A maiden knows
god shamefully hid
in the blood.
her love like the sky the distant
grass.'
What does he know of the lord of his lust, who frequently from loneliness alone raised up its
beaded god-head (even before
and often
as
though she didn’t
she’s eased him,
exist)
to rouse the night into infinite uproar?
O the Neptune aswim in our blood! O his terrible trident! The dark wind from
his chest
through the curving conch!
*95
WILLIAM
H.
Hear how the night grows hollow
GASS
as'a cave.
not from you that the lovers longing for
is it
falls?
Does not
his
that:
stars,
beloved face
innermost vision
of her pure features shine to
No, neither you,
And you,
alas!
him from your purer
fires?
nor his mother
ever bent his brows in such an eager arch;
nor to meet the maiden has his
mouth begun
Do you
really
so shook him,
who
enfolds
him
in
her feeling
to ripen like a fall fruit.
imagine your
light step
when your walk is
like a
waver
in the
morning
wind? Surely you startled his heart; but more primal terrors
overtook him at the shock of your blameless touch. Call
him
.
.
.
you can never
him completely from
call
that
converse with the dark. Really, he wants
he
starts to feel at
home
in
to,
he does escape; relieved,
your heart, accepts and begins to be
himself.
But could he ever begin himself? Mother, you made him small,
it
was you who began him,
he was new with you, you arched the friendly world over those
new
Oh, where
are the years, now,
eyes,
and shut the strange outside.
when your
slender form
stood between him and the drifting chaos of his childhood?
You hid
so
much from him
then;
made harmless
the night-frightening room, and sent, from the haven of your heart,
a
human
Not
space
like
breath into the substance of his dark.
in that night, no,
you placed
but within your nearby Being
a light that shone, as
if
solid things.
196
in friendship,
even through
Reading Rilke
Nowhere as
the rustle of a stair your smile could not explain,
though you had long known when the speak
And he
.
floor
would choose
.
.
listened
and was soothed. So much did your tender
rising
accomplish; his
caped
tall
behind the wardrobe, and slightly
postponing
And he
himself
—
alarming future,
his
into the folds of the drape.
itself, fit
as
stepped
fate
he lay assuaged, your
delicate image beneath his
drowsy
lids
dissolving like a sweet in the taste of forthcoming sleep
seemed or
safe.
dam
But within who could divert
the seed-flow of instinct inside him?
Ah, there was no caution
in that sleeping child; sleeping
but dreaming, but fevered: what he
He, so shy, so untarnished: how
him its
in its
hungry
handed himself over
and savage designs,
to
it
—
.
Loved.
his inner world, the wilderness inside himself,
from among whose toppled trunks,
that primeval forest
accumulated
leaves,
and
silent ruin
rose his pale green heart like a sapling. Loved. Yet
Went beyond
origin
own
birth
his
left.
the place his final roots were rooted to that
overwhelming
where
for!
menacing shapes of its preying
forms.
Loved
himself in
interior life entangled
tendrils, its twisted
constricting embrace, the
How he
let
little
was already
outlived. Loving,
he descended into his ancestral blood, the ravines
where Gorgons
And
lay
gorged
snakes with his fathers.
like
every Terror was his pal and winked with complicity.
Yes, Ghastlies smiled at
him
.
l
.
.
97
Seldom
to
WILLIAM
GASS
H.
did you, mother, smile so winsomely.
he not love what smiled such smiles your love he loved it
was
Look,
there
we
—dissolved
him? Long before
at
even as you, also swollen, bore him,
for
it,
How could
in the fluid that floats the seed.
don’t love like flowers, with only
memory
springtime behind us; a sap older than
mounts
in
this: that
when we
our arms
love.
one
O my girl,
we’ve loved, in ourselves, not the one
still
to
come,
but a foaming multitude; not one child alone, but fathers fallen inside us
like the ruins of
mountains;
then the dry riverbeds mothers have become;
and the whole of
that silent landscape
or cloudy destiny: this,
And you
yourself,
how
girl,
got here
could you
set prehistoric time to ticking in
were exhaled by extinct
things.
through him, hated you.
reached out to you give
him
a day’s
.
.
.
Oh,
its
clear
ahead of you.
know
your
—
that
lover.
you ve
—What emotions
—What women,
—What
vivified in his youthful veins.
under
sinister
Dead
men you
children
gently, gently,
work done with confidence and
Lead him
love.
nearby a gracious garden; give him restorative nights
.
.
.
Hold him
THE FOURTH ELEGY O trees of life, when will your winter come? Were
not in tune. Not like migratory birds.
Outmoded, late, in haste, we force ourselves on winds which let us down upon indifferent ponds.
198
in ...
3
Reading Rilke
Though we’ve had to learn how flowering somewhere lions still roam, unaware,
in their majesty, of
is
fading,
any weakness.
