New Poems: A Revised Bilingual Edition
352
New Poems: A Revised Bilingual Edition
352eBookBilingual edition, Revised (Bilingual edition, Revised)
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Overview
The formative work of the legendary poet who sought to write "not feelings but things I had felt"
When Rainer Maria Rilke arrived in Paris for the first time in September 1902, commissioned by a German publisher to write a monograph on Rodin, he was twenty-seven and already the author of nine books of poems. His early work had been accomplished, but belonged tonally to the impressionistic, feeling-centered world of a late-nineteenth-century aesthetic.
Paris was to change everything. Rilke's interest in Rodin deepened and his enthusiasm for the sculptor's "art of living surfaces" set the course for his own pursuit of an objective ideal. What was "new" about Rilke's New Poems, published in two independent volumes in 1907 and 1908, is a compression of statement and a movement away from "expression" and toward "making realities." Poems such as "The Panther" and "Archaic Torso of Apollo" are among the most successful and famous results of Rilke's impulse.
This selection from both books unites the companion volumes in a torrent of brilliant work intoxicated with the materiality of the world. Edward Snow has now improved upon the translations for which he received the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award and with which he began his twenty-year project of translating Rilke.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781466872639 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| Publication date: | 06/03/2014 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 352 |
| File size: | 584 KB |
About the Author
Edward Snow has received the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award and the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation for his many renderings of Rilke. The author of A Study of Vermeer and Inside Breughel, he teaches at Rice University.
Rainer Maria Rilke was born in Prague in 1875 and traveled throughout Europe for much of his adult life, returning frequently to Paris. There he came under the influence of the sculptor Auguste Rodin and produced much of his finest verse, most notably the two volumes of New Poems as well as the great modernist novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Among his other books of poems are The Book of Images and The Book of Hours. He lived the last years of his life in Switzerland, where he completed his two poetic masterworks, the Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus. He died of leukemia in December 1926.
Edward Snow is a professor of English at Rice University. He is the recipient of an Academy of Arts and Letters Award for his Rainer Maria Rilke translations and has twice received the Academy of American Poets' Harold Morton Landon Translation Award. He is the author of A Study of Vermeer and Inside Bruegel.
Read an Excerpt
New Poems
Revised Bilingiual Edition
By Rainer Maria Rilke, Edward Snow
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Copyright © 2001 Edward SnowAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-7263-9
CHAPTER 1
NEW POEMS
[1907]
Introduction
Rilke arrived in Paris for the first time in September 1902, commissioned by a German publisher to write a monograph on Rodin. He was twenty-seven and already an accomplished poet with a considerable body of work behind him. In addition to the outpourings of his early years (nine books of poetry and fiction between 1894 and 1899), two of the three sections of The Book of Hours were complete, and the first edition of The Book of Images was about to be published. All this early work is unremittingly subjective; it still belongs tonally and texturally to the impressionistic, feeling-centered world of a late-nineteenth-century aesthetic. But what in the beginning borders on callow self-indulgence gradually deepens into a disciplined lyric temperament. The spacious, gently modulated rhythms of the first part of The Book of Hours are the creations of a poet who is very sure of himself; Rilke later said he could have continued in this style for the rest of his life.
But the move to Paris was to change everything. Shortly after Rilke arrived there, he met Rodin, and his interest in him soon deepened into discipleship. As his enthusiasm for the sculptor's work increased, so did his dissatisfaction with his own. Rodin was a laborer, a craftsman, and the energy and dedication with which he immersed himself in the actual process of making seemed to Rilke a rebuke to his own lyric dexterity and slavish dependence on inspiration. With Rodin's "travailler, rien que travailler" ringing in his ears, he set about acquiring an entirely new set of working habits — forcing himself to write every day during regularly scheduled hours, wandering about Paris practicing the art of observation, taking notes, making lists of subjects for poems. Meanwhile he began to entertain the idea of a poetry that would answer to what he described as Rodin's "art of living surfaces" — a poetry that would somehow manage to belong to the world of things rather than feelings. The results — appearing slowly at first, then coming to fruition in an incredible burst of creative energy that spanned the summers of 1906 and 1908 — were the two volumes of the New Poems, which together constitute one of the great instances in modern literature of the lyric quest for objective experience.
