You must not understand this life

Rilke in German

https://rilke.de/



Dich wundert nicht des Sturmes Wucht

Dich wundert nicht des Sturmes Wucht,
du hast ihn wachsen sehn; -
die Bäume flüchten. Ihre Flucht
schafft reitende Alleen.
Da weißt du, der, vor dem sie fliehn,
ist der, zu dem du gehst,
und deine Sinne singen ihn,
wenn du am Fenster stehst.

Des Sommers Wochen standen still,
es stieg der Bäume Blut;
jetzt fühlst du, dass es fallen will
in den, der alles tut.
Du glaubtest schon erkannt die Kraft,
als du die Frucht erfasst,
jetzt wird sie wieder rätselhaft,
und du bist wieder Gast.

Der Sommer war so wie dein Haus,
drin weißt du alles stehn -
jetzt musst du in dein Herz hinaus
wie in die Ebene gehn.
Die große Einsamkeit beginnt,
die Tage werden taub,
aus deinen Sinnen nimmt der Wind
die Welt wie welkes Laub.

Durch ihre leeren Zweige sieht
der Himmel, den du hast;
sei Erde jetzt und Abendlied
und Land, darauf er passt.
Demütig sei jetzt wie ein Ding,
zu Wirklichkeit gereift, -
dass Der, von dem die Kunde ging,
dich fühlt, wenn er dich greift.

Plaster Cast Torso of Apollo

We can infer his long since looted head

with eyes like curated hail. And that his chest

is still benumbed by empire from above,

as if a morgue, in his glare, now canonized,



fires an arctic solstice. Otherwise, the pocked tits

could not oppress you, and Victory

would not grin through smug ligaments

to reach that sperm hive where priapism lived.



Otherwise, this bust would seem impugned

by the rude graffiti, A R T, that’s spraybombed on it,

and would not slutshame like a frat boy’s tweet:



would not, from every morsel of itself

extrude a tomb: for here there is no flesh

to witness for you. You must be those eyes.


Transposed from the German, below ____





“Archäischer Torso Apollos”



Wir kannten nicht sein unerhörtes Haupt,

darin die Augenäpfel reiften. Aber

sein Torso glüht noch wie ein Kandelaber,

in dem sein Schauen, nur zurückgeschraubt,



sich hält und glänzt. Sonst könnte nicht der Bug

der Brust dich blenden, und im leisen Drehen

der Lenden könnte nicht ein Lächeln gehen

zu jener Mitte, die die Zeugung trug.



Sonst stünde dieser Stein entstellt und kurz

unter der Schultern durchsichtigem Sturz

und flimmerte nicht so wie Raubtierfelle



und bräche nicht aus allen seinen Rändern

aus wie ein Stern: denn da ist keine Stelle,

die dich nicht sieht. Du mußt dein Leben ändern.

The Lay of Love and Death of Christoph Cornet Rilke von Langenau.

The Lay of Love and Death of Christoph Cornet Rilke von Langenau.


By RANIER MARIA RILKE.

•

Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke von Langenau1

Translated by Harry Guest.

•

“…den 24. November 1663 wurde Otto von Rilke / auf Langenau / Gränitz und Ziegra / zu Linda mit seines in Ungarn gefallenen Bruders Christoph hinterlassenem Anteile am Gute Linda beliehen; doch mußte er einen Revers ausstellen / nach welchem die Lehensreichung null und nichtig sein sollte / im Falle sein Bruder Christoph (der nach beigebrachtem Totenschein als Cornet in der Kompagnie des Freiherrn von Pirovano des kaiserl. österr. Heysterschen Regiments zu Roß. . . . verstorben war) zurückkehrt…”

“…on the 24th of November 1663 Otto von Rilke auf Langenau came into an inheritance left by his brother Christoph who had been killed in Hungary. However, there is a counter-bill according to which the inheritance is null and void since, according to the death-certificate, his brother Christoph was killed when he was a Cornet (the soldier who bears the regimental flag) in the Company of Baron von Pirovano in the Imperial Austrian cavalry Regiment. ..”



THE LAY OF LOVE AND DEATH OF CORNET CHRISTOPH RILKE VON LANGENAU

I

Riding, riding, riding, through the day, through the night, through the day.

Riding, riding, riding.

And courage is so exhausted while longing remains so strong. There are no hills now, hardly even a tree. Nothing risks standing up. Strange huts squat thirstily near a marsh for water. There’s not a tower to be seen anywhere. Always the view’s the same. We have two eyes, too many. Only at night sometimes can anyone know where we’re going. Do we perhaps ride back in the dark to the same bit of land we fought so hard to win under a strange sun? That could be true. The sun’s strong here, the way it is at home in the depth of summer. It was summertime when we left. The clothes women wore shone in green fields. We’ve been riding for so long. It must be autumn. At least there the women know about us and are sad.

II

Von Langenau turned in his saddle and said “Herr Marquis. . .”

For three days now the slim little Frenchman beside him has never stopped chattering and laughing. Now he doesn’t know what to say. He’s like a child who’d like to sleep. There’s dust on his white lace collar. He doesn’t notice it. He’d only like to sink down slowly in his velvet saddle.

But Von Langenau smiles and says “You don’t seem to see very well, Herr Marquis. Surely for your mother you’d be looking more like ̶ “

That makes the little Frenchman bloom once more. He shakes the dust from his lace collar and looks like new and ready for anything.

III

Each soldier talks about his mother. One of the Germans isn’t at all shy about it. He brings his words out slowly, clearly. Like a girl arranging a bouquet, testing flower by flower so thoughtfully, not really knowing what they’ll look like as a whole. He’s fitting his words together like that. In pleasure? In sorrow? They all keep listening. Even the spitting stops. Because, like him, they enjoy hearing themselves talk. And anyone in the crowd who can’t speak German still can still catch the odd phrase: “One evening . . .” “When I was little . . .”