Bent upon one thing, we begin to feel its
burden and the beckon of another. our neighborhood. Aren’t lovers
Hostility’s
always arriving at the borders of each other,
although both promised breathing space, unimpeded hunting,
home? Sometimes
a
backdrop
be carefully prepared
will
so that a figure in the foreground will
seem frank and open
to us;
unknown when public pressure shapes the face we show. Who has not sat nervously before his own heart’s but the contours of our feelings stay
Up
it
Easy
goes: the scene to
understand.
swaying a
little
set for saying farewell.
is
The
familiar garden
before the dancer
Not him. Enough. However he’s just a bourgeois in a
and enters I
will
his
curtain?
comes
in.
elegantly he pretends to move,
costume,
house by the kitchen door.
not accept these half-filled masks:
better, a puppet.
the husk
it
It’s
whole.
has for body,
Hey! I’m waiting. Even
its
if
I
can endure
wires,
its
painted face.
the lights go out;
even
if
drifts
me like a gray draft from the stage; if none of my ancestors will sit silently by me
even
I’m told, “That’s
all”;
even
if
absence
toward
anymore,
nor a woman, nor the boy with the squinting brown eyes: I’ll
stay in
my seat. One
can always watch. *
09
WILLIAM
Am
after
you tasted mine, the
who
kept on tasting as
till,
who found
not right? You, father,
I
GASS
H.
life
infusion of
first
bitter
my irffant
self,
my brewing grew,
troubled by the aftertaste of such a foreign future,
gazed into
my cloudy eyes
—you, who,
so often
since you died, have lodged your fears about
deep
in
my own
hopes, giving up that calm
the dead deserve, surrendering a peaceable for forebodings
about
and you others, too
show
for that first
when
me
—
kingdom
my fate. Am not right? am not right? who must I
—
I
of love for you
have loved
me
always mislaid
I
the look which formed your face,
even as
I
loved
it,
became remote
as a place in the expanse of
the world
where you no longer were to wait before the
.
.
.
when
puppet stage
to stare so intensely as to
.
.
.
I’m inclined no,
provoke an Angel
a player to startle the stuffed skins into
Angel and puppet: a
Then
there
comes together
the circuit of
to arise
Then
life.
real play at last. like
what our being here has pulled
Then
to appear,
all
clapping hands apart.
cosmic movement can be seen
from the cycle of our seasons.
over everything plays the Angel puppeteer.
Surely the dying must sense what a that nothing
is
really itself.
when behind each shape and what
lay before us
sham
it
all is,
O hours of childhood,
stood more than the past,
was
less
than the future.
We grew, and sometimes we wanted to hurry our growing, partly eager to equal the
grown-up
who had for his prize only that. Yet, when alone, we contented
ourselves with what could not
be clocked.
200
Reading Rilke
We stood there in
the pause between world and plaything,
place which, from the
in that
first,
had been
set aside for a
pure
event.
Who’ll show a child his proper place? set him
among
his stars,
and put the measure of earth’s distance in his hands? Who makes the death of a child out of gray bread, or leaves like the
there to harden in the round
it
ragged core of a sweet apple? Murderers
aren’t hard to understand.
But
to hold
it
hold death,
this: to
the whole of death, even before one’s
this
mouth
life’s
begun,
gently, without complaint:
exceeds description
4 .
THE FIFTH EFEGY Dedicated
But
Frau Hertha Koenig
to
me, who are they, these troupers,
tell
—
we are driven since childhood, and bent (for what? for whom?) by some tireless will? even more transient than
Because
if
wrings them, twists them, swings and flings them,
and catches them; and they descend
tosses as
it
the
to light
air
were oiled and polished,
on a carpet worn threadbare
by their incessant leaping and landing, a carpet lost in
Stuck there
cosmic space.
like a
bandage, as
if
the suburban sky
had bruised the earth.
And upright, displayed there, the great
Da
.
.
.
for in Fate’s repeated
even the strongest
men
first letter
and relentless
are tossed, in
201
of
grip
whim,
barely there,
WILLIAM
GASS
H.
from their station again, the way Augustus the Strong toyed with the
served his table.'
tin platter that
Ah, and around
this center,
attention like a rose
blooms and sheds pestle-like pistil,
impregnated by so
it
bears
its
its
its
petals.
this
sham and
surface shining with
own
boredom
About
s
pollen
seedless
fruit.
There’s the weary and wrinkled weight
lifter,
able only, so old, to beat a drum,
shrunk as
in his scrotum-like skin
had once held two men,
if it
though now one’s dead while he
lives on,
in the
ground
deaf and dazed
in his
widower’s weeds.
Then
the young one, the man,
who might be
the son of a neck and a nun,
tense and tightly filled
with muscle and simplicity.
Oh, and you, while
it
was
still little,
during one of
You,
who
be the plaything of some pain,
to
fall
its
a gift
long convalescences
.
.
with the thud
only green fruit know, like daily rain
the
from the
movements
(a tree
more
tall
boughs
of your troupe create
which passes through
its
seasons
rapidly than water, spring to
fall),
only to land where your grave will be.
202
.
smirk;
Reading Rilke
Sometimes, feel a
in a
momentary pause, you
shy look of love, for one seldom allowed to be your
mother, begin to flood your face, though
it
soon be
will
absorbed by the business of your body. Again, the man’s clapping hands are calling for more leaping,
but before an honest anguish can catch up with your racing heart the true source of painful feeling
comes the
sting in the soles of your feet,
to force its
few
tears
from your eyes.
Yet there’s that blind smile. Angel! Oh, take that smile! pluck that
little
flowered herb of
healing,
find a vase to save
Include
it!
among
it
those joys
not yet open to us. In a graceful urn let
an ornate inscription praise
it:
“Subrisio Saltat.”
You, then, lovely one, you, over
whom
the most enchanting pleasures
have skipped without a sound,
maybe your
fringes are
happy
for you,
or the green metallic silk that binds your firm full breasts
soothed
it
needs nothing further.
upon shoulders
to
be shown,
feels itself so
You, lifted
and balanced and rebalanced on swaying calmly, like a marketed
Where, oh, where, so long a
is
scales,
fruit.
that place
—
I
bear in
way from hard-earned mastery,
203
my heart
— WILLIAM
GASS
H.
