Reading Rilke

by William H. Gass

  Mitchell is significantly better.

  Mitchell. Fling the emptiness out of your arms into the spaces we breathe; perhaps the birds will feel the expanded air with more passionate flying.

  Gass, a jackal who comes along after the kill to nose over the uneaten hunks, keeps everything he likes:

  Gass 1. Fling the emptiness out of your arms to broaden the spaces we breathe—maybe then birds will feel the amplified air with an inner flight.

  Gass 2. Fling the emptiness out of your arms to broaden the spaces we breathe—maybe then birds will feel the amplified air with more fervent flight.

  I am obliged to point out that Flemming, whose translation I came upon rather late in the day, also uses “fervent” to qualify “flight,” but I wonder at his word order:

  Flemming. Fling out of your arms the emptiness into the spaces we breathe—perhaps the birds will feel the expanded air in their more fervent flight.

  As we pursue these comparisons tediously from line to line and verse to verse, it becomes evident that Leishman, Poulin, and Mitchell have given us the only tolerable versions, and that they are quite different in spirit as well as in the details of their execution. The awkwardness of Leishman’s frequent Germanic constructions, his sometimes overly noisy line, the mumbo jumbo that gets into them, the oh-so-literary faces he makes, the occasional inaccuracy, the thickets of confusion we need to be rabbits to run through: we are certainly as familiar with these qualities now as with the faults of a friend, for J. B. Leishman, more than anyone else, has given us our poet, Rilke, in English (as Herter Norton has rendered the prose), and his lines have been impressed on our sensibilities like creases of bedclothing on sleeping bodies; it is impossible to remove them, especially when they dent so handsomely, and “immemorial sap mounts in our arms when we love.” Yet he will do his derivative dances, like this Hopkins jig from “The Second Elegy”:

  Leishman. Let the archangel perilous now, from behind the stars, step but a step down hitherwards: high up-beating, our heart would out-beat us. Who are you?

  Poulin, our second, younger, far fresher horse, neatly reduces this to:

  Poulin. If the archangel, the dangerous one behind the stars, took just one step down toward us today: the quicker pounding of our heart would kill us. Who are you?

  Meanwhile, Stephen Mitchell, presently our most popular translator of Rilke’s work, goes back to Leishman, because Leishman is struggling to capture qualities in Rilke’s lines that are really there, while Poulin quietly erases them. Mitchell achieves this improvement:

  Mitchell. But if the archangel now, perilous, from behind the stars took even one step down toward us: our own heart, beating higher and higher, would beat us to death. Who are you?

  Before pushing my pencil angrily through the paper, I stumble through the passage first this way, then that:

  Gass 1. Were the perilous great Angel behind the stars to step down a single step toward us now, our stepped-up heart would overbeat and break us. Who are you?

  Gass 2. Yet if the archangel, perilous now, were to step but a step down toward us from behind the stars, our own heartbeaten heart would burst our chest. Who are you?

  Poulin’s and Mitchell’s translations are frequently superior to Leishman’s in terms of what they do not attempt. In “The Ninth Elegy,” for instance, occurs the famous heart-and-hammer image:

  Leishman. Between the hammers lives on our heart, as between the teeth the tongue, which, in spite of all, still continues to praise.

  Poulin. Our heart survives between hammers, just as the tongue between the teeth is still able to praise.

  Mitchell. Between the hammers our heart endures, just as the tongue does between the teeth and, despite that, still is able to praise.

  Gass. Our heart dwells between hammers, like the tongue between the teeth, where it remains, notwithstanding, a continual creator of praise.

  Leishman lets the German twist his line. Poulin’s row has a better bite, like straightened teeth, but he finishes too quickly.

  Images like this—of a space enlarged by the emptiness in a lover’s arms; of a bat ricocheting through the air like a crack through a cup; of a child’s death made from gray bread and stuffed in the child’s mouth like the core of an apple … no … like the ragged core of a sweet apple; or the ideas themselves: that the world exists nowhere but within and therefore the springtimes have need of us; that the youthfully dead have a special meaning and life and death run like hot and cold through the same tap; that we are here just to speak and proclaim the word; that love should give its beloved an unfastening and enabling freedom; that praise is the thing—they belong to no language, but to the realm of absolute image and pure idea, where a simple thought or bare proportion can retain its elementary power; and it is the ubiquitous presence of these type-tropes and generalizing “ideas” in Rilke that makes translating him possible at all, as their relative absence in someone like Mallarmé makes him as difficult to shape as smoke.