IV

They’re all near each other now, soldiers coming from France and Burgundy, from the Netherlands, from out of the valleys of Carinthia, from Bohemian castles, from the Emperor Leopold himself. They all know what he’s talking about. It’s almost as though there’s only one mother. . .

V

So they ride away into the evening, into any evening. They say nothing but then they’ve brought lucid words with them. Then the Marquis takes off his helmet. His dark hair is soft and, as he lowers his head, it falls on to his neck the way a girl’s would. Now Von Langenau understands something: a long way away, standing out, a radiance, something slender, something shadowy. A lonely statue, half decayed. And long after, much later, it occurs to him that it was a Madonna.

VI

Watchfire. They all sit around and wait. Wait, hoping someone will sing. But they’re all so tired. The reddish light is harsh. It reaches the dusty shoes. Creeps to the knees, peers into folded hands. However it doesn’t have wings. Faces stay dark. Even so, the eyes of the little Frenchman light up for a moment with a same kind of glow. He’s kissed a small rose then put it back to wither against his chest. Von Langenau saw him do that because he can’t seem to fall asleep. He thinks: I don’t have a rose, not one.

Then he begins to sing. And it’s an old sad song that girls back at home sing in the fields, in autumn, when the harvest is almost over.

VII

The little Marquis says “You are very young aren’t you, sir?”

And Von Langenau, half sorrowful half defiant, answers. “Eighteen.” Then they fall silent.

Later on the Frenchman asks “Have you got a fiancée?”

“How about yourself?” Von Langenau throws back at him.

“She’s blonde. Like you, Herr Junker.”

And they are silent once again until the German cries out “But then why the devil d’you just sit in a saddle, ride at the Turkish dogs, gallop all over this land of poison?”

The Marquis smiles. “To go back home again.”

And Van Langenau’s face goes sad. He thinks about the blonde girl he used to play with. Wild games. And he’d like to go home, just for a moment, only long enough to say “Magdalena — I know I was always like that. Forgive me.”

Like — was? thinks the young Junker. — They’re far away from each other now.

VIII

One day, during the morning, a man on horseback turned up, then another, then four more, ten. All of them big and tall. In armour. And then a thousand coming up behind: the army.

They’ll have to part.

“Go home safely, Herr Marquis —”

“May Our Lady protect you, Herr Junker.”

And they can’t leave each other. They’re friends for life, brothers. They’ve trusted one another, learnt so much about each other. Hesitate. All around about them there’s hurrying and the clatter of hooves. The Marquis slips his right glove off. Brings the tiny rose out, chooses a petal for him. The way a priest would place a wafer on the palm.

“It’ll look after you. Farewell. For now.” Von Langenau doesn’t know what to do. He looks longingly at the Frenchman, then puts this foreign petal inside his greatcoat where it will drift up and down on the tides of his heart. A horn’s blown. The Junker rides up to his regiment and smiles sadly. He’s protected by a woman he’s never met.

IX

One day all the camp-followers turn up. Cursing, colours, laughter. They dazzle the countryside. Lively boys running around. Scuffling. Yelling. Harlots arrive with purple hats on their floating hair. Becks and calls. Mercenaries come wearing iron, black like wandering nightfall. They grab the whores violently, tear their clothes, push them where the drums are kept. And from the eager hands of soldiers the drums awake, rumble as if inside a dream, go on rumbling. ̶ And in the twilight lanterns are held out. Makeshift ones, strange-looking. And wine, glinting on the helmets.

Wine? Or blood? — Who can tell the difference?

X

Before Count Spork at last. He’s standing by his white horse, towering. His long hair’s the colour of iron.

Von Langenau hasn’t had to ask. He knows the General and leaps from his steed to give a salute out of a cloud of dust. He’s brought a message commending himself but the Count simply gives an order “Read me what’s on that scrap of paper.” His lips didn’t move. They don’t need to. They’re good enough to curse with. For anything further he just gestures with his right hand. That’s it. And anybody’ll see what he means. The young man is not quite there. He’s unsure where he stands. The General’s in front of them all. Even the sky is. And then the great general speaks:

“You’ll carry the flag, Cornet.”

That’s all. But a lot.

•

XI

The Company lies beyond the River Raab. Von Langenau rides away, alone. Over a flat piece of land. In twilight. Metalwork on the saddle glints through the dust. And then the moon rises. He sees the shine on his hands.

He has a dream.

Someone yells out to him.
Screams, screams, rips his dream apart.
That’s not an owl. It’s a yell for help:
the only tree there is calls out: “You there!”
And he can see a shape leaning against it,
a woman, bloody, naked. He hears what she’s saying: “Get me free!”
And he springs into the green darkness,
cuts through the cords
sees her eyes glowing
her teeth grinding.

Is she laughing?
He’s afraid,
gets on his horse
and gallops into night. The cords gripped in his fist are wet with blood.

XII

Von Langenau’s writing a letter, in gratitude. He makes the letters large, upright, serious:


My dear Mother,

“Be proud: I carry the flag,
“Don’t worry: I carry the flag,
“Love me: I carry the flag ̶ “

Then he sticks the letter inside his greatcoat, on a secret place. Near the rose-petal. And he thinks: it’ll soon smell sweet. And he thinks: maybe someone else will find it . . .

And he thinks again . . . For the enemy is close.

XIII

They are riding over a slain farmer. His eyes stay wide open and something is mirrored in them, but not the sky. Later they hear dogs howling. There’s a village. At last. And above the huts a castle like a rocky hill. They come up to the drawbridge. There’s a huge gate. A welcome blow on a horn. Listen: rumbling, rattling, hounds barking. Neighing in the courtyard, horses kicking, summons.

