The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke

by Rainer Maria Rilke

  um-gegossener Stern … : Gong!

  Du, die man niemals vergißt,

  die sich gebar im Verlust,

  nichtmehr begriffenes Fest,

  Wein an unsichtbarem Mund,

  Sturm in der Säule, die trägt,

  Wanderers Sturz in den Weg,

  unser, an Alles, Verrat … : Gong!

  À Monique:

  un petit recueillement de ma gratitude

  L’Heure du Thé

  Buvant dans cette tasse sur laquelle, dans une langue inconnue, sont peut-ětre inscrits des signes de bénédiction et de bonheur, je la tiens dans cette main pleine de lignes à son tour que je ne saurais expliquer. Sont-elles d’accord ces deux écritures, et puisqu’elles sont seules entre elles et toujours secrètes sous la coupole de mon regard, vont-elles dialoguer à leur façon et se concilier, ces deux textes millénaires qu’un geste de buveur rapproche?

  Chapelle Rustique

  Comme la maison est calme: écoute! Mais, là-haut, dans la blanche chapelle, d’où vient ce surcroît de silence?—De tous ceux qui depuis plus d’un siècle y sont entrés pour ne pas ětre dehors, et qui, en s’agenouillant, se sont effrayés de leur bruit? De cet argent qui, en tombant dans le tronc, a perdu sa voix et qui n’aura qu’un petit bruissement de grillon quand il sera recueilli? Ou de cette douce absence de Sainte-Anne, patronne du sanctuaire, qui n’ose pas approcher, pour ne pas abîmer cette pure distance que suppose un appel?

  »Farfallettina«

  Toute agitée elle arrive vers la lampe, et son vertige lui donne un dernier répit confus avant d’ětre brûlée. Elle s’est abattue sur le vert tapis de la table, et sur ce fond avantageux s’étale pour un instant (pour une durée à elle que nous ne saurions mesurer) le luxe de son inconcevable splendeur. On dirait, en trop petit, une dame qui avait une panne en se rendant au Théâtre. Elle n’y arrivera point. Et d’ailleurs où est le Théâtre pour de si frěles spectateurs? … Ses ailes dont on aperçoit les minuscules baguettes d’or remuent comme un double éventail devant nulle figure; et, entre elles, ce corps mince, bilboquet où sont retombés deux yeux en boule d’émeraude …

  C’est en toi, ma belle, que Dieu s’est épuisé. Il te lance à la flamme pour regagner un peu de sa force. (Comme un enfant qui casse sa tirelire.)

  Le Mangeur de Mandarines

  Oh quelle prévoyance! Ce lapin entre les fruits. Pense! trente sept petits noyaux dans un seul exemplaire prěts à tomber un peu partout et à faire progéniture. Il a fallu que nous corrigions ça. Elle eût été capable de peupler la terre cette petite Mandarine entětée qui porte une robe si large comme si elle devait encore grandir. Mal habillée en somme; plus occupée de multiplication que de mode. Montre-lui la grenade dans son armure de cuir de Cordoue: elle éclate d’avenir, se retient, dédaigne.… Et laissant entrevoir sa lignée possible, elle l’étouffe dans un berceau de pourpre. La terre lui semble trop évasive pour faire avec elle un pacte d’abondance.

  ELEGIE

  an Marina Zwetajewa-Efron

  O die Verluste ins All, Marina, die stürzenden Sterne!

  Wir vermehren es nicht, wohin wir uns werfen, zu welchem

  Sterne hinzu! Im Ganzen ist immer schon alles gezählt.

  So auch, wer fällt, vermindert die heilige Zahl nicht.

  Jeder verzichtende Sturz stürzt in den Ursprung und heilt.

  Wäre denn alles ein Spiel, Wechsel des Gleichen, Verschiebung,

  nirgends ein Name und kaum irgendwo heimisch Gewinn?

  Wellen, Marina, wir Meer! Tiefen, Marina, wir Himmel.

  Erde, Marina, wir Erde, wir tausendmal Frühling, wie Lerchen,

  die ein ausbrechendes Lied in die Unsichtbarkeit wirft.

  Wir beginnens als Jubel, schon übertrifft es uns völlig;

  plötzlich, unser Gewicht dreht zur Klage abwärts den Sang.

  Aber auch so: Klage? Wäre sie nicht: jüngerer Jubel nach unten.

  Auch die unteren Götter wollen gelobt sein, Marina.

