The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke

by Rainer Maria Rilke

  (To Countess Margot Sizzo-Noris-Crouy, January 6, 1923)

  The Tenth Elegy (Lines 1–12: Duino, January/February 1912; continued in Paris, late autumn 1913; new conclusion, lines 13-end: Muzot, February 11, 1922)

  Lou, dear Lou, finally:

  At this moment, Saturday, the eleventh of February, at 6 o’clock, I am putting down my pen after completing the last Elegy, the Tenth. The one (even then it was intended as the last one) whose first lines were already written in Duino: “Someday, emerging at last from the violent insight, / let me sing out jubilation and praise to assenting angels.…” What there was of it I once read to you; but only the first twelve lines have remained, all the rest is new and: yes, very, very glorious!—Imagine! I have been allowed to survive until this. Through everything. Miracle. Grace.

  (To Lou Andreas-Salomé, February 11, 1922)

  l. 20, market of solace:

  I reproach all modern religions for having provided their believers with consolations and glossings-over of death, instead of giving them the means of coming to an understanding with it. With it and with its full, unmasked cruelty: this cruelty is so immense that it is precisely with it that the circle closes: it leads back into a mildness which is greater, purer, and more perfectly clear (all consolation is muddy!) than we have ever, even on the sweetest spring day, imagined mildness to be.

  (To Countess Margot Sizzo-Noris-Crouy, January 6, 1923)

  l. 21, the church:

  The Christian experience enters less and less into consideration; the primordial God outweighs it infinitely. The idea that we are sinful and need to be redeemed as a prerequisite for God is more and more repugnant to a heart that has comprehended the earth. Sin is the most wonderfully roundabout path to God—but why should they go wandering who have never left him? The strong, inwardly quivering bridge of the Mediator has meaning only where the abyss between God and us is admitted—; but this very abyss is full of the darkness of God; and where someone experiences it, let him climb down and howl away inside it (that is more necessary than crossing it). Not until we can make even the abyss our dwelling-place will the paradise that we have sent on ahead of us turn around and will everything deeply and fervently of the here-and-now, which the Church embezzled for the Beyond, come back to us; then all the angels will decide, singing praises, in favor of the earth!

  (To Ilse Jahr, February 22, 1923)

  l. 62, the vast landscape of Lament:

  The land of Lament, through which the elder Lament guides the dead youth, is not to be identified with Egypt, but is only, as it were, a reflection of the Nile-land in the desert clarity of the consciousness of the dead.

  (To Witold Hulewicz, November 13, 1925)

  ll. 73–88, But as night approaches … / … the indescribable outline:

  Go look at the Head of Amenophis the Fourth in the Egyptian Museum in Berlin; feel, in this face, what it means to be opposite the infinite world and, within such a limited surface, through the intensified arrangement of a few features, to form a weight that can balance the whole universe. Couldn’t one turn away from a starry night to find the same law blossoming in this face, the same grandeur, depth, inconceivableness? By looking at such Things I learned to see; and when, later, in Egypt, many of them stood before me, in their extreme individuality, insight into them poured over me in such waves that I lay for almost a whole night beneath the great Sphinx, as though I had been vomited out in front of it by my whole life.

