Possibility of Being

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Possibility of Being Page 8

by Rainer Maria Rilke


  At the beginning of January 1922 Rilke’s friend Frau Gertrud Ouckama Knoop had sent him a journal she had kept during the long and fatal illness of her daughter Wera, who died at the age of eighteen or nineteen, and whom Rilke had seen once or twice when she was a child. This beautiful girl had been an exquisite dancer, but, just before the beginning of her fatal glandular disease, had suddenly declared that she neither could nor would dance any longer, and, during the short time that remained for her, had devoted herself first to music and then to drawing, as though (in Rilke’s words) “the dancing which had been denied were more and more gently, more and more discreetly, still issuing from her.” His thoughts about Wera, whose fullness and love of life had seemed to reach their highest intensity when life was passing into death, crystallized, as it were, around the figure of Orpheus with his lyre, of which he had recently acquired a small engraving—Orpheus the mediator, at home in the realms both of the living and of the dead; and the result was this entirely unexpected series of sonnets, of which the First Part was written shortly before and the Second Part shortly after, the completion of the Duino Elegies.

  THIS IS THE CREATURE

  The unicorn has ancient, in the Middle Ages continually celebrated, significations of virginity: hence it is asserted that, although non-existent for the profane, it was, as soon as it appeared, within the “silver mirror” which the virgin is holding before it (see tapestries of the fifteenth century) and “in her,” as in a no less pure, no less mysterious mirror.

  [Rilke is alluding to the celebrated tapestries of La Dame à la

  Licorne in the Musée de Cluny.]

  POEMS 1906-26

  TO MUSIC

  Written after a private concert at the house of the recipient.

  WHEN WILL, WHEN WILL

  “Written on the evening before the Orpheus sonnets.”

  FOR WITOLD HULEWICZ

  Inscribed in the Duino Elegies for his Polish translator: “To that faithful and active intermediary, Witold Hulewicz (Olwid), with gratitude: Rainer Maria Rilke.”

  R.M.R.

  Epitaph composed by himself before 27 October 1925 and inscribed on his tombstone in the churchyard at Raron.

  INDEX OF TITLES

  Adam

  A Feminine Destiny

  A God Can Do It

  A Prophet

  Archaic Torso of Apollo

  Autumn

  Autumn Day

  Buddha

  Corrida

  Dancer

  David Sings before Saul

  Death Experienced

  Does It Exist?

  Early Apollo

  Eastern Aubade

  Eros

  Eve

  Everything Beckons to Us

  Exposed on the Heart’s Mountains

  For a Friend

  For Witold Hulewicz

  From a Childhood

  Girls

  God in the Middle Ages

  Going Blind

  How It Thrills Us

  Hymn

  I Live in Expanding Rings

  In the Drawing-Room

  Lady before the Mirror

  L’Ange du Méridien

  Late Autumn in Venice

  Leda

  Love-Song

  Mirrors

  O Fountain Mouth

  Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes.

  Pietà

  Pont du Carrousel

  Praising, That’s It!

  Presentiment

  Quai du Rosaire

  Raise No Commemorating Stone

  R.M.R.

  Roman Fountain

  Roman Sarcophagi

  Self-Portrait from the Year 1906

  Spanish Dancer

  Still the God Remains

  The Blind Man

  The Bowl of Roses

  The Cathedral

  The Courtesan

  The Departure of the Prodigal Son

  The Donor

  The Eighth Elegy

  The First Elegy

  The Flamingos

  The Fourth Elegy

  The Gazelle

  The Goldsmith

  The Group

  The Magician

  The Merry-Go-Round

  The Mountain

  The Ninth Elegy

  The Olive Garden

  The Panther

  The Poet’s Death

  The Reader

  The Rose Window

  The Sap Is Mounting Back

  The Steps of the Orangery

  The Temptation

  The Unicorn

  The Voices

  This Is the Creature

  To Music

  Turning

  What Will You Do, God?

  When Will, When Will

  With Strokes That Ring Clear

  World Was in the face of the Beloved

  You Mustn’t Be Afraid, God

  OTHER RAINER MARIA RILKE BOOKS

  Published by New Directions

  Poems from the Books of Hours

  Where Silence Reigns: Selected Prose

  Copyright © 1957, 1977 by New Directions Publishing Corporation

  Translation © The Hogarth Press Ltd. 1960, 1964

  All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, or television review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

  Grateful acknowledgement is made to Professor Theodore Ziolkowski of Princeton University, who chose the current selection of poems from the various New Directions volumes of Rilke’s work translated by J. B. Leishman. Portions of this selection appear by arrangement with W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First published ctothbound and as New Directions Paperbook 436 in 1977

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

  Rilke, Rainer Maria, 1875–1926.

  Possibility of being.

  (A New Directions Book)

  Includes indexes.

  I. Leishman, James Blaire, 1902–1963. II. Title.

  PT2635.I65A249 1977 831’.9’12 77–4656

  ISBN 978-0-8112-0651-8

  ISBN 978-0-8112-2497-0 (e-book)

  New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin

  by New Directions Publishing Corporation

  80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011

 

 

 


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