  So unschuldig sind Götter, sie warten auf Lob wie die Schüler.

  Loben, du Liebe, laß uns verschwenden mit Lob.

  Nichts gehört uns. Wir legen ein wenig die Hand um die Hälse

  ungebrochener Blumen. Ich sah es am Nil in Kôm-Ombo.

  So, Marina, die Spende, selber verzichtend, opfern die Könige.

  Wie die Engel gehen und die Türen bezeichnen jener zu Rettenden,

  also rühren wir dieses und dies, scheinbar Zärtliche, an.

  Ach wie weit schon Entrückte, ach, wie Zerstreute, Marina,

  auch noch beim innigsten Vorwand. Zeichengeber, sonst nichts.

  Dieses leise Geschäft, wo es der Unsrigen einer

  nicht mehr erträgt und sich zum Zugriff entschließt,

  rächt sich und tötet. Denn daß es tödliche Macht hat,

  merkten wir alle an seiner Verhaltung und Zartheit

  und an der seltsamen Kraft, die uns aus Lebenden zu

  Überlebenden macht. Nicht-Sein. Weißt du’s, wie oft

  trug uns ein blinder Befehl durch den eisigen Vorraum

  neuer Geburt.… Trug: uns? Einen Körper aus Augen

  unter zahllosen Lidern sich weigernd. Trug das in uns

  niedergeworfene Herz eines ganzen Geschlechts. An ein Zugvogelziel

  trug er die Gruppe, das Bild unserer schwebenden Wandlung.

  Liebende dürften, Marina, dürfen soviel nicht

  von dem Untergang wissen. Müssen wie neu sein.

  Erst ihr Grab is alt, erst ihr Grab besinnt sich, verdunkelt

  unter dem schluchzenden Baum, besinnt sich auf Jeher.

  Erst ihr Grab bricht ein; sie selber sind biegsam wie Ruten;

  was übermäßig sie biegt, ründet sie reichlich zum Kranz.

  Wie sie verwehen im Maiwind! Von der Mitte des Immer,

  drin du atmest und ahnst, schließt sie der Augenblick aus.

  (O wie begreif ich dich, weibliche Blüte am gleichen

  unvergänglichen Strauch. Wie streu ich mich stark in die Nachtluft,

  die dich nächstens bestreift.) Frühe erlernten die Götter

  Hälften zu heucheln. Wir in das Kreisen bezogen

  füllten zum Ganzen uns an wie die Scheibe des Monds.

  Auch in abnehmender Frist, auch in den Wochen der Wendung

  niemand verhülfe uns je wieder zum Vollsein, als der

  einsame eigene Gang über der schlaflosen Landschaft.

  [Taube, die draußen blieb]

  Für Erika, zum Feste der Rühmung

  Taube, die draußen blieb, außer dem Taubenschlag,

  wieder in Kreis und Haus, einig der Nacht, dem Tag,

  weiß sie die Heimlichkeit, wenn sich der Einbezug

  fremdester Schrecken schmiegt in den gefühlten Flug.

  Unter den Tauben, die allergeschonteste,

  niemals gefährdetste, kennt nicht die Zärtlichkeit;

  wiedererholtes Herz ist das bewohnteste:

  freier durch Widerruf freut sich die Fähigkeit.

  Über dem Nirgendssein spannt sich das Überall!

  Ach der geworfene, ach der gewagte Ball,

  füllt er die Hände nicht anders mit Wiederkehr:

  rein um sein Heimgewicht ist er mehr.

  NOTES

  Translating poems into equivalent formal patterns is to some extent a matter of luck, or grace, and this is especially true of rhymed poems. Rilke called rhyme “a goddess of secret and ancient coincidences” and said that “she is very capricious; one cannot summon or foresee her; she comes as happiness comes, hands filled with an achievement that is already in flower.” Some of my favorite Rilke poems never got beyond a rough draft, because that sweet goddess refused to make even the briefest appearance. Otherwise I would have included: from The Book of Pictures, the tender and funny “Annunciation,” in which the angel Gabriel is so moved by Mary’s ripening beauty that he forgets what he was sent to announce; from New Poems, “Woman in Love” (“Die Liebende”), a deeply awed, Brahmsian love song to the night; and from The
Sonnets to Orpheus, I 6, 9, 10, 12, 19; II 1, 12, 16, and 18.