  You must realize that it is difficult to be alone there; it has become a public square; the most irrelevant foreigners are dragged in en masse. But I had skipped dinner; even the Arabs were sitting at a distance, around their fire; one of them noticed me, but I got away by buying two oranges from him; and then the darkness hid me. I had waited for nightfall out in the desert, then I came in slowly, the Sphinx at my back, figuring that the moon must already be rising (for there was a full moon) behind the nearest pyramid, which was glowing intensely in the sunset. And when at last I had come around it, not only was the moon already far up in the sky, but it was pouring out such a stream of brightness over the endless landscape that I had to dim its light with my hand, in order to find my way among the heaps of rubble and the excavations. I found a place to sit down on a slope near the Sphinx, opposite that gigantic form, and I lay there, wrapped in my coat, frightened, unspeakably taking part. I don’t know whether my existence ever emerged so completely into consciousness as during those night hours when it lost all value: for what was it in comparison with all that? The dimension in which it moved had passed into darkness; everything that is world and existence was happening on a higher plane, where a star and a god lingered in silent confrontation. You too can undoubtedly remember experiencing how the view of a landscape, of the sea, of the great star-flooded night inspires us with the sense of connections and agreements beyond our understanding. It was precisely this that I experienced, to the highest degree; here there arose an image built on the pattern of the heavens; upon which thousands of years had had no effect aside from a little contemptible decay; and most incredible of all was that this Thing had human features (the fervently recognizable features of a human face) and that, in such an exalted position, these features were enough. Ah, my dear— I said to myself, “This, this, which we alternately thrust into fate and hold in our own hands: it must be capable of some great significance if even in such surroundings its form can persist.” This face had taken on the customs of the universe; single parts of its gaze and smile were damaged, but the rising and setting of the heavens had mirrored into it emotions that had endured. From time to time I closed my eyes and, though my heart was pounding, I reproached myself for not experiencing this deeply enough; wasn’t it necessary to reach places in my astonishment where I had never been before? I said to myself, “Imagine, you could have been carried here blind-folded and been set down on a slope in the deep, barely-stirring coolness—you wouldn’t have known where you were and you would have opened your eyes—” And when I really did open them, dear God: it took quite a long time for them to endure it, to take in this immense being, to achieve the mouth, the cheek, the forehead, upon which moonlight and moonshadows passed from expression to expression. How many times already had my eyes attempted this full cheek; it rounded itself out so slowly that there seemed to be room up there for more places than in our world. And then, as I gazed at it, I was suddenly, unexpectedly, taken into its confidence, I received a knowledge of that cheek, experienced it in the perfect emotion of its curve. For a few moments I didn’t grasp what had happened. Imagine: this: Behind the great projecting crown on the Sphinx’s head, an owl had flown up and had slowly, indescribably audibly in the pure depths of the night, brushed the face with her faint flight: and now, upon my hearing, which had grown very acute in the hours-long nocturnal silence, the outline of that cheek was (as though by a miracle) inscribed.

  (To Magda von Hattingberg, February 1, 1914)

  l. 108, hazel-trees: Rilke had originally written “willows”; this was corrected on the advice of a friend, who sent him a small handbook of trees and shrubs.

  What a kind thought it was of yours to introduce me so clearly and thoroughly to the elements of “catkinology” with your book and the explanatory letter; after this there is no need for further or more exact information: I am convinced! So (remarkably enough) there are no “hanging” willow catkins; and even if there were some rare, tropical exception, I still would not be able to use it. The place in the poem that I wanted to check for factual accuracy stands or falls according to whether the reader can understand, with his first intuition, precisely this falling of the catkins; otherwise, the image loses all meaning. So the absolutely typical appearance of this inflorescence must be evoked—and I immediately realized from the very instructive illustrations in your little book that the shrub which, years ago, supplied me with the impression I have now used in my work must have been a hazelnut tree; whose branches are furnished most densely, before the leaves come out, with l
ong, perpendicularly hanging catkins. So I know what I needed to know and have changed the text from “willow” to “hazel.”

  (To Elisabeth Aman-Volkart, June 1922)

  APPENDIX TO DUINO ELEGIES

  [Fragment of an Elegy] (Duino, late January 1912)

  Written between the First and Second Elegies.

  [Original Version of the Tenth Elegy] (Lines 1–15: Duino, January / February 1912; continued in Paris, late in 1913)

  Antistrophes (Lines 1–4: Venice, summer 1912; the rest: Muzot, February 9, 1922)

  See note to the Fifth Elegy.