XIV

Repose! To be a guest for once. Not just to get for yourself what you can afford. Not always having to grab things frenziedly. Just for once letting it all come and know that what you’re getting is bound to be good. Forget about bravery for a while and tumble between silk sheets. Not always just being a soldier. Letting your hair go loose for once, sprawling on an easy chair with a white collar on, feeling all’s well all over, right to the fingertips. After a bath. To learn again what women look like. How they cope with colour like whites and blues; what hands they have and how they sing and laugh when blond boys bring beautiful dishes in, laden with juicy fruits.

XV

It all started over dinner. Turned into a festival, no-one really understanding why. Torches flaring, voices bawling, weird songs clinking from glass and glitter and then, as soon as all’s fallen in rhythm: dance. Everyone swept away like waves breaking in the solar ̶ losing each other and finding each other ̶ glare of enjoyment and light that’s blinding ̶ swaying of summer winds into the clothes of women so warm.

From the darkness of wine and a thousand roses the hour runs rustling into the dream of nightfall.

XVI

There’s one who stands and stares into this splendour. And he’s so well-disposed that he waits to make sure he’s awake. Because only in sleep can anyone observe such finery, such a celebration with women like that: their slightest gesture makes a pleat recurring in brocade. They create hours from silver conversations and often lift their hands somehow ̶ and you have to fancy they go somewhere you don’t know to fold soft roses you’ll never see. And then you dream ̶ to be decked out like them, pleased in a different way and to deserve a crown for your vacant forehead.

XVII

One who is wearing white silk knows he can’t wake up because he is awake and bewildered far from reality. So he flees scared into the dream to stand unmoving in the park, alone in the black park. And the festivities are a long way away. And the light tells lies. And the night is all around him and so cool. And he asks a woman who’s nodding her head at him:

“Are you the night?”

She smiles.

And he feels ashamed about his white clothes.

And wants to be far off and alone and armed.

Well-armed.

XVIII

“Have you forgotten you are my page for to-day? Why have you abandoned me? Where are you off to? Your clothes tell me you’re —”

•

“Do you wish you were wearing your ordinary coat?”

•

“Are you cold? ̶ Are you perhaps homesick?”

The Countess smiles.

No. That’s only because childhood, that soft dark cloak, has fallen from his shoulders. Who has taken it off? “You?” he asks in a voice he’s never heard before.” You!” And now there’s nothing on him. He’s naked like a penitent. Luminous and slender.

XIX

The castle loses its light slowly. A heaviness now: being weary or in love or drunk. After so many long empty nights in the open: beds. Wide, oak beds. Where you don’t say your prayers as you did on your way here, lying in a damp furrow like a grave, trying to fall asleep.

“Lord God. As Thou wilt.”

Prayers are shorter in bed.

More heartfelt though.

XX

The tower chamber is dark.

But they lighten faces by smiling. They fumble on their way as if they are blind and find each other like a doorway. Almost like children who, frightened by the night, keep close to each other. And yet they aren’t afraid. Nothing is against them ̶ neither yesterday, nor to-morrow; because time has collapsed. And they are coming out like blossom from the rubble.

He does not ask “Your husband?”

She does not ask “Your name?”

They’ve discovered each other so they can take a new identity.

They will give each other a hundred new names and then take them away again, lightly, as someone would lift off an ear-ring.

XXI

In the entrance-hall the armour, a shoulder-belt and the greatcoat belonging to Von Langenau hang over a chair. His gloves are lying on the floor. His flag, dark and long, droops on its staff leaning against the crossbars of a window. Outside, a storm is racing across the sky, breaking the night into pieces, white pieces, black ones. The moonlight goes past like a drawn-out lightning flash and the flag which doesn’t move has restless shadows. It is dreaming.

XXII

Was a window open? Has the storm got inside the castle? Who’s slamming the doors? Who’s just passing through the room? ̶ Leave it alone. Doesn’t matter who it is. He won’t find anything in the tower chamber. Behind a hundred doors lies an ample sleep that two have in common ̶ like one mother or one death.

XXIII

Can it be morning? What’s that sun rising? How big it is. Are those birds? You can hear them all over the place.

Everything’s bright but it’s not daybreak.

Everything’s loud but it’s not birds we’re hearing.

It’s the rafters that are lit. It’s the windows that scream. And everyone’s screaming, scarlet in the face, screaming to the enemy standing outside in the flickering landscape, screaming: Fire.

And with sleep torn from them they all force their way, half of them in iron, half of them in nothing, rushing from room to room, all over the place, trying to find the staircase.

And with forced breath horns stammer in the courtyard:

Gather round! Gather round!

Quivering drums.

XXIV

But the flag is not there.

Shouts: Cornet!

Maddened horses, prayers, screams,

Curses: Cornet!

Iron on iron, commands, signals.

Silence. Then: Cornet!

And again: Cornet!

And away with the thundering cavalry.

•

But the flag is not with them.

XXV

Running as fast possible he pushes through doors that are on fire, gets scorched descending the stairs, breaks out of the raging building, carrying the flag on his arms as though he was holding a pale unconscious woman. He finds a horse like a hoofed scream and gallops ahead, past all once gone by, to be again with his own. The flag is coming where it belongs, never looking so regal and now they all recognise far in the distance the shining man with no helmet who’s bearing the flag . . .

But it starts to gleam, twists about, turns larger, goes red.

•

Then their flag is burning in the midst of the enemy and they’re rushing towards it.

XXVI

Von Langenau is in the thick of the enemy but not alone. Terror has made a circle around him and he checks his steed in the centre under his slowly blazing flag.

He looks around slowly, almost wistfully. So much that is strange, so many bright colours in front of him. Gardens ̶ he thinks for a moment then smiles. But he can feel that eyes are holding him, recognises them and knows who they are, heathen dogs ̶ and he urges his horse among them.

But when it got knocked down under him he found gardens again, also the sixteen curved sabres springing at him, catching the light, ray by ray, like a fête.

A laughing fountain.