What specifically is "new" about the New Poems? The most striking transformation occurs in Rilke's language, which grows simultaneously more lucid and complex. Compression of statement and elimination of authorial self are taken to their extremes in the pursuit of an objective ideal. Only a few of these Dinggedichte or "thing-poems," as they soon came to be called, are actually about objects, but all of them have a material quality, and confront the reader with a sculptural, free-standing presence. Even their semantic densities communicate a sense of volume and contour. One is always aware of them as things made. Syntax, especially, becomes a tensile material capable of being worked into structures that remind one more often of the space-mobilizing forms of Arp than of Rodin's massive presences. Even in a poem like "The Capital," devoted entirely to the description of a static object, visual image interacts with a kinesis of line and syntax to change the thing into a forcefield of opposing impulses:
the vaulting's ribs
spring from the tangled capital
and leave that realm of crowded, intertwined,
mysteriously winged creation:
their hesitance and the suddenness of the heads
and those strong leaves, whose sap
mounts like brimming anger, finally
reversing in a quick gesture that clenches
and outthrusts —:
Several of the New Poems participate even more directly than this in the movements and energies they describe — the chthonic windings of "The Tower" and the flamenco gestures of "Spanish Dancer" are especially brilliant instances. Seldom is visual perception an end in itself, and often it is the focus of a poem's deconstructive energies: a gazelle dissolves into the stream of discontinuous metaphors that evoke it; a marble fountain becomes a complex microcosm of fluid interchanges and secret relations. "As ifs" proliferate through the poetry, keeping the reader's attention fixed not so much on the object-world as on the zone where it and the imagination interact. Even the icons of indifference that figure so prominently in the New Poems live in the imagination whose desire for relation they refuse:
What do you know, O stone one, of our life?
And do you smile even more blissfully
when you hold your slate out into the night?
("L'Ange du Méridien")
This interanimation of object and consciousness is, finally, the great theme of the New Poems, in spite of their apparent worship of states of withdrawal, apartness, and fulfilled isolation. At their most radical they seek to open the dimensions of what a phenomenologist like Merleau-Ponty would call the "lived world," where subject and object are inseparable aspects of an imaginatively engendered unity. In "The Bowl of Roses," the New Poem that may go furthest in this direction, what begins as an object of perception is gradually transformed by the imaginative impulse it releases into a multifarious world teeming with metamorphic energies:
What can't they be: was that yellow one,
that lies there hollow and open, not the rind
of a fruit in which the very same yellow,
intenser, orange-redder, was juice?
And was mere opening too much for this one,
since touched by air its nameless pink
has taken on the bitter aftertaste of lilac?
And that cambric one, is it not a dress
in which the shift still clings, soft and breath-warm,
both of them cast off together
in the morning shadows of the old woodland pool?
And this one, opalescent porcelain,
fragile, a shallow china cup
and full of tiny bright butterflies, —
and that one, containing nothing but itself.
The transformative capacities of the roses are, of course, those of the imagination that beholds them, but the effect is the opposite of mere projection: the act of viewing seems rather to cross over into a prior dimension where reality and imagination have yet to face each other off as opposites. Self-containment, arrived at from this direction, feels almost like the opposite of itself and triggers one of the great moments of ontological redefinition in Rilke:
And aren't all that way: simply self-containing,
if self-containing means: to transform the world outside
and wind and rain and the patience of spring
and guilt and restlessness and muffled fate
and the darkness of the evening earth
out to the roaming and flying and fleeing of the clouds
and the vague influence of distant stars
into a handful of inwardness.