  Poulin is uncomfortable, not with the rough free form of the Elegies, but with their metaphysical grandeur. The lighter translucency of the Sonnets to Orpheus is more to his liking, while Leishman’s tread there is too heavy, still too elegiac, even in his most successful moments, as if he had continued to slog long after the swamp had dried and its residual dusts had blown.

  The trials of the translator can contain no better testimony that they are trials indeed than the abrupt and thrilling opening of the Sonnets to Orpheus, an opening which so beautifully describes the poems themselves: Da stieg ein Baum.

  Leishman. A tree ascending there. O pure transcension! O Orpheus sings! O tall tree in the ear!

  MacIntyre. There arose a tree. Oh, pure transcension! Oh, Orpheus sings! Oh, tall tree in the ear!

  Pitchford. Somewhere a tree ascended. Oh sheer transcendence. Oh Orpheus singing. Oh tall tree lofted in the ear.

  Poulin. A tree sprang up. O sheer transcendence! O Orpheus sings! O tall tree in the ear!

  Mitchell. A tree ascended there. Oh pure transcendence! Oh Orpheus sings! Oh tall tree in the ear!

  Flemming. There rose a tree. O magic transcendence! Orpheus sings. And in the ear a tree!

  Norton. There rose a tree. O pure transcendency! O Orpheus singing! O tall tree in the ear!

  Gass 1. A suddenly ascending tree. O pure transcendency! O Orpheus sings! O tall tree in the ear!

  Merit is spread pretty evenly here. Except for Pitchford’s “Somewhere a tree ascended.” Actually, this tree shoots up in a special way—it does not simply rise. Instead of being climbed, it does the climbing—it scales the sky—and in that lies its transcendence. Both Leishman and Gass are after a kind of “going up.” Gass, who flails like someone drowning here, found the word which would reflect that rising music, but the word was “scaled,” and no one wants to keep company with flaking and disease. “There climbed a tree” or “There scaled a tree” are silly in English. Yet “scaled” is so nearly the right word. A bitter business, this. Poulin puts the suddenness in the verb, a good idea, while Gass expansively explains it. MacIntyre’s rocky rhythm prevents any real rising (arose/a tree). Gass, again, defeats his own sense with an overlong line. Both MacIntyre and Mitchell seem insensitive to the differences between “O” and “Oh” and “Oh,”. To find a tree in your ear is odd enough, but Flemming almost sticks it in there. Pitchford postpones the problem. In English, one exclaims: “Oh rats!” or “Oh my God!” but never “Oh transubstantiation!” Though “transcendency” goes better with “tree” than its other forms do. Between Leishman, Poulin, and Norton, it is difficult to choose, although Poulin is more natural in English. There is nevertheless something satisfactory about Norton’s honest literalism.

  So Orpheus sings, and a tall tree springs up in the ear. This pure wand of song creates a clearing into which charmed animals are drawn to listen to Orpheus, who could move the trees as well as the wind. We must forbid the image to remind us of Disney.

  Leishman. Creatures of s
ilence pressing through the clear disintricated wood from lair and nest …

  MacIntyre. Animals from the silence, from the clear now opened wood came forth from nest and den …

  Pitchford. Out of such quiet, out of each lair and nest, animals crept from their disenchanted wood …

  Poulin. Creatures of silence crowded out of the clear freed forest, out of their dens and lairs …

  Mitchell. Creatures of stillness crowded from the bright unbound forest, out of their lairs and nests …

  Flemming. For creatures stepped soundlessly from clearings of forests and left lair and nest behind …

  Norton. Creatures of stillness thronged out of the clear released wood from lair and nesting place …