XXVII

The greatcoat got burnt in the castle, along with the letter and the rose-petal that once belonged to a woman from a foreign land.

Next spring (it came sadly and cold) a messenger from the Baron of Pirovano rode slowly into Langenau. He has seen an old woman weeping there.

"Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower"

To Clara Rilke, January 1, 1907

 

Go to the Limits of Your Longing

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

Rilke, Duino Elegies Comparing Translations

https://rilkeduinoelegiestranslations.com/

Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel

Ordnungen? und gesetzt selbst, es nähme

einer mich plötzlich ans Herz: ich verginge von seinem

stärkeren Dasein. Denn das Schöne ist nichts

als des Schrecklichen Anfang, den wir noch grade ertragen,

und wir bewundern es so, weil es gelassen verschmäht,

uns zu zerstören. Ein jeder Engel ist schrecklich.

Who, if I should cry, would hear me then

from amongst the order of angels? And even if one should

suddenly take me to its heart, I would expire

from its greater presence. For beauty is nothing

but the beginning of a terror that we are just able to bear,

and which we so admire because it serenely disdains

to destroy us. Every angel brings terror.

To: Adelheid von der Marwitz

(1894-1944), sister of the German poet Bernhard von der Marwitz (1890-1918) who died in World War I and had maintained a correspondence with Rilke. Her brother’s frequent recitations of Rilke’s poetry introduced her to the literary culture of her time. A dedication in a book that her brother gave her before his death quotes a poem from Rilke’s “The Book of Images.”

Soglio (Bergell, Graubünden)

September 11th, 1919

My dear young friend:

The joy brought by your letter has many sides: let me recount at least a few. First, this is what we welcome now above all, that human beings are making a new start here and there to rebuild life with the strength and the faith of their indestructible hearts. There are others who could try this but who still just stand there, staring and trying to make sense, and for whom sadness and sloth finally become utterly insurmountable. And this even though based on feeling and reflection, only one thing is urgently needed: to attach oneself with unconditional purpose somewhere to nature, to what is strong, striving and bright, and to move forward without guile, even if that means in the least important, daily matters. Each time we tackle something with joy, each time we open our eyes toward a yet untouched distance we transform not only this and the next moment, but we also rearrange and gradually assimilate the past inside of us. We dissolve the foreign body of pain of which we neither know its actual consistency and make-up nor how many (perhaps) life-affirming stimuli it imparts, once dissolved, to our blood!

Death, especially the most completely felt and experienced death, has never remained an obstacle to life for a surviving individual, because its innermost essence is not contrary to us (as one may occasionally surmise), but it is more knowing about life than we are in our most vital moments. I always think that such a great weight with its tremendous pressure somehow has the task of forcing us into a deeper, more intimate layer of life so that we may grow out of it all the more vibrant and fertile. I learned this experience very early on through various circumstances, and it was then confirmed from pain to pain: what is here and now is, after all, what has been given and is expected of us and we must attempt to transform everything that happens to us into a new familiarity and friendliness with it. For where else should we direct our senses, which after all have been exquisitely designed to grasp and master what is here? And how may we evade the duty to admire what God has entrusted to us, for this surely prepares us completely for all future and eternal admiration! So, if I understood your cheerful and lively words in this sense and with utmost agreement, then it only added to my joy that I thought to recognize you in it quite clearly: somehow I had long suspected that such a decisive leap would come from you. There it was—and I now feel a kind of pride and satisfaction in having guessed and anticipated quite correctly from your earlier letters what you are capable of. You have been able to establish yourself anew in a place which had grown familiar during many years of your childhood and youth. That you feel blessed again in that place to tackle new tasks and desired projects and that the warmth of accomplishing something each day lets you experience a new degree of feeling alive: this is so much that there is nothing left for your friend to wish for besides hoping that everything may remain like this. Your youth, your untainted will, and the heartfelt and natural direction of the path you’ve so courageously chosen all vouch for the likelihood that this will be the case. The fact that you could make the effort to engage fully in the activities of people your age who share your aspirations is a sign of the most noble and admirable courage, and you are experiencing already how these efforts are paying off on the inside. What you told me gave me a sense of the affection of your small and harmonious yet vibrant circle, and I would like for you to return their expression of sympathy. I would be delighted to contribute an hour to your gatherings by giving a bit of myself and receiving from all of you in turn, and to share in your joy and happiness!

I have not yet been able to get back to working productively. It is therefore my task to chastise and reproach myself for not yet being far enough along to grow some new vines and extend a few leaves over the ruination of the past few years. Perhaps they are pushing through somewhere but the surface is only rubble and desolation, with no new growth in sight. I ought to begin in any random spot, right now, today, immediately, but it’s not a matter of my being picky when, in spite of this realization, I am waiting for certain conditions that I expect to provide a kind of peculiar support. I am hoping for a small, old house and an old garden where I may enter into a long period of being apart, close to nature and to a few things humming with the gentle beating of the past. Without this kind of assistance, I do not think I will be able to muster the concentration that would reveal to me the quietest, most guarded spot of my inner nature where new sources well up. I have already talked with your brother Banni of this need which he understands completely and wholeheartedly!

Now it’s a matter of finding out whether something like this exists somewhere. It almost came to pass here, if only on a provisional basis. I’ve taken up residence in this tiny mountain spot (barely an hour from the Italian border) in an ancient Palazzo Salis that has managed to hold on to its ancestral furnishings and an old garden edged by trimmed boxwood, even though decades ago all of it was turned into a hotel. To top it off, they have granted me access to the Count’s old library (otherwise off-limits for guests) with a room perfectly after my innermost taste that seems related to earlier arrangements where I had been most comfortable. Take good care of yourself. I will remain in Switzerland as long as it remains feasible, at this address—please write to me again.

