RILKE | February: Images from the Periphery of Time
RILKE | February: Images from the Periphery of Time
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"Standing at the foot of the / cathedral's great ascent, unadorned, close to the / window-rose, with the apple in the apple-pose, guiltless-guilty once and for all / of time..." from Eve, a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke This week, an image called Fall Glacier after Storm. Also: two new translations from the German.
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Images from the Periphery of Time | intro mp3 |
Anyone who has had the opportunity to hike or climb in one of the great
mountain ranges of the world will have noticed that something extraordinary
happens as one ventures above treeline. The higher one goes, leaving behind
the closed evergreen forest and stepping out into the treeless alpine tundra, the
more one has a powerful sense of space opening up and time slowing down.
As hinted at in the photograph above, standing almost a vertical kilometer above
the glaciers shown below, one sometimes has a feeling of being taken back
through the eons to the primal origins of life on the Earth itself. Rock; Ice; Sky;
Man; Woman. Nothing else.
And then there is the sense of the vastness of time itself, of life stepping into
the flow of the physically manifest, flourishing a while and then somehow
mysteriously returning, much like snow crystals emerging out of clear cold air,
lingering a while, then vanishing in the palm of one's hand.
In the two poems presented here, both from Rilke's mature work in the New Poems
(c. 1907) we encounter similar themes. What I find most striking about the some-
what abstract and awkward Eve is Rilke struggling to find the language for the
fact that all life as it manifests is necessarily limited, and even at its peak "aspiring
towards Death, / and yet God she had barely known at all."
How different is the language of Death Experience. In this little-known master-
piece, we find Rilke using with complete confidence an imagery and tone which is
very close to Shakespeare and yet very unlike the other poems of the collection. In
an era in which we are all at least outwardly conditioned by a mechanistic science
to time as measured by the clock and matter devoid of all spirit, Rilke's moving
closing lines:
"...but your far away,
removed out of our performance existence,
sometimes overcomes us, as an awareness
descending upon us of this very reality,
so that for a while we play Life
rapturously, not thinking of any applause."
seem to take us back, like high mountains and glaciers sometimes do, to a place
where for a brief moment we stand above and beyond the movement of beginning
and ending itself:
| Eva Einfach steht sie an der Kathedrale großem Aufstieg, nah der Fensterrose, mit dem Apfel in der Apfelpose, schuldlos-schuldig ein für alle Male an dem Wachsenden, das sie gebar, seit sie aus dem Kreis der Ewigkeiten liebend fortging, um sich durchzustreiten durch die Erde, wie ein junges Jahr. Ach sie hätte gern in jenem Land noch ein wenig weilen mögen, achtend auf der Tiere Eintracht und Verstand. Doch da sie den Mann entschlossen fand, gings sie mit ihm, nach dem Tode trachtend, und sie hatte Gott noch kaum gekannt. |
Eve Standing at the foot of the Cathedral's great ascent, unadorned, close to the window-rose, with the apple in the apple-pose, guiltless-guilty once and for all of time for all the growing things that she gave forth, since she, out of Eternity's circle, went away in love, in order to labor through the Earth like a just beginning year. Oh how she would have liked to linger in that land a while, to observe the peace and understanding of the animals. And yet because she found the man resolved, she went with him, aspiring towards Death, and yet God she had barely known at all. |
| Todeserfahrung Wir wissen nichts von diesem Hingehn, das nicht mit uns teilt. Wir haben keinen Grund, Bewunderung und Liebe oder Haß dem Tod zu zeigen, den ein Maskenmund tragischer Klage wunderlich entstellt. Noch ist die Welt voll Rollen, die wir spielen, solang wir sorgen, ob wir auch gefielen, spielt auch der Tod, obwohl er nicht gefällt. Doch als du gingst, da brach in diese Bühne ein Streifen Wirklichkeit durch jenen Spalt, durch den du hingingst: Grün wirklicher Grüne, wirklicher Sonnenschein, wirklicher Wald. Wir spielen weiter. Bang und schwer Erlerntes hersagend und Gebärden dann und wann aufhebend; aber dein von uns entferntes, aus unserm Stück entrücktes Dasein kann uns manchmal überkommen, wie ein Wissen von jener Wirklichkeit sich niedersenkend, so daß wir eine Weile hingerissen das Leben spielen, nicht an Beifall denkend. aus: Neue Gedichte (c. 1907) |
Death Experience We know nothing of this going away, that shares nothing with us. We have no reason, whether astonishment and love or hate, to display Death, whom a fantastic mask of tragic lament astonishingly disfigures. Now the world is still full of roles which we play as long as we make sure, that, like it or not, Death plays, too, although he does not please us. But when you left, a strip of reality broke upon the stage through the very opening through which you vanished: Green, true green, true sunshine, true forest. We continue our play. Picking up gestures now and then, and anxiously reciting that which was difficult to learn; but your far away, removed out of our performance existence, sometimes overcomes us, as an awareness descending upon us of this very reality, so that for a while we play Life rapturously, not thinking of any applause. (all tr. Cliff Crego) |
| view / print Picture/Poem Poster: Death Experience (86 K) | or download as PDF |
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