October: Cotton Grass and the Landscapes of Enchantment
|
"Words gently end at the edge / of the Unsayable . . . And Music, ever new, out of the most / trembling of stones, builds in unusable space its / deified house." from the Second Part of the Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke This week, an image called Cotton Grass Pool. Also: two new translations from the German. |
The guest poems for this week are two new English
translations from the work of the German
language poet,
Rainer
Maria Rilke (from the
Rilke website, a concise hyperlinked biography).
The Sonnets to Orpheus
Rilke wrote the Sonnets
to Orpheus
*
at his modest chateau in Muzot, Switzerland, during a
period
of intense activity in February of 1922. It was to be his last published
work. The sequence of 55
poems, all sharing the same basic form and divided into two parts, is
characterized by a marvelously
light and quick energy. Indeed, they seem filled with the exuberance of the
mountains in which they
were composed, where everything seems larger than life, colors brighter and
more radiant, and
streams faster and more clear.
This then is a poetry of praise, of the air I breathe, the meadow through
which I walk, the beauty
of a single windflower opening to receive the morning sun, and yes, of praise
itself:
|
IV [ZWEITER TEIL] O dieses ist das Tier, das es nicht giebt. Sie wusstens nicht und habens jeden Falls —sein Wandeln, seine Haltung, seinen Hals, bis in des stillen Blickes Licht—geliebt. Zwar war es nicht. Doch weil sie's liebten, ward ein reines Tier. Sie ließen immer Raum. Und in dem Raume, klar und ausgespart, erhob es leicht sein Haupt und brauchte kaum zu sein. Sie nährten es mit keinem Korn, nur immer mit der Möglichkeit, es sei. Und die gab solche Stärke an das Tier, dass es aus sich ein Stirnhorn trieb. Ein Horn. Zu einer Jungfrau kam es weiß herbei— und war im Silber-Spiegel und in ihr. |
IV [SECOND PART] O this is the creature that does not exist. They knew nothing and yet without a doubt —his gait, his posture, his neck, down to the silent light of his gaze—they had loved. Indeed, it wasn't real. But because they loved, it became a pure animal. Always, they gave it space. And in that space, clear and spare it raised lightly its head and needed scarcely to be. They nourished it not with grain, but with only the possibility that it truly was. And this gave such strength to the animal that it grew a horn from its brow. But one horn. It passed in its whiteness a young maiden— and appeared in the silver mirror, and in her. |
|
X (ZEITER TEIL) Alles Erworbene bedroht die Maschine, solange sie auch erdreistet, im Geist, statt im Gehorchen, zu sein. Daß nicht der herrlichen Hand schöneres Zörgen mehr prange, zu dem entschlossenern Bau schneidet sie steifer den Stein. Nirgends bleibt sie zurück, daß wir ihr ein Mal entrönnen und sie in stiller Fabrik ölend sich selbe gehört. Sie ist das Leben,—sie meint es am besten zu können, die mit dem gleichen Entschluß ordnet und schafft und zerstört. Aber noch ist uns das Dasein verzaubert; an hundert Stellen ist noch Ursprung. Ein Spielen von reinen Kräften, die keiner berührt, die nicht kniet und bewundert. Worte gehen noch zart am Unsäglichen aus . . . Und die Musik, immer neu, aus den bebendsten Steinen, baut im unbrauchbaren Raum ihr vergöttlichtes Haus. |
|
X (SECOND PART) All achievement is threatened by the machine, as long as it dares to take its place in the mind, instead of obeying. That the master's hand no longer shines forth in fine lingerings, now it cuts to the determined design more rigidly the stone. Nowhere does it remain behind, that for once we might escape as it oils and abides by itself in the silent factories. It has become Life,—it thinks it can do everything best and with like determination orders and creates and destroys. And yet for us Being is still enchanted; on a hundred planes is still origin. A play of pure energies touched by no one who has not knelt down and is amazed. Words gently end at the edge of the Unsayable . . . And Music, ever new, out of the most trembling of stones, builds in unusable space its deified house. |
| view / print
Picture/Poem
Poster: Sonnets to Orpheu: X [SECOND 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:
(41) September: Mountain Fall
(39) September: Clear Water
|
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 |