Now it lies carefree in these open roses.
In a sense, the New Poems themselves are just such handfuls of inwardness. Open to the permeability of the inner and the outer realms, their autonomy is that of things invested with a new sense of self. They deny us subjectivity in order to restore us to the world.
Neue Gedichte
KARL UND ELIZABETH VON DER HEYDT IN FREUNDSCHAFT
Früher Apollo
Wie manches Mal durch das noch unbelaubte
Gezweig ein Morgen durchsieht, der schon ganz
im Frühling ist: so ist in seinem Haupte
nichts was verhindern könnte, daß der Glanz
aller Gedichte uns fast tödlich träfe;
denn noch kein Schatten ist in seinem Schaun,
zu kühl für Lorbeer sind noch seine Schläfe
und später erst wird aus den Augenbraun
hochstämmig sich der Rosengarten heben,
aus welchem Blätter, einzeln, ausgelöst
hintreiben werden auf des Mundes Beben,
der jetzt noch still ist, niegebraucht und blinkend
und nur mit seinem Lächeln etwas trinkend
als würde ihm sein Singen eingeflößt.
Early Apollo
As sometimes between the yet leafless branches
a morning looks through that is already
radiant with spring: so nothing of his head
could prevent the splendor of all poems
from striking us with almost lethal force;
for there is yet no shadow in his gaze,
his temples are yet too cool for the laurel crown,
and only later from his eyebrows' arches
will the rose garden lift up on tall stems,
from which petals, loosened, one by one
will drift down on the trembling of his mouth,
which now is yet quiet, never-used, and gleaming
and only drinking something with its smile
as though its song were being instilled in him.
Liebes-Lied
Wie soll ich meine Seele halten, daß
sie nicht an deine rührt? Wie soll ich sie
hinheben über dich zu andern Dingen?
Ach gerne möcht ich sie bei irgendwas
Verlorenem im Dunkel unterbringen
an einer fremden stillen Stelle, die
nicht weiterschwingt, wenn deine Tiefen schwingen.
Doch alles, was uns anrührt, dich und mich,
nimmt uns zusammen wie ein Bogenstrich,
der aus zwei Saiten eine Stimme zieht.
Auf welches Instrument sind wir gespannt?
Und welcher Geiger hat uns in der Hand?
O süßes Lied.
Love Song
How shall I keep my soul
from touching yours? How shall I
lift it out beyond you toward other things?
Ah, I would like to lodge it
in the dark with some lost thing
in some silent foreign place
that doesn't tremble when your depths stir.
Yet whatever touches you and me
blends us together just as a bow's stroke
from two strings draws one voice.
Across what instrument are we stretched taut?
And what player holds us in his hand?
O sweet song.
Eranna an Sappho
O du wilde weite Werferin:
Wie ein Speer bei andern Dingen
lag ich bei den Meinen. Dein Erklingen
warf mich weit. Ich weiß nicht wo ich bin.
Mich kann keiner wiederbringen.
Meine Schwestern denken mich und weben,
und das Haus ist voll vertrauter Schritte.
Ich allein bin fern und fortgegeben,
und ich zittere wie eine Bitte;
denn die schöne Göttin in der Mitte
ihrer Mythen glüht und lebt mein Leben.
Eranna to Sappho
O you fierce far-flinging hurler!
Like a spear among domestic things
I lay among my kin. Your music
launched me far. I don't know where I am.
No one can ever bring me back.
My sisters think of me and weave,
and the house is full of trusted footsteps.
I alone am distant and given over,
and I tremble like a plea;
for the lovely goddess burns at the center
of her myths and lives my life.
Sappho an Eranna
Unruh will ich über dich bringen,
schwingen will ich dich, umrankter Stab.
Wie das Sterben will ich dich durchdringen
und dich weitergeben wie das Grab
an das Alles: allen diesen Dingen.