  I have included the selections from The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge not to discourage readers from experiencing the novel in its entirety, but to show the power of these excerpts as prose-poems. With their density of texture, their metaphorical richness, and the strength and subtlety of their rhythms, they don’t seem out of place among Rilke’s greatest verse.

  The German text is that of the standard edition (Sämtliche Werke [SW], Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1955–1966), except for two lines in the Fifth Elegy, where I have followed the Thurn und Taxis manuscript and the first edition.

  Letters excerpted and translated in these notes can be found in the following collections (except where otherwise noted):

  Briefe aus den Jahren 1902–1906. Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 1930.

  Briefe aus den Jahren 1907–1914. Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 1933.

  Briefe aus Muzot, 1921–1926. Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 1937.

  Briefe. Wiesbaden: Insel Verlag, 1950.

  Rainer Maria Rilke und Marie von Thurn und Taxis: Briefwechsel. Zürich/Wiesbaden: Niehans & Rokitansky Verlag und Insel Verlag, 1951.

  Rainer Maria Rilke/Lou Andreas-Salomé: Briefwechsel. Wiesbaden: Insel Verlag, 1952.

  Rainer Maria Rilke/Katharina Kippenberg: Briefwechsel. Wiesbaden: Insel Verlag, 1954.

  Briefwechsel mit Benvenuta. Eßlingen: Bechtle Verlag, 1954.

  Briefe an Sidonie Nádherńy von Borutin. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1973.

  Briefe an Nanny Wunderly-Volkart. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1977.

  FROM THE BOOK OF HOURS (1905)

  I began with Things, which were the true confidants of my lonely childhood, and it was already a great achievement that, without any outside help, I managed to get as far as animals. But then Russia opened itself to me and granted me the brotherliness and the darkness of God, in whom alone there is community. That was what I named him then, the God who had broken in upon me, and for a long time I lived in the antechamber of his name, on my knees. Now, you would hardly ever hear me name him; there is an indescribable discretion between us, and where nearness and penetration once were, new distances stretch forth, as in the atom, which the new science conceives of as a universe in miniature. The comprehensible slips away, is transformed; instead of possession one learns relationship [statt des Besitzes lernt man den Bezug], and there arises a namelessness that must begin once more in our relations with God if we are to be complete and without evasion. The experience of feeling him recedes behind an infinite delight in everything that can be felt; all attributes are taken away from God, who is no longer sayable, and fall back into creation, into love and death. It is perhaps only this that again and again took place in certain passages in the Book of Hours, this ascent of God out of the breathing heart—so that the sky was covered with him—, and his falling to earth as rain. But saying even that is already too much.

  (To Ilse Jahr, February 22, 1923)

  [I am, O Anxious One. Don’t you hear my voice] (Berlin-Schmargendorf, September 24, 1899)

  [I find you, Lord, in all Things and in all] (Berlin-Schmargendorf, September 24, 1899)

  FROM THE BOOK OF PICTURES (First edition, 1902; second edition, 1906)

  Lament (Berlin-Schmargendorf, October 21, 1900)

  Autumn Day (Paris, September 21, 1902)

  Evening (Undated: 1902/1906; perhaps Sweden, autumn 1904)

  The Blindman’s Song (Paris, June 7, 1906)

  This and the following three songs are part of a ten-poem cycle called The Voices.

  To want to improve the situation of another human being presupposes an insight into his circumstances such as not even a poet has toward a character he himself has created. How much less insight is there in the so infinitely excluded helper, whose scatteredness becomes complete with his gift. Wanting to change or improve someone’s situation means offering him, in exchange for difficulties in which he is practiced and experienced, other difficulties that will find him perhaps even more bewildered. If at any time I was able to pour out into the mold of my heart the imaginary voices of the dwarf or the beggar, the metal of this cast was not obtained from any wish that the dwarf or the beggar might have a less difficult time. On the contrary: only through a praising of their incomparable fate could the poet, with his full attention suddenly given to them, be true and fundamental, and there is nothing that he would have to fear and refuse so much as a corrected world in which the dwarfs are stretched out and the beggars enriched. The God of completeness sees to it that these varieties do not cease, and it would be a most superficial attitude to consider the poet’s joy in this suffering multiplicity as an esthetic pretense.