*
where they
fell
away from one another
like
mating animals, *
weary, ill-matched,
where weights were too heavy, where still
their spinning plates
toppled from the tips of their futilely stirring sticks
Suddenly,
in this
magically transformed
and
.
.
?
tiresome no-man’s-land, suddenly,
in this indescribable place, the is
.
—
always “not good enough”
turns back to start,
into a sterile perfection
where the long-columned adds up and adds up
Squares,
.
O square in
where the modiste
.
bill
adds up to
.
Paris, ceaseless
ways of the world,
restless
those endless ribbons, into ever frills,
showplace,
Madame Lamort
weaves and winds the bows,
nil.
new
designs:
flowers, cockades, artificial fruit,
each cheaply dyed, to decorate the tacky winter hats of Fate.
Angel:
and
if
there were a place
there,
that’s
we knew nothing of,
on some mystical carpet, the lovers did everything
unachievable here
—showed
their somersaulting souls,
hearts leaps, their towered palaces of pleasure,
ladders a long time leaning in a tremble against one another
on no more ground than cloud do
suppose they could dare
to
in front of the silent, the
numberless dead:
Would still
there,
down hidden and unknown hoard,
these spectators, then, toss
their savings, their their
it all
legal coins of
happiness
204
Reading Rilke
at the feet of that
genuinely smiling couple,
and upon that now
gratified carpet ? 5
THE SIXTH ELEGY Fig tree, for a long time
how you
it
has meant
much
to
me
almost forget to flower,
and then, without
fanfare, force your concentrated essence
into the season’s first fruit.
Like the tube of a fountain, your arching boughs circulate the sap, driving till it
it
down and then
leaps from sleep, though
into the outburst of
its
still
up,
drowsy,
sweetest achievement.
Like that god gone into swan. .
we
alas,
we
In a
few the impulse
that
when
like
.
But we
linger,
boast about our blooming; already betrayed,
reach the core of our
their
.
fruit too late.
to action
the temptation to
young mouths,
evening
air,
is
so powerful
bloom
lightly
touches
their lowered eyelids,
they are instantly tumescent:
heroes, perhaps, and those who’ve been chosen to disappear early,
whose veins the gardener
has fastened like vines to a different
They the in
race ahead of their
way
own
of souls
lattice.
laughter
the triumphant king’s team precedes
him
those slowly receding reliefs at Karnak.
The hero
strangely resembles those
who
die
in their youth.
Survival doesn’t concern him.
205
— WILLIAM Rising composes his Being.
He
H.
GASS
takes himself
on always perilous journeys into the changing constellations of his far-off stars.
if
Where few
mum about us,
could find him. But Fate, as
inspired, suddenly sings
him
like a bird
borne into the buffets of a storm. For
On
^
I
hear no one
like
him.
an aroused wind, his dark song rushes through me.
Also,
I
would love
oh, to be a boy again, to sit
propped on
about Samson
my life
my future
—how
O
my longings:
ahead,
arms and read
at first his
was barren, and then bore Within you,
from
to hide
mother
all.
Mother, was he not a hero already,
didn’t his imperious choice begin there, inside you?
Thousands were
stirring in that
womb
and wanting
to
be what
he was.
But
And
see: if
he chose and selected, he seized and used.
he ever pushed columns apart,
it
was when
he burst from the world of your body into that
temple of enemies called the world,
where he went on choosing and doing. Oh, mothers of heroes, oh sources of raging and you ravines
into
rivers;
which sorrowing maidens, from the
heart’s
edge, have already plunged
former and future victims of your son! For even as the Hero overcame the labors and
trials
the hearts that beat harder on his behalf
could only
lift
until, already at
him above
all
his obstacles,
beginning to turn his back, he stood
the end of these
many
smiles, another self
206
6 .
of love,
Reading Rilke
THE SEVENTH ELEGY No more It
can’t
courting. Voice, you’ve outgrown seduction.
be the excuse for your song anymore,
although you sang as purely as a bird
when
the soaring season
he’s just that’s
No
lifts
him, almost forgetting
an anxious creature, and not a single heart
being tossed toward brightness, into a home-like heaven.
less
than he, you’d be courting some silent companion
so she’d feel you, though you’re perched out of sight,
some mate and warms
in
whom
in
her hearing
a reply slowly
wakens
—your ardent
feeling finding a fellow
flame.
Oh, and springtime would understand
—
there’d be
no corner that wouldn’t echo with annunciation. each
First
little
questioning note
would be surrounded by a confident
Then
day’s magnifying stillness.
the intervals between calls, the steps rising toward the
anticipated temple of what’s to come; then the falling
is
caught by
its
trill,
the
way
a fountain’s
next jet as though in play
.
.
.
With the summer ahead. Not only all of summer’s dawns, the way they shine before sunrise and dissolve into day.
Not only the shaping the
days, so soft around flowers,
trees, so
and above,
purposeful and strong.
Not only the devotion of these freed not only the paths, not only
forces,
meadows
at
evening,
not only the ozoned air after late thunder,
not only, at dusk, the onset of sleep and twilight’s
premonitions
.
.
.
207
WILLIAM
H.
GASS
*
summer nights,
but also the nights! the height of
and the
Oh, all
to
stars as well, the stars of the earth.
be dead someday so as eternally to know them,
how
the stars: then how, how,
Look,
been
I’ve
come Out from
.
.
but not only she would
crumbling graves
confine
I
my lover,
them!
.
their
How could
calling
to forget
my call
girls
—once
would
called
rise
—
and gather.
to just
one?