  “Disintricated” is an inspired Shakespearean coinage, but the word it replaces is gelösten (with its twin suggestion of “listen” and “loosen”), and we are no longer in those intricated elegies where the compaction would have been appropriate. Leishman and MacIntyre preserve the rhyme scheme of the original (as they attempt to do throughout), yet it is a strange sort of preservation which so often forces the English into grotesque shapes. Poulin and Norton have a better plan. They allow rhyme to occur as the sense of the language readily permits it, suggesting the sonnet form rather than duplicating it. Flemming’s emphasis (stressing what the animals left behind) is all wrong, and his lines are as painful as walking in a tight boot. Pitchford claims the woods have been disenchanted when exactly the opposite has happened. The forests are confining until Orpheus’ enchanting music releases them. Poulin’s “freed forest” is fine. His version is clearly superior in every respect.

  Skipping a few lines:

  Leishman. And where before

  less than a hut had harboured what came thronging, a refuge tunneled out of dimmest longing with lowly entrance through a quivering door, you built them temples in their sense of sound.

  MacIntyre. Where scarce a humble

  hut for such reception was before, a hiding-place of the obscurest yearning, with entrance shaft whose underpinnings tremble, you made for the beasts temples in their hearing.

  Pitchford. And where hardly a hut

  had stood to receive and shelter this, you made a secret burrow out of the darkest need, an opening on which strung columns vibrate, you built a temple for them out of hearing.

  Poulin. And where there’d been

  hardly a hut before to take this in, a dugout carved from their darkest desire with a lintel of trembling timber—you erected temples for them in their inner ear.

  Mitchell. And where there had been

  just a makeshift hut to receive the music, a shelter nailed up out of their darkest longing, with an entryway that shuddered in the wind—you built a temple deep inside their hearing.

  Flemming. And where

  there was scarcely a hut to shelter them,—a hiding place out of their darkest longings, there you created temples in their ears.

  Norton. And where before

  hardly a hut had been to take this in, a covert out of darkest longing with an entrance way whose timbers tremble,—you built temples for them in their hearing.

  For everyone but Poulin the poem falls into artificial pieces, as if the loosened petals of a real rose turned to plastic as they reached the ground. Leishman’s “quivering door” is a disaster; moreover, the language is as puffy as a dissipated face. Norton is always a help for those who need a pony, but this time the animal is too young to ride. I would rather Poulin had used a den instead of a dugout, since a canoe doesn’t belong here. My final try follows:

  There rose a tree. O pure uprising!

  O Orpheus sings! O tall tree in the ear!

  And hushed all things. Yet even in that silence

  a new beginning, beckoning, new bent appeared.

  Creatures of silence thronged from the clear

  released trees, out of their lairs and nests,

  and their quiet was not the consequence

  of any cunning, any fear,

  but was because of listening. Growl, shriek, roar,

  shrank to the size of their hearts. And where there’d been

  ramshackles to shelter such sounds before—

  just dens designed from their darkest desires,

  with doorways whose doorposts trembled—

  you built a temple in the precincts of their hearing.4

  The Sonnets are written in a light, flowing, yet terribly condensed language of incredible musicality, verbal playfulness, and sudden invention. Metamorphosis is their mode of operation. What is one to do with Rilke’s management of “i” and “e” in that overpowering first line: Da stieg ein Baum. O reine übersteigung! or with the way the third line picks it up: Und alles schwieg. Doch seibst in der Verschweigung …? One can do nothing, only try to enrich one’s own poor transcription wherever possible and by whatever harmonious means will work.

  It may seem perverse, but the translator must, I think, avoid construing: a tree is a kind of vegetable bridge between earth and sky, the immanent and the transcendent. It is a tree like those of the forest, yet it is made of music. It is this … It is that … Soon I may know too much for my own good, and be tempted to offer the reader an apple from my tree of knowledge. One is generally wise to render the poem as the poet wrote it and let the poet’s poem explain itself. Generally …

  2

  It was nearly a girl who went forth

  from this joyful union of song and lyre,

  and shone so clearly through the veils of her youth,

  and made herself a bed within my ear.

  And slept in me. And all slept inside her sleep:

  the trees which had always amazed me,

  meadow-deep distances as touchable as skin,

  and every astonishment that has ever been.