  Antistrophe: “The returning movement, from left to right, in Greek choruses and dances, answering to the previous movement of the strophe from right to left; hence, the lines of choral song recited during this movement.” (OED)

  FROM THE SONNETS TO ORPHEUS (1923)

  These strange Sonnets were no intended or expected work; they appeared, often many in one day (the first part of the book was written in about three days), completely unexpectedly, in February of last year, when I was, moreover, about to gather myself for the continuation of those other poems—the great Duino Elegies. I could do nothing but submit, purely and obediently, to the dictation of this inner impulse; and I understood only little by little the relation of these verses to the figure of Vera Knoop, who died at the age of eighteen or nineteen, whom I hardly knew and saw only a few times in her life, when she was still a child, though with extraordinary attention and emotion. Without my arranging it this way (except for a few poems at the beginning of the second part, all the sonnets kept the chronological order of their appearance), it happened that only the next-to-last poems of both parts explicitly refer to Vera, address her, or evoke her figure.

  This beautiful child, who had just begun to dance and attracted the attention of everyone who saw her, by the art of movement and transformation which was innate in her body and spirit,—unexpectedly declared to her mother that she no longer could or would dance (this happened just at the end of childhood). Her body changed, grew strangely heavy and massive, without losing its beautiful Slavic features; this was already the beginning of the mysterious glandular disease that later was to bring death so quickly. During the time that remained to her, Vera devoted herself to music; finally she only drew—as if the denied dance came forth from her ever more quietly, ever more discreetly.

  (To Countess Margot Sizzo-Noris-Crouy, April 12, 1923)

  Even to me, in the way they arose and imposed themselves on me, the Sonnets to Orpheus are perhaps the most mysterious, most enigmatic dictation I have ever endured and achieved; the whole first part was written down in a single breathless obedience, between the 2nd and 5th of February 1922, without one word being in doubt or having to be changed. And that at a time when I had braced myself for another great work and was already occupied with it. How can one help growing in reverence and endless gratitude, through such experiences in one’s own existence.

  (To Xaver von Moos, April 20, 1923)

  I, 1 (Muzot, February 2/5, 1922)

  l. 2, Orpheus: According to Greek mythology, the song of Orpheus was so enchantingly beautiful that the animals in the forest and even the rocks and trees gathered to listen.

  During a visit to Sion (a town not far from Muzot), Rilke’s friend Baladine Klossowska had discovered a postcard reproduction of Cima da Conegliano’s pen-and-ink drawing (ca. 1500) of this scene: Orpheus sitting under a tree, playing a kind of viol, with a bird, a pair of deer, and a pair of rabbits intently listening. Madame Klossowska tacked the card to the wall opposite Rilke’s desk and left it there on her departure from Muzot in November 1921.

  I, 2 (Muzot, February 2/5, 1922)

  l. 1, almost a girl: Cf. the end of “Turning-point”:

  Look, inner man, at your inner girl.

  The deepest experience of the creative artist is feminine, for it is an experience of conceiving and giving birth. The poet Obstfelder once wrote, speaking of the face of a stranger: “When he began to speak, it was as though a woman had taken a seat within him.” It seems to me that every poet has had that experience in beginning to speak.

  (To a young woman, November 20, 1904)

  I, 3 (Muzot, February 2/5, 1922)

  ll. 3 f., crossing / of heart-roads: “The sanctuaries that stood at crossroads in classical antiquity were dedicated to sinister deities like Hecate, not to Apollo, the bright god of song.” (Hermann Mörchen, Rilkes Sonette an Orpheus, Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1958, p. 66)

  l. 13, True singing:

  It is not only the hearable in music that is important (something can be pleasant to hear without being true). What is decisive for me, in all the arts, is not their outward appearance, not what is called the “beautiful”; but rather their deepest, most inner origin, the buried reality that calls forth this appearance.