Like seeds, the recently interred are always seeking the earth’s surface.
My children, one thing really relished in this world will serve for a
thousand. Never believe
that destiny
more than what’s confined
how
is
often did you pass the
man you
to a childhood;
loved, panting,
panting after the blissful chase, to dash into freedom?
It is
breathtaking simply to be here. Girls, even you
knew, who seemed so deprived, so reduced, who became sewers yourselves, festering in the awful alleys of the
For each of you had an hour, perhaps a at
bit less,
worst a scarcely measurable span between while and while,
when you wholly were. Had all. Were bursting with But we easily forget what our laughing neighbor neither confirms nor envies. yet the it
We want to show
most apparent joy reveals
has been transformed,
My love,
when
it
itself
rises
it
only after
within us.
The outer world dwindles, and day fades from day. Where once a solid house was, soon some invented structure perversely suggests itself, as at ease among ideas if it still
off,
the world exists nowhere but within us.
Withinwarding
as
city.
is
everything.
stood in the brain.
208
Being.
— Reading Rilke
The Present has amassed
vast stores of power,
shapeless as the vibrant energy It
has forgotten temples.
has stolen from the earth.
We must save in secret
such lavish expenditures of
spirit.
where one thing we served, knelt
Yes, even
prayed to survives,
Many
it
it
seeks to see
have ceased perceiving
the chance to enlarge
it,
add
it,
and
for,
itself invisible.
and so
pillars
and
miss
will
statues, give
it
grandeur, within.
Each to
torpid turn of the world disinherits
whom
some
neither what’s been nor will be adheres.
For to humans even what comes next
is
far
We, however, should not be confused by
away.
this,
but should resolve to retain the shape in stone
we
still
recognize.
This once stood stood facing of our not
shall
among mankind,
the destroyer, stood in the middle
fate,
its
as
though an
existed,
design from the
stars’
firm place in heaven.
—
show it there! in your eyes stand seen and redeemed at last, straight
Angel, to you it
standard
knowing what, why, or wherefore,
answer
and took
like a
I
shall
as pillars, pylons, the sphinx, the cathedral’s
gray spire thrust up from a decaying or a foreign
Wasn’t we,
it
miraculous?
O great one,
my breath
is
marvel, Angel, that
extol our
we did
achievements,
too short for such praise.
Because, after of our sphere
(How
O
all,
we
oars
haven’t failed to
make use
—these generous spaces.
frightfully vast they
must
be,
not to have overflowed with our feelings
209
city.
it,
—
— WILLIAM
GASS
H.
even after these thousands of years'.)
But one tower was even compared
to
great, wasn’t it?
a
woman
O Angel,
iUwas
you? Chartres was great
and music rose even higher, flew
Even
*
beyond
alone at night by her
in love,
didn’t she reach your
far
us.
window
.
.
.
knee? Don’t think I’m courting you, Angel.
And even For
if
my call
I
were! You’d never come.
always
is
full
of "stay away.’’
Against such a powerful current even you cannot advance.
My call is like an outstretched arm. And its open, available hand yet only to
ward
off
is
upturned,
always in front of you,
and warn,
though wide open, incomprehensible
7 .
THE EIGHTH ELEGY Dedicated
to
Rudolf Kassner
All other creatures look into the
with their whole eyes.
Our
Open
eyes, instead, go
round the other
way,
and
setting snares
traps
on every path
to
freedom.
What is outside, we read solely from the animal’s gaze, for we compel even the young child to turn and look back at preconceived things, never to
know
the acceptance so deeply set inside
the animal’s face. Free from death. It is all
we
always has
and when
see. its it
The
free animal
decline behind,
moves,
it
its
god ahead,
moves within
eternity the
way fountains
flow.
We’ve never had
that sort of pure space before us,
210
— Reading Rilke
into
which flowers endlessly open
— no
there’s always the interpreted world,
not for a single day
;
and even our
abstract realms reflect a repeated yes or no:
never that pure unmonitored element one breathes, naturally knows,
and never craves. As a child
one may be absorbed by silence only out of
Too
it
again.
Or one
dies
close to death, one
may
he shaken
is it.
see
it
no longer,
ahead instead, maybe with the wide eyes of animals.
to stare
Lovers approach
it,
and would be amazed,
were not a partner always It
and
to
in
the
way
.
.
.
opens up behind the other almost by mistake
.
.
.
but no one gets beyond the other, and the world comes back again.
Continuously confronted by creation, we see there
dimmed reflection of the free and open. Or some dumb animal, with its calm eyes,
only a
is
seeing through and through us.
That’s our Fate, to be possessed by the opposite, to see
an inversion and nothing more.
If this
confident creature coming toward us,
on such
a different course,
had our kind of consciousness,
he would spin us around and drag us But
to
him he
and because he his
infinite,
is
is
outward gaze
And
all,
yet
there
wake.
incomprehensible,
blind to his condition,
is
the future, he sees
he and
in his
pure. all,
Where we
see
and sees himself
in everything,
whole always.
upon the warm and watchful animal
lies
the weight and care of an
immense
Because what often overwhelms us clings
21
1
to
sadness.
him, too:
WILLIAM remembrance
the
we were once disparity
tenderly tethered
to.
now,*
for
Here
*
all is
was heartbeat and breath. home, our second seems uncertain and cold.
first
Oh, the
GASS
what we reach
that
and distance, there
After the
H.
bliss of
it
those so small they can remain in the place
where they came
to be;
Oh, the pleasure the midge must know, who will dance even its wedding dance in the same world in which it was conceived.