  (To Hermann Pongs, October 21, 1924)

  The Drunkard’s Song (Paris, June 7/12, 1906)

  The Idiot’s Song (Paris, June 7, 1906)

  The Dwarf’s Song (Paris, June 7, 1906)

  FROM NEW POEMS (First Part, 1907; Second Part, 1908)

  Do the New Poems still seem so impersonal to you? You see, in order to speak about what happened to me, what I needed was not so much an instrument of emotion, but rather: clay. Involuntarily I undertook to make use of “lyric poetry” in order to form not feelings but things I had felt; every one of life’s events had to find a place in this forming, independently of the suffering or pleasure it had at first brought me. This formation would have been worthless if it hadn’t gone as far as the trans-formation of every accidental detail; it had to arrive at the essence.

  (To “une amie,” February 3, 1923)

  The Panther (Paris, 1903, or possibly late in 1902)

  In addition to the panther in the Jardin des Plantes, Rilke was probably remembering a small Greek statue of a panther (or tiger).

  In his studio in the rue de l’Université, Rodin has a tiny plaster cast of a tiger (antique) which he values very highly: C’est beau, c’est tout [It’s beautiful, it’s everything], he says of it. And from this little plaster copy I have seen what he means, what antiquity is and what links him to it. There is in this animal the same kind of aliveness in the modeling; on this little Thing (it is no higher than my hand is wide, and no longer than my hand is) there are a hundred thousand places, as if it were something really huge—a hundred thousand places that are all alive, active, and different. All this just in plaster! And the representation of the prowling stride is intensified to the highest degree, the powerful downward tread of the broad paws, and simultaneously that caution in which all strength is wrapped, that noiselessness.

  (To Clara Rilke, September 27, 1902)

  In Rodin’s studio there is a cast of a panther, of Greek workmanship, hardly as big as a hand (the original is in the medallion collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris). If you look from the front under its body into the space formed by the four powerful soft paws, you seem to be looking into the depths of an Indian stone temple; so huge and all-inclusive does this work become.

  (Auguste Rodin, 1902, SW 5, 173)

  The Gazelle (Paris, July 17, 1907)

  Yesterday I spent the whole morning in the Jardin des Plantes, looking at the gazelles. Gazella Dorcas, Linnaeus. There are a pair of them and also a single female. They were lying a few feet apart, chewing their cuds, resting, gazing. As women gaze out of pictures, they were gazing out of something, with a soundless, final turn of the head. And when a horse whinnied, the single one listened, and I saw the radiance from ears and horns around her slender head.… I saw the single one stand up, for a moment; she lay right down again; but while she was stretching and testing herself, I could see the magnificent workmanship of those legs (they are like rifles from which leaps are fired). I just couldn’t tear myself away, they were so beautiful.

  (To Clara Rilke, June 13, 1907)

  1.6, songs of love: Possibly a reference to the Song of Solomon, which, in the translation that Rilke used, frequently compares the beloved to a gazelle.

  The Swan (Meudon, winter 1905/1906)

  The G
rownup (Paris, July 19, 1907)

  There is an insightful study of this poem in Geoffrey H. Hartman’s The Unmediated Vision (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954).

  l. 4, the Ark of God: The ark of the tabernacle, Exodus 25.

  Going Blind (Paris, late June 1906)

  Before Summer Rain (Paris, early July 1906)

  Written after a visit to the Château de Chantilly.

  l. 6, Saint Jerome (ca. 347-ca. 420): One of the four great Doctors of the Western Church, noted for his asceticism and pugnacity. Rilke may have been thinking of the Dürer engraving, dated 1514.

  The Last Evening (Paris, June 1906)

  Dedication, Frau Nonna: Rilke’s friend Julie Freifrau von Nordeck zur Rabe-nau, whose first husband was killed in the battle of Königgrätz, July 3, 1866, at the age of thirty-one.

  l. 14, shako: “A military cap in the shape of a truncated cone, with a peak and either a plume or a ball or ‘pompom.’ ” (OED)

  Portrait of My Father as a Young Man (Paris, June 27, 1906)

  This poem, written three months after Josef Rilke’s death, describes

  the fine colored daguerrotype of my father that was taken when he was seventeen, just before his departure on the [Austrian army’s] Italian campaign. Those first, naive photographs could be so movingly real—this one gives you the impression that you are looking at him through his mother’s eyes, seeing the beautiful young face in its solemn, barely smiling presentiment of bravery and danger. In my childhood I must have seen it once among my father’s papers; later it seemed as though it was missing for years—useless to ask where it had gone. Then, after he died, I found it among the possessions he had left behind, framed like a miniature in antique red velvet, intact—and I realized how unutterably it had taken form in my heart.