Sappho to Eranna
I want to fill you full of turmoil,
want to brandish you above me, you vine-clasped staff.
Like dying I want to pierce through you
and pass you on like the grave
to Life: your life in all these things.
Sappho an Alkaïos
FRAGMENT
Und was hättest du mir denn zu sagen,
und was gehst du meine Seele an,
wenn sich deine Augen niederschlagen
vor dem nahen Nichtgesagten? Mann,
sieh, uns hat das Sagen dieser Dinge
hingerissen und bis in den Ruhm.
Wenn ich denke: unter euch verginge
dürftig unser süßes Mädchentum,
welches wir, ich Wissende und jene
mit mir Wissenden, vom Gott bewacht,
trugen unberührt, daß Mytilene
wie ein Apfelgarten in der Nacht
duftete vom Wachsen unsrer Brüste —.
Ja, auch dieser Brüste, die du nicht
wähltest wie zu Fruchtgewinden, Freier
mit dem weggesenkten Angesicht.
Geh und laß mich, daß zu meiner Leier
komme, was du abhältst: alles steht.
Dieser Gott ist nicht der Beistand Zweier,
aber wenn er durch den Einen geht
* * *
Sappho to Alcaeus
FRAGMENT
And besides, what could you say to me,
and how could my soul concern yours,
since you lower your man's looks cravenly
before the close, never-said things?
Look: our rapture is the saying of these things,
and their saying bathes us in glory.
When I think: under your rule our sweet
maidenhood would miserably perish,
which we, I who know and those
who know with me, guarded by the god,
bore untouched, while Mytilene,
like an apple orchard in the night,
grew fragrant with our breasts' ripening —.
Yes, these breasts, which you didn't choose
like someone making wreaths of fruit,
you suitor with the downturned face.
Go, leave me, that to my lyre may come
what you hold back: everything stands poised.
This god lends no assistance to a pair,
but when he passes through the one
* * *
Grabmal eines jungen Mädchens
Wir gedenkens noch. Das ist, als müßte
alles dieses einmal wieder sein.
Wie ein Baum an der Limonenküste
trugst du deine kleinen leichten Brüste
in das Rauschen seines Bluts hinein:
— jenes Gottes.
Und es war der schlanke
Flüchtling, der Verwöhnende der Fraun.
Süß und glühend, warm wie dein Gedanke,
überschattend deine frühe Flanke
und geneigt wie deine Augenbraun.
Funeral Monument of a Young Girl
We still remember. It is as though
all this must one day be again.
Like a citrus tree along the Greek shore
you bore your small light breasts
into the surging of his blood:
— that god's.
And it was the slender
fugitive, that favorer of women.
Sweet and glowing, warm like your thought,
overshadowing your young flanks
and arched the way your eyebrows were.
Opfer
O wie blüht mein Leib aus jeder Ader
duftender, seitdem ich dich erkenn;
sieh, ich gehe schlanker und gerader,
und du wartest nur —: wer bist du denn?
Sieh: ich fühle, wie ich mich entferne,
wie ich Altes, Blatt um Blatt, verlier.
Nur dein Lächeln steht wie lauter Sterne
über dir und bald auch über mir.
Alles was durch meine Kinderjahre
namenlos noch und wie Wasser glänzt,
will ich nach dir nennen am Altare,
der entzündet ist von deinem Haare
und mit deinen Brüsten leicht bekränzt.
Sacrifice
How my body blooms from every vein
more fragrantly, since I first saw you;
look, I walk slimmer now and so much straighter,
and you only wait —: who are you then?
See: I feel how I'm moving away,
how I'm shedding my old life, leaf by leaf.
Only your smile stands like pure stars
over you and, soon now, over me.
Everything that from my childhood years
still floats namelessly and gleams like water:
I will christen it yours on the altar,
which your hair has set on fire
and your breasts have gently wreathed.
Östliches Taglied
Ist dieses Bette nicht wie eine Küste,
ein Küstenstreifen nur, darauf wir liegen?