  (To Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis-Hohenlohe, November 17, 1912)

  l. 14, A gust inside the god. A wind:

  All in a few days, it was a nameless storm, a hurricane in the spirit (like that time at Duino), everything that was fiber and fabric in me cracked.

  (Ibid., February 11, 1922, just after the completion of the Elegies)

  I, 5 (Muzot, February 2/5, 1922)

  ll. 5 f., When there is poetry, / it is Orpheus singing:

  Ultimately there is only one poet, that infinite one who makes himself felt, here and there through the ages, in a mind that can surrender to him.

  (To Nanny Wunderly-Volkart, July 29, 1920)

  True art can issue only from a purely anonymous center.

  (To R.S., November 22, 1920)

  I, 7 (Muzot, February 2/5, 1922)

  I, 8 (Muzot, February 2/5, 1922)

  I, 25 (Muzot, February 2/5, 1922)

  Rilke’s note: “To Vera.” (In a copy of the Sonnets sent to Herr and Frau Leopold von Schlözer on May 30, 1923)

  Vera Ouckama Knoop (1900–1919) was the young dancer to whom the whole cycle is dedicated. Her mother had recently sent Rilke a detailed, moving account of her illness and death.

  II, 4 (Muzot, February 15/17, 1922)

  Any “allusion,” I am convinced, would contradict the indescribable presence of the poem. So in the unicorn no parallel with Christ is meant; rather, all love of the non-proven, the non-graspable, all belief in the value and reality of whatever our heart has through the centuries created and lifted up out of itself: that is what is praised in this creature.… The unicorn has ancient associations with virginity, which were continually honored during the Middle Ages. Therefore this sonnet states that, though it is nonexistent for the profane, it comes into being as soon as it appears in the “mirror” which the virgin holds up in front of it (see the tapestries of the 15th century) and “in her,” as in a second mirror that is just as pure, just as mysterious.

  (To Countess Margot Sizzo-Noris-Crouy, June 1, 1923)

  II, 8 (Muzot, February 15/17, 1922)

  l. 4, the lamb with the talking scroll: Rilke’s note: “the lamb (in medieval paintings) which speaks only by means of a scroll with an inscription on it.”

  Dedication, Egon von Rilke (1873–1880): Youngest child of Rilke’s father’s brother.

  I think of him often and keep returning to his image, which has remained indescribably moving to me. So much “childhood”—the sad and helpless side of childhood—is embodied for me in his form, in the ruff he wore, his little neck, his chin, his beautiful disfigured eyes. So I evoked him once more in connection with that eighth sonnet, which expresses transience, after he had already served, in the Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, as the model for little Erik Brahe, who died in childhood.

  (To Phia Rilke, January 24, 1924, in Carl Sieber, René Rilke: Die Jugend Rainer Maria Rilkes, Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 1932)

  II, 13 (Muzot, February 15/17, 1922)

  In a letter telling Vera’s mother about the unexpected appearance of the second part of the Sonnets, Rilke wrote:

  Today I am sending you only one of these son
nets, because, of the entire cycle, it is the one that is closest to me and ultimately the one that is the most valid.

  (To Gertrud Ouckama Knoop, March 18, 1922)

  The thirteenth sonnet of the second part is for me the most valid of all. It includes all the others, and it expresses that which, though it still far exceeds me, my purest, most final achievement would someday, in the midst of life, have to be.

  (To Katharina Kippenberg, April 2, 1922)

  l. 14, cancel the count:

  Renunciation of love or fulfillment in love: both are wonderful and beyond compare only where the entire love-experience, with all its barely differentiable ecstasies, is allowed to occupy a central position: there (in the rapture of a few lovers or saints of all times and all religions) renunciation and completion are identical. Where the infinite wholly enters (whether as minus or plus), the ah so human number drops away, as the road that has now been completely traveled, —and what remains is the having arrived, the being!

  (To Rudolf Bodländer, March 23, 1922)

  II, 14 (Muzot, February 15/17, 1922)