In friendship,

Rilke

Rilke in English By W.H. AUDEN September 6, 1939

Not the least interesting phenomenon of the last four years has been the growing influence of Rilke upon English poetry: indeed, Rilke is probably more read and more highly esteemed by English and Americans than by Germans, just as Byron and Poe had a greater influence upon their German and French contemporaries than upon their compatriots.

It is presumptuous to pretend that one can ever really judge poetry written in a foreign language: one can only define the impression it makes upon oneself. Witht the appearance of this translation of the “Duino Elegies,” which, with the Orpheus Sonnets, form the final flower of his work, the bulk of Rilke’s poetry is now available in English, and it is possible to attempt such a definition.Rilke’s most immediate and obvious influence has been upon diction and imagery. One of the constant problems of the poet is how to express abstract ideas in concrete terms. The Elizabethans solved it for their generation by an anthropormorphic idenitification:

That fell sergeant strait in his arrest

the Metaphysicals for theirs by an intellectual ingenuity of wit:

For in your beauty’s orient deepThese flowers, as in their causes, sleep

With the exception of Blake, the poets of the succeeding two centuries found no fitting solution: in consequence they are wekaest whenever they attempt to deal with abstractions. They were content to state the latter abstractly, with the result that their poetry too often denegrates into preaching.

Rilke is almost the first poet since the seventeenth century to find a fresh solution. His method is the direct opposite to that of the Elizabethans but, like them and unlike the Metaphysicals, he thinks in physical rather than intellectual symbols. While Shakespeare, for example, thought of the non-human world in terms of the human, Rilke thinks of the human in terms of the non-human, of what he calls Things (Dinge), a way of thought which, as he himself pointed out, is more characteristic of the child than of the adult. To the former, tables, dolls, houses, trees, dogs, etc., have a life which is just as real as their own or that of their parents. Indeed, as a rule children think of life in terms of things and animals rather than in terms of people: a conscious interest in people does not commonly begin until adolescence.

If you can manage it, return with a portion of your weaned and grown-up feeling to any one of the things of your childhood with which you were much occupied. Consider whether there was anything at all that was closer, more intimate and necessary to you than such a Thing. . . . Was it not with a Thing that you first shared your little heart, like a piece of bread that had to suffice for two?

Thus one of Rilke’s most characteristic devices is the expression of human life in terms of landscape:

O Mädchen,
dies: das wir liebten in uns, nicht Eines, ein
Künftiges, sondern
das zahllos Brauende; nicht ein einselnes Kind,
sondern die Väter, die wie Trümmer Gebirgs
uns im Grunde beruhn; sondern das trockene Flußbett
einstiger Mütter; sondern die ganze
lautlose Landschaft unter dem wolkingen oder
reinen Verhängnis; dies kam dir, Mädchen, zuvor.

Oh, maid,
this: that we’ve loved, within us, not one, still to come, but all
the innumerable fermentation; not just a single child,
but the fathers, resting like mountain-ruins
within our depths—but the dry river-bed
of former mother—yes, and the whole of that
soundless landscape under its cloudy or
cloudless destiny: this got the start of you, maid

It is this kind of imagery which is already beginning to appear in English poetry {e.g., in Stephen Spender’s “Napoleon in 1814”) and is likely, I think, to become commoner.

But Rilke’s influence is not confined to certain technical tricks. It is, I believe, no accident that as the international crisis becomes more and more acute, the poet to whom writers are becoming increasingly drawn should be one who felt that it was pride and presumption to interfere with the lives of others (for each is unique and the apparent misfortunes of each may be his very way of salvation); one who occupied himself consistently and exclusively with his own inner life; one who wrote:

Art cannot be helpful through our trying to keep and specially concerning ourselyes with the distresses of others, but in so far as we bear our own distresses more passionately, give now and then a perhaps dearer meaning to endurance, and develop for ourselves the means of expressing the suffering within us and its conquest more precisely and clearly than is possible to those who have to apply their powers to something else.

This tendency is not to be dismissed with the cheery cry “defeatism.” It implies not a denial of the importance of political action, but rather the realization that if the writer is not to harm both others and himself, he must consider, and very much more humbly and patiently than he has been doing, what kind of person he is, and what may his real function. When the ship catches fire, it seems only natural to rush importantly to the pumps, but perhaps one is only adding to the general confusion and panic: to sit still and pray seems selfish and unheroic, but it may be the wisest and most helpful course.

A review is not the place to discuss Rilke’s ideas in detail. There are curious similarities hetween them and those of D. H. Lawrence. Both envied the undivided consciousness of the animals, both were obsessed by the idea of Death (cf. Lawrence’s “Ship of Death’ with the “Tenth Elegy’), both, to use terms common to Lawrence and Rilke’s friend Kassner, looked back to the physical aristocratic world of the Father rather than forward to the spiritual democratic world of the Son, and were consequently hostile to Christianity, both even were excited by the same Etruscan tombs. But what is important for us and future writers is not the truth or falsehood of their conclusions, but their conception of the writer’s real task and the lifelong and humble devotion which they brought to it.

What a scholar’s opinion of these translations may be I do not know and do not very much care. There is no such thing as a perfect translation; it is a job that has to be redone for every generation. But I am confident that this translation by Mr. Leishman and Mr. Spender will remain definitive for our own.

When anxious, uneasy and bad thoughts come, I go to the sea

‘And now let us welcome the new year, full of things that never were.’ Rainer Maria Rilke

Autumn

The leaves are falling, falling as if from afar,
as if withered in the distant gardens of heaven;
with nay-saying gestures they fall.

And in the nights falls the heavy earth
from all the stars into loneliness.

We all are falling. This hand there falls.
And look at the other: it is in all of them.

And yet there is one, who holds all this
falling with infinite gentleness in his hands.