Observe the
almost aware of both, souls yet
who
where
like
one of those Etruscan
has flown the corpse which was its
hovering figure
How confused yet be called it
from birth
less certain bird,
still
forms the
the bat must be: to
upon
to
fly.
As
if
its
coffin’s lid.
come from
in flight
from
nest,
a
womb,
itself,
zigzags through the air like a crack through a cup.
In the
same way
wing, at dusk, crazes the porcelain surface
its
of the sky.
And
we: spectators always, everywhere,
looking on, but never beyond!
World overwhelms
We rearrange Who
it
us.
We order
it.
The order
and come apart ourselves.
has turned us around
so that whatever
we
do,
like this,
we wear
the look of
departing?
As he who on to
halts,
a hill high
show
one
final time,
enough
off his
whole
valley,
wavers and stops and lingers there,
we
falls.
too live our lives forever taking leave
212
8 .
someone
—
—
Reading Rilke
THE NINTH ELEGY Why,
the seasons of
if
as a laurel, a
little
could be passed
life
darker than
all
other green,
with tiny waves on the edge of each smile of a wind
like the
must we be human long for Fate?
.
.
—
leaf,
why, then,
:
—and, shunning our Destiny,
.
Oh, not because happiness that profit snatched hastily exists
:
from threatening
loss
not from curiosity, not simply to practice
a heart that could live quite as well in a laurel
but because
because
all
it is
that
much just is
to
needs
as well: once.
.
us,
strangely concerns us. Us, most fleeting of
And we
.
be here,
fleeting here
Just once. Everything.
.
all.
Only once. Once and no more.
Then never
again.
But
this
having been once, although only once, having been earthed
And
so
to hold in
we push it
in
—can
ever be canceled?
it
ourselves on and pray to achieve
our simple hands,
our ever more crowded gaze,
Pray to become
keep alas,
it
it,
it.
To
give
a keepsake forever
to
it
.
.
.
in
our speechless heart.
someone? We’d rather
But
to that other land,
what can be taken? Not our power of perceiving,
learned here so slowly; nothing here that’s happened.
Nothing. But possibly suffering. Above
and the long endurance of love untellable things. But later,
what then
Nor does
is
the use?
The
the hardness of
life,
—wholly
when
the stars have us under them,
stars are
the wanderer bring
all,
down
213
still
better unspoken.
a handful of earth
— WILLIAM from
mountain slope
his high
mute),
H.
GASS
to the valley (fof earth, too, is '
but a word he has plucked from the climbing: the yellow and blue gentian. Are we, perhaps, here just to utter: house, bridge, fountain, gate, jug, fruit tree, at
most: column, tower
to
speak
in a
way which
they could he7
Isn’t
it
.
.
.
window
but to utter them, remember,
the
named never dreamed
the hidden purpose
of this cunning earth, in urging on lovers, to realize,
through their rapture, rapture for
Threshold: what
it
can mean
all?
two lovers
for
down their threshold a little, just as the many who’ve come through have worn and ahead of the many to follow ... so lightly. to foot
Here
is
the time for words, here
Speak and proclaim. More than the things
we can
and imageless
live
is its
it,
home.
ever,
with are falling away,
action’s usurping their place.
Real acts will quickly crack their shells
when
what’s working within
brings forth a
Our like
them
new form.
heart dwells between
hammers,
the tongue between the teeth,
where
it
remains, notwithstanding,
a continual creator of praise.
Praise this world to the Angel, not the unutterable one.
You cannot impress him with the splendor you’ve felt, for in the heaven of heavens, where he feels so sublimely, you
re
but a beginner.
Show him some
2I 4
simple thing, then,
Reading Rilke
been changed
that’s till it
lives in
human
ages
our hands, in the shine of our eyes, as a part
him
of ourselves. Fell as
passage through
in its
things. He’ll stand
you stood by the roper
in
Rome
more astonished,
or the potter in Egypt.
Show him how happy a thing can be, how innocent and ours; how even Sorrow, in the midst of lamenting, is determined to alter,
—
to serve as a thing, or fade in a thing
beyond
into beauty is
violining.
a constant leaving, they
to
escape
These things whose
know when you
praise them.
Transient, they trust us, the most transient, to
wish us to
to their rescue; they
within our invisible hearts, into
Whoever we may You
earthly things
—
is
this not
if
Earth,
my loved
one,
You need no more Beyond as I’ve
all
is
—
so endlessly
us!
what you want,
—
things!
not this deep translation,
Already one
utterly,
your dream
be one day invisible? Earth!
What,
—
them
come
finally be.
to arise invisible in us? Is not to
alter
I
will.
is
—
invisible!
your ardent aim?
Believe me.
of your springtimes to win me.
more than my blood can endure.
the words
I
can speak
I
am yours,
been from the beginning. Always, you were
and your
life
holiest thought’s
right,
been of death, our most intimate
friend.
But look
—
I
live.
Oh, on what? Neither childhood nor
future grows less. wells
up
in
my
Abundant existence
heart
9 .
WILLIAM
GASS
H.
THE TENTH ELEGY" Someday, released
from
at last
this
anguished soul-searching,
may sing an extolling song to the assenting Angels; may not even one of the firmly struck hammers of the I
heart
land upon a slack, uncertain, or broken string;
may my weeping
each tear glistening
make me more radiant, like a new bloom:
how
then
precious to
deep that
me
my tormented
nights will be, and
how
my regret
didn’t
I
face
more
willingly kneel to you,
inconsolable sisters, more willingly lose myself in your flowing hair.