Nichts ist gewiß als deine hohen Brüste,
die mein Gefühl in Schwindeln überstiegen.
Denn diese Nacht, in der so vieles schrie,
in der sich Tiere rufen und zerreißen,
ist sie uns nicht entsetzlich fremd? Und wie:
was draußen langsam anhebt, Tag geheißen,
ist das uns denn verständlicher als sie?
Man müßte so sich ineinanderlegen
wie Blütenblätter um die Staubgefäße:
so sehr ist überall das Ungemäße
und häuft sich an und stürzt sich uns entgegen.
Doch während wir uns aneinander drücken,
um nicht zu sehen, wie es ringsum naht,
kann es aus dir, kann es aus mir sich zücken:
denn unsre Seelen leben von Verrat.
Eastern Aubade
Is this bed not like some distant coast,
just a thin strip of land on which we lie?
All is indistinct except your high breasts,
which towered dizzily beyond my feeling.
For this night, in which so much cried out,
in which animals called and tore each other's flesh,
is it not for us dark, uncharted? And yet:
what outside is slowly dawning — they call it day —
do we find that any more familiar?
We would have to lie as tightly intertwined
as flower petals around the stamen:
for the unrestrained reigns everywhere
and masses and plunges toward us.
Yet while we press ourselves against each other,
to keep from seeing how it closes in,
it may unsheathe itself from you, from me:
for our souls live on treason.
Abisag
I
Sie lag. Und ihre Kinderarme waren
von Dienern um den Welkenden gebunden,
auf dem sie lag die süßen langen Stunden,
ein wenig bang vor seinen vielen Jahren.
Und manchmal wandte sie in seinem Barte
ihr Angesicht, wenn eine Eule schrie;
und alles, was die Nacht war, kam und scharte
mit Bangen und Verlangen sich um sie.
Die Sterne zitterten wie ihresgleichen,
ein Duft ging suchend durch das Schlafgemach,
der Vorhang rührte sich und gab ein Zeichen,
und leise ging ihr Blick dem Zeichen nach —.
Aber sie hielt sich an dem dunkeln Alten
und, von der Nacht der Nächte nicht erreicht,
lag sie auf seinem fürstlichen Erkalten
jungfräulich und wie eine Seele leicht.
II
Der König saß und sann den leeren Tag
getaner Taten, ungefühlter Lüste
und seiner Lieblingshündin, der er pflag —.
Aber am Abend wölbte Abisag
sich über ihm. Sein wirres Leben lag
verlassen wie verrufne Meeresküste
unter dem Sternbild ihrer stillen Brüste.
Und manchmal, als ein Kundiger der Frauen,
erkannte er durch seine Augenbrauen
den unbewegten, küsselosen Mund;
und sah: ihres Gefühles grüne Rute
neigte sich nicht herab zu seinem Grund.
Ihn fröstelte. Er horchte wie ein Hund
und suchte sich in seinem letzten Blute.
Abishag
I
She lay. And servingwomen bound
her child's arms around the shriveled king,
on whom she lay those long sweet hours,
daunted a little by his many years.
And now and then she turned her face
when an owl cried, and listened in his beard;
and all the things that were night
came and flocked around her with fear and longing.
The stars trembled just as she did,
a scent went searching through the sleeping room,
the curtain stirred and gave a signal,
and her eyes softly followed it —.
But she clutched that dark old man,
and, unattained by what Night brings forth,
lay on his potency's increasing chill
a virgin, and lightly like a soul.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from New Poems by Rainer Maria Rilke, Edward Snow. Copyright © 2001 Edward Snow. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Copyright Notice,
Preface,
FROM NEW POEMS,
FROM NEW POEMS: THE OTHER PART,
Index of Titles and First Lines in German,
Index of Titles and First Lines in English,
Also by Edward Snow,
About the Authors,
Copyright,