- Rilke

Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge (The Notebooks of Malte Lourids Brigge) (1910)

Rilke Archive

http://www.picture-poems.com/rilke/rilkelinks.html

The Ninth Elegy - Rainer Maria Rilke

Why, if this interval of being can be spent serenely
in the form of a laurel, slightly darker than all
other green, with tiny waves on the edges
of every leaf (like the smile of a breeze)–: why then
have to be human–and, escaping from fate,
keep longing for fate? . . .


Oh not because happiness exists,
that too-hasty profit snatched from approaching loss.
Not out of curiosity, not as practice for the heart, which
would exist in the laurel too. . . . .

But because truly being here is so much; because everything here
apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which in some strange way
keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all.
Once for each thing. Just once; no more. And we too,
just once. And never again. But to have been
this once, completely, even if only once:
to have been one with the earth, seems beyond undoing.

And so we keep pressing on, trying to achieve it,
trying to hold it firmly in our simple hands,
in our overcrowded gaze, in our speechless heart.
Trying to become it.–Whom can we give it to? We would
hold on to it all, forever . . . Ah, but what can we take along
into that other realm? Not the art of looking,
which is learned so slowly, and nothing that happened here. Nothing.
The sufferings, then. And above all, the heaviness,
and the long experience of love,– just what is wholly
unsayable. But later, among the stars,
what good is it–they are better as they are: unsayable.
For when the traveler returns from the mountain-slopes into the valley,
he bings, not a handful of earth, unsayable to others, but instead
some word he has gained, some pure word, the yellow and blue
gentian. Perhaps we are here in order to say: house,
bridge, fountain, gate, pitcher, fruit-tree, window–
at most: column, tower. . . . But to say them, you must understand,
oh to say them more intensely than the Things themselves
ever dreamed of existing. Isn’t the secret intent
of this taciturn earth, when it forces lovers together,
that inside their boundless emotion all things may shudder with joy?
Threshold: what it means for two lovers
to be wearing down, imperceptibly, the ancient threshold of their door–
they too, after the many who came before them
and before those to come. . . . ., lightly.

Here is the time for the sayable, here is its homeland.
Speak and bear witness. More than ever
the Things that we might experience are vanishing, for
what crowds them out and replaces them is an imageless act.
An act under a shell, which easily cracks open as soon as
the business inside outgrows it and seeks new limits.
Between the hammers our heart
endures, just as the tongue does
between the teeth and, despite that,
still is able to praise.

Praise this world to the angel, not the unsayable one,
you can’t impress him with glorious emotion; in the universe
where he feels more powerfully, you are a novice. So show him
something simple which, formed over generations,
lives as our own, near our hand and within our gaze.
Tell him of Things. He will stand astonished; as you stood
by the ropemaker in Rome or the potter along the Nile.
Show him how happy a Thing can be, how innocent and ours,
how even lamenting grief purely decides to take form,
serves as a Thing, or dies into a Thing–, and blissfully
escapes far beyond the violin.–And these Things,
which live by perishing, know you are praising them; transient,
they look to us for deliverance: us, the most transient of all.
They want us to change them, utterly, in our invisible heart,
within–oh endlessly–within us! Whoever we may be at last.

Earth, isn’t this what you want: to arise within us,
invisible? Isn’t it your dream
to be wholly invisible someday?–O Earth: invisible!
What, if not transformation, is your urgent command?
Earth, my dearest, I will. Oh believe me, you no longer
need your springtimes to win me over–one of them,
ah, even one, is already too much for my blood.
Unspeakably I have belonged to you, from the first.
You were always right, and your holiest inspiration
is our intimate companion, Death.

Look, I am living. On what? Neither childhood nor future
grows any smaller . . . . . Superabundant being
wells up in my heart.

translated by Stephen Mitchell

Préface à 'Mitsou - Rilke

Does anyone know cats? Do you, for example, think that you do? I must admit I have always considered that their existence was never anything but shakily hypothetical.

For, if they are to share our world animals have somehow to participate in it. They must, to however small an extent, fall in with our way of life, tolerate it; else by their hostility or their fear they will merely measure the distance that separates them from us, and relations between us will consist solely in that.

Take dogs: the admiration and trust evidenced in their approach to us often make some of them seem to have abandoned their most primal canine traditions and turned to worship of our ways, and even of our faults. That is precisely what makes them tragic and sublime. Their determination to acknowledge us forces them to live at the very limits of their nature, constantly -- through the humanness of their gaze, their nostalgic nuzzlings -- on the verge of passing beyond them.

But what attitudes do cats adopt? Cats are just that: cats. And their world is utterly, through and through, a cat's world. You think they look at us? Has anyone ever truly known whether or not they deign to register for one instant on the sunken surface of their retina our trifling forms? As they stare at us they might merely be eliminating us magically from their gaze, eternally replete. True, some of us indulge our susceptibility to their wheedling and electric caresses. But, let such persons remember the strange, brusque, and offhand way in which their favorite animal frequently cuts short the effusions they had fondly imagined to be reciprocal. They too, even the privileged elected to enjoy their proximity of cats, have been rejected and denied time and time again, and even as they cherish some mysteriously apathetic creature in their arms they too have felt themselves brought up short at the threshold of a world that is a cat's world, a world inhabited exclusively by cats and in which they live in ways that no one of us can ever fathom.

Has man ever been their coeval? I doubt it. And I can assure you that sometimes, in the twilight, the cat next door pounces across and through my body, either unaware of me or as demonstrated to some eerie spectator that I really don't exist.