We squander our sorrows. How we look along their bitter lengths
searching for an end, and see not their secret.
But they are our serious winter
one season of our inner year but
soil,
Yet, alas,
trees,
—not
place, village, storehouse,
how
our dark evergreens,
just a season,
home.
strange are the streets of the City of Pain,
where, amid the noise raised against noise that
we mistake
for
stillness,
a stout figure swaggers, cast in inanities’ mold: itself
the gilded din, and decaying memorials.
Oh, how completely would an Angel crush underfoot market of cheap comforts, with the church
at its side,
purchased ready-made,
as swept, as shut, as disappointing as a post office
The
their
on
a
Sunday.
outskirts, though, are always swirling with carnival.
Elevating swings! Daring jugglers and exciting High Divers!
216
—
— Reading Rilke
And
the shooting galleries with their lifelike ducks,
targets
when
a
which
will fall in a clatter of tin
lucky shot happens to hit one.
Encouraged by the crowd, he waddles
after
more
prizes:
booths that can satisfy any kind of curiosity are
drumming
their
drums and crying
their wares.
Especially worth seeing, but for adults only: coins in copulation, right there onstage,
money’s metal genitals ruhadubdubbing.
Educational, and sure to encourage multiplication
.
.
.
Oh, and just outside that tent,
behind the
last billboards,
plastered with posters for “Todlos,"
the dark bitter beer so sweet to the addicted, so long as they swallow
and
just at the
it
while chewing on fresh distractions
back of the
billboards, right
behind them,
is
.
.
reality.
Children are playing; to one side, earnest, in
patchy grass, lovers are holding each other,
and dogs
are doing nature’s business.
The young man Lament .
He
.
is
drawn
farther on; perhaps he loves a
.
follows her into the
meadows. She
We live out there. A long way Where? And
young
the young
man
.
.
says:
.
follows. He’s
moved by her
manner: her shoulders, her neck
maybe she comes from
a noble family?
turns back, looks around, waves
.
.
.
Still,
he leaves her,
What’s the use?
She’s a Lament.
Only those who died young,
in their first stages
of timeless serenity, scarcely weaned,
217
.
— WILLIAM
H.
GASS
follow her lovingly.
She waits and befriends the* girls. Gently shows them what she’s wearing. Pearls * the shape of tears, and patience’s fine-spun veils.
She walks with the young men
in silence.
But there in the valley where they
live,
one of the older Laments answers the youth’s questions:
Long
Our
ago, she says, the Lamentations
were a powerful
clan.
worked the mines in that mountain range. humans, sometimes, you can still find a polished lump
fathers
Among
of primal pain, or a piece of petrified rage ^tes, that
And
amid the
would have come from
gently she guides
slag of an ancient volcano,
there.
We
used
to
be
rich.
him through the immense land
of
Lamentation,
shows him temple columns or the ruins of castles where the Lords of Lamentation wisely ruled the country long ago.
Shows him the
shows him
fields flowering
(which the
living only
tall
weeping
trees,
with griefstrife
know
as
becalmed
shows him sorrow’s pastured herds
leaves);
—and sometimes
a startled bird, cutting across their gaze,
loops the
of
first letter
its
At evening she leads him the seers and sybils
lonely cry. to the graves of the elders,
who prophesied and warned.
But with night coming on, they move more slowly, and soon the tomb, whose stone, awash with moonlight, rises to watch over
Brother to the Nile
s
all,
confronts them.
sublime Sphinx, the
silent
chamber s
secret face.
And
they are stunned by the crowned head that has quietly
formed
218
Reading Rilke
— the featured
forever
on the scale of the
His eyes can’t take
man
of
/
stars.
mind
in, his
it
reeling from recent
still
death,
hut their gaze frightens an owl from behind the stone crown.
And
the bird, with slow swooping strokes, brushes the statue’s
cheek
fuller
until that
touching faintly speaks,
in death’s different hearing,
as
though on the facing pages of an open book
an unutterable shape were shaped.
And
higher, the stars.
New ones. The
stars of Pain’s
Land.
Slowly the Lament names them: “There, look: there’s the Rider, the Staff,
and they
call that
bigger
constellation Garland of Fruit. Then, farther on,
toward the Pole: Cradle, Path, Puppet, Window, The Burning Book.
But
southern sky, clear as lines on the palm of a blessed
in the
hand, the brilliantly glowing ‘M’ that stands for
Mothers
.” .
.
But the dead youth must go on, and leads
him
where the
silently the elder
as far as the gorge
true Source of Joy
shines in the moonlight.
Solemnly she names it is
it
and
the stream which bears
They stand
says:
“For
them
men
on.’’
at the foot of the range,
and there she embraces him, weeping.
219
Lament
WILLIAM
H.
GASS
Alone he climbs the Mountains of Primal Pain. And not once does his step echo from Destiny’s soundless path.
Yet
if
the eternal dead were to
look, they
might be pointing
wake an image
in us,
to the catkins
hanging from empty hazels, or they might remind us of the rain that
And
we,
falls
who have
on the dark earth
always thought
of happiness as ascending,
would
feel the
that almost
when
a
emotion
undoes us
happy thing falls
10 .
220
in early spring.
NOTES
Lifeleading
1.
Life of a Poet: Rainer
Maria
Rilke,
by Ralph Freedman.
New York:
Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 1995, 129. 2.
Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press,
New York:
Octagon Books
1941; reprinted
Farrar, Straus
and Giroux,
by Octagon Books, 1971.
