June: Windflowers and the Poetry of Praise
|
"Breathing,
you invisible poem! Ceaselessly going round your own Being pure exchanged worldspace. / Counterpoise, in which I rhythmically reclame myself..." from the Second Part of the Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke This week, an image of Alpine Anemones. Also: four new translations from the German. |
|
I
[ZWEITER TEIL] Atmen, du unsichtbares Gedicht! Immerfort um das eigene Sein rein eingetauschter Weltraum. Gegengewicht, in dem ich mich rhythmisch ereigne. Einzige Welle, deren allmähliches Meer ich bin; sparsamstes du von allen möglichen Meeren,— Raumgewinn. Wieviele von diesen Stellen der Räume/ waren schon innen in mir. Manche Winde sind wie mein Sohn. Erkennst du mich, Luft, du, voll noch/ einst meiniger Orte? Du, einmal glatte Rinde, Rundung und blatt meiner Worte. |
I
[SECOND PART] Breathing, you invisible poem! Ceaselessly going round your own Being pure exchanged worldspace. Counterpoise, in which I rhythmically reclaim myself. Solitary waves, whose gradual sea I am; you the sparest of all possible seas,— space rewon. How many of the these regions of space/ have already been inside of me. Many winds are as if they were my son. Do you recognize me, air, full of places/ once my own? You, once smooth rind, curve and leaf of my words. |
|
XIV
[ZWEITER TEIL] Siehe die Blumen, diese dem Irdischen treuen, denen wir Schicksal vom Rande des Schicksals leihn,— aber wer weiß es! Wenn sie ihr Welken bereuen, ist es an uns, ihre Reue zu sein. Alles will schweben. Da gehn wir umher wie/ Beschwerer, legen auf alles uns selbst, von Gewichte entzückt; o was sind wir den Dingen für zehrende Lehrer, weil ihnen ewige Kindheit glückt. Nähme sie einer ins innige Schlafen und schliefe tief mit den Dingen—: o wie käme er leicht, anders zum anderen Tag, aus der gemeinsamen Tiefe. Oder er bliebe vielleicht; und sie blühten und priesen ihn, den Bekehrten, der nun den Ihrigen gleicht, allen den stillen Geschwistern im Winde der Wiesen. |
XIV
[SECOND
PART] (SECOND PART) See the flowers, they who are true to the earthly, to whom we lend Fate from Fate's edge,— but who knows! when they their faded ones repent, is it left to us, to be the repenter for them. Everything wants to float. We go about like weights, laying ourselves on everything, from heaviness/ enthralled; o what exhausting teachers we are for the things, for they achieve eternal childhood. If they were to take one in inner slumber and sleep deeply with things—: o how he would become light, different to a different day, out of the common depths. Or he would remain perhaps; as they flowered and praised him, the converted one, who now is their equal, silent siblings all among the winds of the meadows. * |
|
V
[ZWEITER TEIL] Blumenmuskel, der der Anemone Wiesenmorgen nach and nach erschließt, bis in ihren Schooß das polyphone Licht der lauten Himmel sich ergießt, in den stillen Blütenstern gespannter Muskel des unendlichen Emphangs, manchmal so von Fülle übermannter, daß der Ruhewink des Untergangs kaum vermag die weiterzurückgeschnellten Blätterränder dir zurückzugeben: du, Entschluß und Kraft von wieviel Welten! Wir, Gewaltsamen, wir währen länger. Aber wann, in welchem aller Leben. sind wir endenlich offen und Empfänger? |
V
[SECOND PART] Flower-muscle, that the windflower morning meadow gradually encloses, till the polyphonic light of the shrill heavens pours into its womb, in the outstretched muscle of the quiet flower-star of infinite reception, many times so overpowered with fullness, that the moment's rest before darkness can hardly return to you the once again hastened back edges of leaves: you, resolution and power of how many worlds! We, the violent ones, we last longer. But when, in which of all lives, are we finally open and receivers. |
|
VIII [ERSTER TEIL] Nur im Raum der Rühmung darf die Klage gehn, die Nymphe des geweinte Quells, wachend über unserm Niederschlage, daß er klar sei an demselben Fels, der die Tore trägt und die Altäre.— Sieh, um ihre stillen Schultern früht das Gefühl, daß sie die jüngste wäre unter den Geschwistern im Gemüt. Jubel weiß, und Sehnsucht ist geständig,— nur die Klage lernt noch; mädchenhändig zählt sie nächtenlang das alte Schlimme. Aber plötzlich, schräg und ungeübt, hält sie doch ein Sternbild unserer Stimme in den Himmel, den ihr Hauch nicht trübt. |
VIII
[FIRST PART] Only in the fields of Praise may Complaint go, the nymphs of the plaintive spring, watching over our defeats, that they would be clear on the same rock that carries the arch and the altars.— See, on her quiet shoulders dawns the feeling that she was the youngest among the siblings of sentiment. Joy knows, and Longing remains constant,— only Complaint still learns; with a girl's hands she counts through the nights the old wrongs. But then suddenly, unpracticed and askew, she fetches a star-image of our voice in the night sky, one that doesn't cloud her breath. |
| view / print
Picture/Poem
Poster: Sonnet to Orpheus: XVIII [FIRST PART] (86 K) | or
download
as PDF |
|
Selected Sonnets
to Orpheus twenty-two poems in the order they have been featured
(text only) |
PDF
of Six Sonnets |
*
Orpheus is the musician of musicians
of classical Greek mythology. He is the one
whose magical art of the lyre has the power to charm the whole of
Nature—the trees,
rivers, stones and even the wild animals, into the silence of listening.
Son of Calliope,
the muse of epic poetry, and a Thracian river-god (in some versions of the
story Apollo),
Orpheus married the nymph Eurydice who was fated to die of a serpent bite
on her heel.
In his profound grief, Orpheus follows his beloved into the underworld, and
with the
sound of his lyre enchants the resident deities into consenting to her release.
The one
condition which Orpheus has to meet during the ascent back to the upperworld
is that
he is not to look back at Eurydice. In a brief moment of weakness, he does,
however,
look back, whereby Eurydice vanishes forever without a trace.
Rejecting all women in his sadness afterwards, Orpheus is later ripped to
pieces by the
Maenads. This then is the source of the famous image of Orpheus' lyre and
singing head,
floating off through empty space to the island of Lesbos.
| see also
the Rilke
Posters |
| listen to other recordings in English and German of twelve poems from
The Book of Images at
The Rilke
Download Page (# Includes
instructions) |
See other recent additions of new English translations of Rilke's
poetry, together with
featured photographs at:
(8) June: The Poetry of Images of Movement
(7) May: Sky Tracks—a 'Found-poem' Photo
| see also a selection of recent Picture/Poem "Rilke in
translation" features at the Rilke
Archive.
|
See also another website by Cliff Crego: The Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke |
a presentation of 80 of the best poems of Rilke in both German and new English translations: biography, links, posters |
|
See also: new |
|
"Straight
roads, Slow rivers, Deep clay." |
A collection of contemporary Dutch poetry in English translation, with commentary and photographs by Cliff Crego |