  She slept the world. Singing God,

  how could you have made her so complete

  she never wanted to be first awake?

  See: she rose and slept.

  Where is her death? O will you find the hidden theme

  before your song sings its own grave?

  From me—where does she fade to? still nearly a girl …5

  The first set of Sonnets appeared unbidden before the remainder of the Elegies was given. The second set is written with the exhilarating knowledge that the Elegies exist. There’s 11, 17, for instance:

  Leishman. Where, in what ever-blissfully watered gardens, upon what trees, out of, oh, what gently dispetalled flower-cups do these so strange-looking fruits of consolation mature?

  MacIntyre. Where, in what ever-happily watered garden, on what trees, from what tenderly stripped flower-calices ripen the strange fruits of consolation?

  Pitchford. Where, in what forever mercifully drenched gardens, in what trees, out of what defoliated bud-calyxes, once so delicate, do the rare fruits of compassion ripen?

  Poulin. Where, in what heavenly watered gardens, in what trees, from what lovingly unsheathed flower-calyxes do the strange fruits of consolation ripen?

  Norton. Where, in what ever-blessedly watered gardens, on what trees, out of what tenderly unleaved blossom-calyxes do the exotic fruits of consolation ripen?

  Spiers. Where, in whichever blissfully watered gardens, on which Trees, and out of which tenderly unpetaled flower cups Do they ripen, the strange fruits of consolation?

  Leishman is sappy. MacIntyre is insipid. Pitchford has never heard of Vietnam. Poulin’s “heavenly” is an instant improvement over “bless” and “bliss.” I don’t think Rilke means the fruits of consolation to be exotic—strange, yes, even alien—though it is their trees that are faraway and foreign. These poems, these fruits, are strange because they are unbidden. And Eden was long ago closed for repairs. Spiers replaces the word “what” with the word “which”—why? However, her “unpetaled flower cups” seems the most natural and least forced. In German, the prepositional march from in to an through aus is terribly important, and yet Poulin (alone) ignores it. One is tempted
to resort to the kind of explanation I just warned about: Where, in what beautifully cared-for gardens, on what inspired trees, from what gently unpetaled flower cups do these unexpected fruits of consolation ripen?

  If we had been choosing chocolates, this last one would have been a jelly. “Forever mercifully drenched” indeed. Let’s put its partly bitten body back and try another piece just a little earlier in the row: 11, 13.

  Leishman. Anticipate all farewells, as were they behind you now, like the winter going past. For through some winter you feel such wintriness bind you, your then out-wintering heart will always outlast.

  MacIntyre. Keep ahead of all parting, as if it were behind you, like the winter that is just now passed. In winters you are so endlessly winter, you find that, getting through winter, your heart on the whole will last.

  Poulin. Be ahead of all Departure, as if it were behind you like the winter that’s just passed. For among winters there’s one so endlessly winter that, wintering out, your heart will really last.

  Mitchell. Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were behind you, like the winter that has just gone by. For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter that only by wintering through it will your heart survive.

  Norton. Be in advance of all parting, as though it were behind you like the winter that is just going. For among winters one is so endlessly winter that, overwintering, your heart once for all will hold out.

  This is one of the great sonnets, one of the most typically Rilkean in theme, too, one of the most moving—Epictetus might have penned it—and a poem quite impossible to translate. There is first of all the contrast between “ahead” and “behind,” which MacIntyre and Poulin retain, but at their peril because the idea is really best expressed simply as Leishman does: “Anticipate all farewells.” Four “winters” follow, and in the last line, three übers. All five of our contestants put in every one of these winters, some more smoothly than others (Poulin is clearly first), but Leishman, always fearless, forces two “outs” into the final line of the quatrain, though the strain is such that the poem sweats. No Sweat is clearly Poulin’s motto, and for the Sonnets it is clearly a good one. His thought is clean and direct, and the positive poetry of that thought is simply allowed to have its effect. MacIntyre bungles things badly, arriving at a rhyme with a line so long it circles the moon, reducing his rhythms to those of poor prose, and badly bollixing the meaning. It is high time we closed the book on him.