Is it a mistake, then, for me to burden you with these reflections when my real purpose is to introduce you to the story with which my young friend Baltusz is about to regale you? True, he will do so by drawing, without speaking to you very much, but his images will more than slake your curiosity. Why, then, should I replicate them in another form? I would rather add to them what he has not yet uttered. But first, to summarize:

Baltusz (I think he must have been ten years old at the time) finds a cat. This was at Chateau de Nyon, with which you are probably familiar. He is allowed to keep his minuscule and trembling treasure and - behold!- he sets off with it on his travels. We are shown the boat, we see his arrival at Geneva,  at Molard, we see the tram. He introduces his new companion to domestic life, he tames her he cherishes her. "Mitsou" good-humoredly goes along with the rules laid down for her, although she sometimes breaks the monotony of the household with some frisky, ingenious and unexpected exploit. Do you find it excessive that when her master takes her out for walks he insists on using that restricting lead? He is leery of all the fancies to which her affectionate, albeit enigmatic and adventurous, tomcat heart can fall prey. Yet he seems to be mistaken. Even a moving day, a time fraught with perils, passes without untoward event, and the playful, tiny creature adapts to the new surroundings with an amused docility. Then, suddenly, in an instant, she disappears. The house is roused, but thank God, this time it's a false alarm. Mitsou is discovered on the plot of grass, and Baltusz, for from scolding the deserter, snugly ensconces her on the pipes of the beneficent and cozy radiator. I imagine that you too will savor the peace, the repletion that follows such anxiety. alas, the respite will be brief. Christmastime sometimes seems too filled with temptations - there are cakes to be eaten when no one is keeping count: one sometimes gets sick. To recover, a nap is in order. Instead of awakening you when she grows bored with your prolonged slumber, Mitsou runs away. What an uproar! Fortunately Baltusz has recovered sufficiently to set out in search of the fugitive. He begins by crawling under his bed: nothing. How courageous he looks there in the cellar, all alone, with the candle that he carries as emblem of his search - he carries it everywhere henceforth, in the garden, in the street: still nothing! See his lonely little form. Who has abandoned him? A cat! Will he be able to console himself with the picture of Mitsou his father recently sketched? No - that had something almost premonitory about it, it was an evil omen, and God knows when the loss was actually ordained! Now there can be no doubt, it has actually happened. He returns to the house. He weeps. He shows us his tears with his own two hands.

Consider them well.

And there you have the story. The artist has told it better than I. What is left for me to say? Very little.

It is always diverting to find something: a moment before, and it was not yet there. But to find a cat: that is unheard of! For you must agree with me that a cat does not become an integral part of our lives, not like, for example, some toy might be: even though it belongs to us now, it remains somehow apart, outside, and thus we always have:

life + a cat,

which, I can assure you, adds up to an incalculable sum.

It is sad to lose something. We imagine that it may be suffering, that it may have hurt itself somehow, that it will end up in utter misery. But to lose a cat: no! that is unheard of. No one has ever lost a cat. Can one lose a cat, a living thing, a living being, a life? But losing something living is death!

Very well, it is death.

Finding. Losing. Have you ever really thought what loss is? It is not simply the negation of that generous moment that had replied to an expectation you yourself had never sensed or suspected. For between that moment and that loss there is always something that we call—the word is clumsy enough, I admit—possession.

[Now loss, however cruel, is powerless against possession, which it completes or even, affirms: loss is, in fact, nothing else than a second acquisition -but now completely interiorized, and just as intense.](Agamben).

Of course, you felt this, Baltusz. No longer able to see Mitsou, you bent your efforts to seeing her even more clearly.

Is she still alive? She lives within you, and her insouciant kitten’s frolics that once diverted you now compel you: you fulfilled your obligation through your painstaking melancholy.

And so, a year later, I discovered you grown taller, consoled.

Nevertheless, for those who will always see you bathed in tears at the end of your book I composed the first—somewhat whimsical—part of this preface. Just to be able to say at the end: “Don’t worry: I am. Baltusz exists. Our world is sound.

There are no cats."

__
Qui connaît les chats? - Se peut-il, par exemple, que vous prétendiez les connaître? J'avoue que, pour moi, leur existence ne fut jamais qu'une hypothèse passablement risquée.

Les bêtes, n'est-ce pas, pour appartenir à notre monde, il faut qu'elles y entrent un peu. Il faut qu'elles consentent, tant soit peu, à notre façon de vivre, qu'elles la tolèrent; sinon, elles mesureront, soit hostiles, soit craintives, la distance qui les sépare de nous et ce sera là leur manière de rapports.

Voyez les chiens: leur rapprochement confidentiel et admiratif est tel que certains d'entre eux semblent avoir renoncé à leurs plus anciennes traditions canines, pour adorer nos habitudes et même nos erreurs. C'est bien cela qui les rend tragiques et sublimes. Leur décision de nous admettre les force d'habiter, pour ainsi dire, aux confins de leur nature qu'ils dépassent constamment de leur regard humanisé et de leur museau nostalgique.

Mais quelle est l'attitude des chats? - Les chats sont des chats, tout court, et leur monde est le monde des chats d'un bout à l'autre. Ils nous regardent, direz-vous? Mais a-t-on jamais su, si vraiment ils daignent loger un instant auf fond de leur rétine notre futile image? Peut-être nous opposent-ils, en nous fixant, tout simplement un magique refus de leur prunelles à jamais complètes? - Il est vrai que certains d'entre nous se laissent influencer par leur caresses câlines et électriques. Mais que ceux-là se souviennent de l'étrange et brusque distraction avec laquelle leur animal favori mit souvent fin à des épanchement qu'ils eussent cru réciproques. Eux aussi, ces privilégiés admis auprès des chat, ont été reniés et désavoués maintes fois et, tout en pressant encore contre leur potrine la bête mystérieusement t apathique, ils se sentaient arrêtés au seuil de ce monde qui est celui des chats et que ceux-ci habitent exclusivement, entourés de circonstances que nul de nous ne saurait deviner.

L'homme fut-il jamais leur contemporain? - J'en doute. Et je vous assure que parfois, au crépuscule, le chat du voisin saute à travers mon corps, en m'ignorant, ou pour prouver aux choses ahuries que je n'existe point.

