November: Fall Ice, Mountain Spring

November: Fall Ice, Mountain Spring
(click on photo to enlarge)
"And when the earthly has /
forgotten you,
say to the quiet land: I flow.
And to the rushing waters speak: /
I am. "

from the Second Part
of the Sonnets to Orpheus
by Rainer Maria Rilke

This week, an image of Fall ice at
a mountain spring. Also: a new
translation from the German.

(click on photo to enlarge)
	"And when the earthly has / forgotten you, say to the quiet land: I flow. And to the rushing waters speak: / I am. " from the Second Part of the Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke This week, an image of Fall ice at a mountain spring. Also: a new translation from the German.

The guest poem for this week is a new English translation from the work of the German language
poet, Rainer Maria Rilke.

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:

XXIX (ZWEITER TEIL)

Stiller Freund der vielen Fernen, fühle
wie dein Atem noch den Raum vermehrt.
Im Gebalk der finstern Glockenstühle
laß dich läuten. Das, was an dir zehrt,

wird ein Starkes über dieser Nahrung.
Geh in der Verwandlung aus und ein.
Was ist deine leidenste Erfahrung?
Ist dir Trinken bitter, werde Wein.

Sei in dieser Nacht aus Übermaß
Zauberkraft am Kreuzweg deiner Sinne,
ihrer seltsamen Begegnung Sinn.

Und wenn dich das Irdische vergaß,
zu der stillen Erde sag: Ich rinne.
Zu dem raschen Wasser sprich: Ich bin>

Rainer Maria Rilke

XXIX (SECOND PART)

Silent friend of many distances, feel
how your breath still multiplies all space.
In the darkness of the belfry's high beams,
let yourself ring. That which weakens you

will grow strong on such nourishment.
Move in and out of transformation.
What is your most painful experience?
Is the drinking bitter, become wine.

Be in this night of a thousand excesses,
magic power at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning of their rare encounter.

And when the earthly has forgotten you,
say to the quiet land: I flow.
And to the rushing waters speak: I am.

(tr. Cliff Crego)

| listen to German original; German/English, phrase by phrase; English trnaslation # |

| view / print Picture/Poem Poster: Sonnet XXIX (SECOND PART) (86 K) |

| 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 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