More
recently
Lang has published Beatrice Bullock-Kimball’s monograph, The European Heritage of Rose Symbolism and Rose Metaphors in View of (1988), Peter
Rilke’s Epitaph. 3.
Capri, ca.
4.
Paris,
5.
My
New Year’s Day
June
Sister,
27, 1906.
My
Spouse:
Norton and Co., 6. 7.
1907.
1962,
A
Biography of Lou Andreas-Salome.
new
New
York:
ed. 1974, 186, 270.
New York: Fromm Inti., 1984, 73. Rilke: A Life, by Wolfgang Leppmann. New York: Fromm
International,
1984, 75. 8.
Freedman,
9.
Quoted by H.
Life of a Poet, 113. F. Peters in
Rainer Maria Rilke: Masks and the Man. Seattle:
Univ. of Washington Press, i960. Reprinted by Gordian Press, NY, 1977, 10. 10.
Freedman,
Life of a Poet, 373.
11.
“Parting,” Paris, early 1906.
12.
From “The Book
of Poverty and Death,”
Hours, 1903. 13.
From “Turning-Point,”
Paris, 1914.
14.
“Autumn,”
11,
Paris, Sept.
1902.
221
which
is
Book
III
of
The Book of
,
Notes
15.
16.
7
!
•
“Autumn Day,”
Paris, Sept. 21, 1902.
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996. To Music, a gift to Frau Hanna Wolff after home, Munich,
18. 19.
“The Lace,”
II,
22.
11
or
Capri, ca. Feb.
10,
1907.
1905.
Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1958,
The Romantic Rebellion,
The
a private concert at her
12, 1918.
Buddha, Meudon, end of
20. Phases of Rilke, 21.
Jan.
*
New York:
Harper and Row,
72.
1973, 353, 4.
Panther, Jardin des Plantes, Paris, 1903.
23.
From “The Fourth
24.
Last entry in Rilkes pocket book, Val-Mont, Switzerland,
Elegy.”
mid-December
1926.
Transreading 1.
2.
Meudon, Winter
1905-6.
See Michael Hamburger s “Brief Afterthoughts on Versions of a Poem by Holderlin,” in Translating Poetry edited by Daniel Weissbort. Iowa City: Univ. of Iowa Press, 1989, 51-6.
3.
4.
Book of Hours, 111. II. 7 of “The Book of Pilgrimage” from The Book of Hours.
Rilke's
Ein Gott Vermags 1.
Reprinted
in the
Canadian Review of Comparative Literature
VII,
no.
2,
1980, 163-73. 2.
Arndt, The Best of Rilke, 162.
3.
Sonnets
to
Orpheus, Part
I,
3,
Muzot, Feb. 2-5,
1922.
4.
Sonnets
to
Orpheus, Part
I,
1,
Muzot, Feb. 2-5,
1922.
5.
Sonnets
to
Orpheus, Part
I,
2,
Muzot, Feb. 2-5,
1922.
6.
Sonnets
to
Orpheus, Part
II,
7.
Vol.
8.
“Torso of an Archaic Apollo,” Paris, early Part
2,
13,
Muzot, Feb. 15-17,
1922.
Poetry, 143.
II.
222
Summer
1908, in
New
Poems,
Notes
Inhalation in a
1.
God
The Poems of Alexander Pope, a one-volume edition of the Twickenham text,
New
edited by John Butt.
Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1963, 265.
2.
“Lament,”
3.
From “The Ninth
4.
“The Spanish
5.
Quotations are from “Mathematical Creation,”
Paris, July 1914.
Elegy.”
Trilogy,”
1,
Ronda, Jan.
6, 1913.
in
The Creative
Process,
edited by Brewster Ghiselin. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1952,
33 42 6.
-
“The Great Night,”
Paris, 1914.
Schade
1.
2.
Freedman,
Life of a Poet, 155.
Paula Modersohn-Becker, by Gillian Perry.
New
York: Harper
&
Row,
1979, 126, plate xvi. 3.
Freedman,
4.
Paula Modersohn-Becker, The Letters and journals, Gunter Busch and Liselette
Life of a Poet, 266.
von Reinken,
eds.;
Arthur
111
5.
From “Requiem
for a Friend.”
6.
Modersohn-Becker,
7.
Ibid., 540.
8.
Freedman,
Life of a Poet, 254.
9.
Paris, Oct.
31-Nov.
.:
Letters
2,
and Journals,
195.
539.
1908.
The Grace
of Great Things
“Primal Sound,” in G. Craig Houston, trans., Rainer Maria Rilke, Selected
Works, 2.
Wensinger and Carole Clew Hoey,
Northwestern Univ. Press, 1990,
trans. Evanston,
1.
S.
vol.
Quoted
in
I,
Prose, 51-6.
My European
Heritage, by Brigitte B. Fischer. Boston:
Publishing, 1986, 76.
Feb. 23, 1921.
3.
Sonnets
to
Orpheus, Part
II,
1,
4.
Sonnets
to
Orpheus, Part
II,
29, Feb. 19-23.
223
Brandon
Notes
5.
From “The Ninth
6.
From “The
7.
London: Chatto and Windus,
8.
Sonnets
9.
Paris, mid-July 1906.
Elegy.”
First Elegy.”
Orpheus, Part
to
II,
1972.
12,
Hermann
Muzot, Feb. 15-17,
Pongs, quoted by Leppmann, 183.
10.
Rilke, in a letter to
11.
From “The
12.
From “The Fourth
13.
Sonnets
14.
“Transformations,” quoted by Martin
Fifth Elegy.”
Elegy.”
Orpheus, Part
to
31.
15.
