A breath around nothing. /
A sigh in a god. A wind...."
from the First
Part of the Sonnets
to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke
This week, an image of Paradise
Lilies. Also: four new translations
from the German.
July: Lilies of Paradise and the Poetry of Praise
|
|
"True
singing is different kind of breath. A breath around nothing. / A sigh in a god. A wind...." from the First Part of the Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke This week, an image of Paradise Lilies. Also: four new translations from the German. |
|
VII [ERSTER TEIL] Rühmen, das ists! Ein zum Rühmen Bestellter, ging er hervor wie das Erz aus des Steins Schweigen. Sein Herz, o vergängliche Kelter eines den Menschen unendlichen Weins. Nie versagt ihm die Stimme am Staube, wenn ihn das göttliche Beispiel ergreift. Alles wird Weinberg, alles wird Traube, in seinem fühlenden Süden gereift. Nicht in den Grüften der Könige Moder straft ihm die Rühmung lügen, oder daß von den Göttern ein Schatten fällt. Er ist einer der bleibenden Boten, der noch weit in die Türen der Toten Schalen mit rühmlichen Früchten hält. |
VII [FIRST PART] Praise, that's it! As one who is called to praise he rose up like an ore out of the stone's silence. His heart, o mortal press, one of humanity's inexhaustible wines. Never does his voice give way to dust when he is grasped by divine example. Everything is vineyard, everything is grape, ripened in the sentiment of his south. Not in the tombs of kingly decay is he punished by Praise for falsity, or in that from gods a shadow falls. He is one of the permanent messengers who deep within the doors of the dead holds up bowls filled with glorious fruits. |
|
V [ERSTER TEIL] Errichtet keinen Denkstein. Laßt die Rose nur jedes Jahr zu seinen Gunsten blühn. Denn Orpheus ists. Seine Metamorphose in dem und dem. Wir sollen uns nicht mühn um andre Namen. Ein für alle Male ists Orpheus, wenn es singt. Er kommt und geht. Ists nicht schon viel, wenn er die Rosenschale um ein paat Tage manchmal übersteht? O wie er schwinden muß, daß ihrs begrifft! Und wenn ihm selbst auch bangte, daß schwände. Indem sein Wort das Hiersein überstrifft, ist er schon dort, wohin ihrs nicht begleitet. Der Leier Gitter zwängt ihm nicht die Hände. Und er gehorcht, indem er überschreitet. |
V [FIRST PART] Erect no monument. Let but the rose flower each year on his behalf. For Orpheus is. His metamorphosis is in all things. We should not burden ourselves with other names. Now and forever Orpheus is when there is song. He comes and goes. Isn't it already enough when he outlasts the bowl of roses but by a few days? O how he must disappear, so that you may understand! Even when he himself worries about disappearing. In that his word the present moment transcends, he is already there, where you are not accompanied. The lyre's lattice doesn't force his hands. And he obeys, in that he transgresses. |
|
XII [ERSTER TEIL] Heil dem Geist, der uns verbinden mag; denn wir leben wahrhaft in Figuren. Und mit kleinen Schritten gehn die Uhren neben unserm eigenlichen Tag. Ohne unsern wahren Platz zu kennen, handeln wir aus wirklichen Bezug. Die Antennen fühlen die Antennen, und die leere Ferne trug . . . Reine Spannung. O Musik der Kräfte! Ist nicht durch die läßlichen Geschäfte jede Störung von dir abgelenkt? Selbst wenn sich der Bauer sorgt und handelt, wo die Saat in Sommer sich verwandelt, reicht er niemals hin. Die Erde schenkt. |
XII [FIRST PART] Hail to the spirit that would connect us; in that we live truly in figures. And with small steps pass the hours beside our authentic day. Without knowing our true place, we are moved to action by real relation. Antennae feel antennae, carried by empty distance . . . Pure tension. O Music of powers! Is not through this venial industry every disturbance deflected from you? Even when the farmer cares and toils, to that place where the seed itself transforms, he does not reach. The Earth bestows. |
|
III [ERSTER TEIL] Ein Gott vemags. Wie aber, sag mir, soll ein Mann ihm folgen durch die schmale Leier? Sein Sinn ist Zweispalt. An der Kreuzung zweier Herzwege steht kein Tempel für Apoll. Gesang, wie du ihn lehrst, ist nicht Begehr, nicht Werbung um ein endlich noch erreichtes; Gesang ist Dasein. Für den Gott ein Leichtes. Wann aber sind wir? Und wann wendet er an unser Sein die Erde und diem Sterne? Dies ists nicht, Jüngling, daß du liebst, wenn auch die Stimme dann den Mund dir aufstößt,—lerne vergessen, daß du aufsangst. Das verrint. In Wahrheit singen, ist ein andrer Hauch. Ein Hauch um nichts. Ein Wehn im Gott. Ein wind. |
III [FIRST PART] A god can do it. But how, tell me, shall a man follow him through the narrow lyre? His senses are split. At the crossing of two heartways stands no temple for Apollo. Song, as you teach him, is not desire, not the touting of some final achievement; Song is Being. Easy for a god. But when are we to be? And when does he turn towards our existence the Earth and the Stars? This is nothing, young one, that you love, when the voice pushes the mouth open,—glearn to forget such murmurings. They will pass. True singing is different kind of breath. A breath around nothing. A sigh in a god. A wind. |
edee
| 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:
(9) June: Windflowers and the Poetry of Praise
(8) June: The Poetry of Images of Movement
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 |