Ai-je tort, dites, de vous mêler à ces réflexions, tout en voulant vous conduire vers l'histoire que mon petit ami Baltusz va vous raconter? Il la dessine, c'est vrai, sans vous parler davantage, mais ses images suffiront largement à votre curiosité. Pourquoi les répéterais-je sous une autre forme? Je préfère y ajouter ce que lui ne dit pas encore. Résumons cependant l'histoire:

Baltusz (je crois qu'il avait dix ans cette époque) trouve un chat. Cela se passe au château de Nyon que, sans doute, vous connaissez. On lui permet d'emporter sa petite trouvaille tremblante, et le voilà en voyage avec elle. C'est le bateau, c'est l'arrivée à Genève, au Molard, c'est le tram. Il introduit son nouveau compagnon à la vie domestique, il l'apprivoise, il le gâte, il le chérit. «Mitsou» se prête, joyeusement, aux conditions qu'on lui propose, tout en rompant parfois la monotonie de la maison par quelque improvisation folâtre et ingénue. Trouvez-vous exagéré que son maître, en le promenant, l'attache à cette ficelle gênante? C'est qu'il se méfie de toutes les fantaisies qui traversent ce coeur de matou, aimant, mais inconnu et aventureux. Cependant, il a tort. Même le déménagement dangereux s'opère sans aucun accident, et la petite bête capricieuse s'adapte au milieu nouveau avec une docilité amusée. Puis, tout à coup, elle disparaît. La maison s'alarme; mais, Dieu soit loué, ce n'est pas sérieux cette fois: On retrouve Mitsou au milieu du gazon, et Baltusz, loin de réprimander son déserteur, l'installe sur les tuyaux du calorifère bienfaisant. Vous goûterez comme moi, je suppose, l'accalmie, la plénitude qui suit cette angoisse. Hélas! ce n'est qu'une trève. Noël parfois se montre par trop séduisant. On mange des gâteaux, un peu sans compter; on tombe malade. Et pour guérir, on s'endort. Mitsou, ennuyé de votre sommeil trop long, au lieu de vous éveiller, s'évade. Quel effarement! Heureusement, Baltusz se trouve assez rétabli pour se lancer à la recherche du fugitif. Il commence par ramper sous son lit: rien. Ne vous semble-t-il pas bien courageux, tout seul, à la cave, avec sa bougie qu'en signe de recherche il emporte ensuite partout, au jardin, dans la rue: rien! Regardez sa petite figure solitaire: Qui l'a abandonné? C'est un chat? - Se consolera-t-il avec le portrait de Mitsou que, dernièrement, son père ébauchait? Non; il y avait du pressentiment là-dedans; et la perte commence Dieu sait quand! C'est définitif, c'est fatal. Il rentre. Il pleure. Il vous montre ses larmes de ses deux mains:

Regardez-les bien.

Voilà l'histoire. L'artiste l'a mieux racontée que moi. Que me reste-t-il à dire encore? Peu.

Trouver une chose, c'est toujours amusant; un moment avant elle n'y était pas encore. Mais trouver un chat: c'est inouï! Car ce chat, convenez-en, n'entre pas tout à fait dans votre vie, comme ferait, par exemple, un jouet quelconque; tout en vous appartenant maintenant, il reste un peu en dehors, et cela fait toujours;

la vie + un chat,

ce qui donne, je vous assure, une somme énorme.

Perdre une chose, c'est bien triste. Il est à supposer qu'elle se trouve mal, qu'elle se casse quelque part, qu'elle finit dans la déchéance. Mais perdre un chat: Non! ce n'est pas permis. Jamais personne n'a perdu un chat. Peut-on perdre un chat, une chose vivante, un être vivant, une vie? Mais perdre une vie: c'est la mort!

Eh bien, c'est la mort.

Trouver. Perdre. Est-ce que vous avez bien réfléchi à ce que c'est que la perte? Ce n'est pas tout simplement la négation de cet instant généreux qui vint combler une attente que vous-même ne soupçonniez pas. Car entre cet instant et la perte il y a toujours ce qu'on appelle - assez maladroitement, j'en conviens - la possession.

Or, la perte, toute cruelle qu'elle soit, ne peut rien contre la possession, elle la termine, si vous voulez; elle l'affirme; au fond ce n'est qu'une seconde acquisition, toute intérieure cette fois et autrement intense.

Vous l'avez senti d'ailleurs, Baltusz; ne voyant plus Mitsou, vous vous êtes mis à le voir davantage. Vit-il encore? Il survit en nous, et sa gaieté de petit chat insouciant, après vous avoir amusé, vous oblige: vous avez dû l'exprimer par les moyens de votre tristesse laborieuse.

Aussi, une année après, je vous ai trouvé grandi et consolé.

Pour ceux cependant qui vous verront toujours éploré au bout de votre ouvrage, j'ai composé la première partie - un peu fantaisiste - de cette préface. Pour pouvoir leur dire à la fin:

«Tranquillisez-vous: Je suis. Baltusz existe. Notre monde est bien solide. Il n'y a pas de chats.»




Au Château de Berg-am-Irchel,

en Novembre 1920

Rilke - The Panther

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly--. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.

Onto a vast plain

You are not surprised at the force of the storm—
you have seen it growing.
The trees flee. Their flight
sets the boulevards streaming. And you know:
he whom they flee is the one
you move toward. All your senses
sing him, as you stand at the window.

The weeks stood still in summer.
The trees' blood rose. Now you feel
it wants to sink back
into the source of everything. You thought
you could trust that power
when you plucked the fruit:
now it becomes a riddle again
and you again a stranger.

Summer was like your house: you know
where each thing stood.
Now you must go out into your heart
as onto a vast plain. Now
the immense loneliness begins.

The days go numb, the wind
sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.

Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.
Be earth now, and evensong.
Be the ground lying under that sky.
Be modest now, like a thing
ripened until it is real,
so that he who began it all
can feel you when he reaches for you.

Rilke, Book of Hours, II 1