From “The Fourth
Elegy."
16.
Paris,
17.
From “The Ninth
18.
Sonnets
19.
Greene and Norton,
to
20. "Death,” 21.
2.
in Hardy.
London:
Elegy.”
Orpheus, Part
II,
29.
Letters of Rainer
Munich, November
From “The Seventh
“Oh
Seymour Smith
20, 1914.
was du
sage, Dichter,
Maria
Rilke, vol. 2, 1910—26, 139—40.
9, 1915.
Elegy.”
Erect
1.
13.
I,
Bloomsbury, 1994,
June
1922.
No Memorial ?"
tust
Stone
December
1921. Inscribed in a
Make Laurids Brigge belonging to Leonie Zacharias. “Man Must Die Because He Has Known Them from
copy of
the sayings of Ptah-
hotep, ms. from ca. 2000 B.C. Paris, July 1914. 3.
Norton:
4.
In
The
New York, Classical
1975.
German Elegy
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
Univ. Press, 1980, 242. 5.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1956, 295-333.
6.
“Puppet Theater,"
7.
Sonnets
8.
Quoted by Mitchell to
9.
to
Orpheus, Part
Orpheus,
Sonnets
to
Paris, July 20, 1907. I,
5,
Muzot, Feb. 2-5,
1921.
in the excellent notes to his translation,
164.
Orpheus, Part
I,
15,
Muzot, Feb. 2-5,
224
1921.
The Sonnets
Notes
The Daino 1.
Schloss Duino, Jan.
Elegies of Rainer Maria Rilke
21, 1912.
2.
Schloss Duino, late Jan.-early Feb. 1912.
3.
Begun late
at
Schloss Duino early
Autumn
Munich, Nov. 22 and
5.
Chateau de Muzot,
6.
Lines
— 31, Ronda,
1913; lines 32-41,
Sierre, Switzerland, Feb. 14, 1922.
Spain, Jan.-Feb. 1913; lines 42-44, Paris, late
Chateau de Muzot, Feb.
Chateau de Muzot, Feb.
8.
Chateau de Muzot, Feb. 7-8,
9.
The
10.
in Paris,
23, 1915.
7.
first six lines,
Muzot, Feb.
continued and completed
1913.
4.
1
in 1912;
Autumn
9, 1922.
7, 1922.
1922.
Schloss Duino,
March
1912; the
remainder, Chateau de
9, 1922.
Lines 1-12 at Schloss Duino, Jan.-Feb. 1912; continued in Paris during late
Autumn
Muzot, Feb.
1913; a 11,
new
conclusion, lines 13 to the end, at Chateau de
1922.
225
* N *
/
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Rainer Maria Rilke, Poems 1912-1926, selected and translated with an introduction by Michael Hamburger. Redding Ridge, Conn.: Black Books, 1981. [Subtitle on interior
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Rilke on Love
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*
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Maria Rilke and Princess Marie von Thurn und
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The
a
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Letters, 1914-1921, of
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Norton and Co., 1940.
2 33
—
A
NOTE ON THE TYPE
This book was set
the
in Fairfield,
hand of the distinguished American
Rudolph Ruzicka (1883-1978).
In
typeface from the
first
its
artist
and engraver
structure Fairfield dis-
plays the sober and sane qualities of the master craftsman
whose trait
talent has long
been dedicated and
that accounts for the trim grace
to clarity. virility,
It
is
the
the spirited
design and sensitive balance, of this original typeface.
Rudolph Ruzicka was born America
in 1894.
He
set
up
engraving and printing, in career working as a
wood
his
in
Bohemia and came
own
New
shop, devoted to
York
artist.
He
wood
in 1913 after a varied
art director
designed and illustrated
was the creator of
wood
engraver, in photoengraving and
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to
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many
and
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books, and
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* *
* *
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in Fargo,
has been the recipient
in 1924. Fie
of grants from the Rockefeller and
genheim Foundations,
emy and Award
as well as the
for Fiction, the
Acad-
Academy and
Insti-
and Letters Medal of Merit
Fiction, the
Critics Circle
He
(1985 and 1996).
and
National
the
Award
has also
for Criticism
won
the Push-
and
cart Prize (1976, 1983, 1987, 1992),
work has appeared four times American Short
where he
Stories. is
He
lives
in
St.
the director of the Inter-
Jacket photograph courtesy
Swiss Literary Archives, Berne Jacket design by Barbara de
A.
his
Best
in
national Writers’ Center.
ALFRED
for
Lannan Foundation Lifetime
Achievement Award,
Louis,
Gug-
and Letters
of Arts
Institute
tute of Arts
Book
North
Wilde
KNOPF, PUBLISHER NEW YORK
www. ran dom hou se com .
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About William
Gass’s
READING RILKE To
the service of the
man
Rilke,
Gass has brought his sympathetic gifts as a novelist;
Jo the service of
literature in translation, his
trating gifts as a critic; but
pene-
it is
to
the service of poetry that he has
brought the richest of his mental traveler
(a
to
come
— as
philosopher,
putting us closer than
hoped
gifts
I
a
say),
had ever
to these magnificent
otherances.”
— Richard
" Reading Rilke is
a
splendidly
creative reading.
It is a
odd masterpiece of
hybrid work— at once an
inspired translation of the Duino
Elegies,
a fasci-
nating inquiry into the genesis of a great
poem, an acute
criticism of
best-loved earlier
lyrics, a
many of Rilke
s
philosophically
inflected study in the problematics of translation,
and an
insightful meditation
nature of Rilke’s
many
readers wh