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Reading Rilke Reflections On The Problems Of Translations by William H. Gass
The greatly esteemed essayist, novelist, and philosopher reflects on the art of translation and on rainer maria rilke's duino elegies-and gives us his own translation of Rilke's masterwork.
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First published January 1, 1999
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About the author
William H. Gass
63 books688 followersWilliam Howard Gass was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, critic, and former philosophy professor.
Gass was born in Fargo, North Dakota. Soon after his birth, his family moved to Warren, Ohio, where he attended local schools. He has described his childhood as an unhappy one, with an abusive, racist father and a passive, alcoholic mother; critics would later cite his characters as having these same qualities.
He attended Wesleyan University, then served as an Ensign in the Navy during World War II, a period he describes as perhaps the worst of his life. He earned his A.B. in philosophy from Kenyon College in 1947, then his Ph.D. in philosophy from Cornell University in 1954, where he studied under Max Black. His dissertation, "A Philosophical Investigation of Metaphor", was based on his training as a philosopher of language. In graduate school Gass read the work of Gertrude Stein, who influenced his writing experiments.
Gass taught at The College of Wooster, Purdue University, and Washington University in St. Louis, where he was a professor of philosophy (1969 - 1978) and the David May Distinguished University Professor in the Humanities (1979 - 1999). His colleagues there have included the writers Stanley Elkin, Howard Nemerov (1988 Poet Laureate of the United States), and Mona Van Duyn (1992 Poet Laureate). Since 2000, Gass has been the David May Distinguished University Professor Emeritus in the Humanities.
Earning a living for himself and his family from university teaching, Gass began to publish stories that were selected for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories of 1959, 1961, 1962, 1968 and 1980, as well as Two Hundred Years of Great American Short Stories. His first novel, Omensetter's Luck, about life in a small town in Ohio in the 1890s, was published in 1966. Critics praised his linguistic virtuosity, establishing him as an important writer of fiction. In 1968 he published In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, five stories dramatizing the theme of human isolation and the difficulty of love. Three years later Gass wrote Willie Masters' Lonesome Wife, an experimental novella illustrated with photographs and typographical constructs intended to help readers free themselves from the linear conventions of narrative. He has also published several collections of essays, including On Being Blue (1976) and Finding a Form (1996). His latest work of fiction, Cartesian Sonata and Other Novellas, was published in 1998. His work has also appeared in The Best American Essays collections of 1986, 1992, and 2000.
Gass has cited the anger he felt during his childhood as a major influence on his work, even stating that he writes "to get even." Despite his prolific output, he has said that writing is difficult for him. In fact, his epic novel The Tunnel, published in 1995, took Gass 26 years to compose. An unabridged audio version of The Tunnel was released in 2006, with Gass reading the novel himself.
When writing, Gass typically devotes enormous attention to the construction of sentences, arguing their importance as the basis of his work. His prose has been described as flashy, difficult, edgy, masterful, inventive, and musical. Steven Moore, writing in The Washington Post has called Gass "the finest prose stylist in America." Much of Gass' work is metafictional.
Gass has received many awards and honors, including grants from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1965, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 1970. He won the Pushcart Prize awards in 1976, 1983, 1987, and 1992, and in 1994 he received the Mark Twain Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Literature of the Midwest. He has teaching awards from Purdue University and Washington University; in 1968 the Chicago Tribune Award as One of the Ten Best Teachers in the Big Ten. He was a Getty Foundation Fellow in 1991-1992. He received the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997; and the American Book Award for The
Gass was born in Fargo, North Dakota. Soon after his birth, his family moved to Warren, Ohio, where he attended local schools. He has described his childhood as an unhappy one, with an abusive, racist father and a passive, alcoholic mother; critics would later cite his characters as having these same qualities.
He attended Wesleyan University, then served as an Ensign in the Navy during World War II, a period he describes as perhaps the worst of his life. He earned his A.B. in philosophy from Kenyon College in 1947, then his Ph.D. in philosophy from Cornell University in 1954, where he studied under Max Black. His dissertation, "A Philosophical Investigation of Metaphor", was based on his training as a philosopher of language. In graduate school Gass read the work of Gertrude Stein, who influenced his writing experiments.
Gass taught at The College of Wooster, Purdue University, and Washington University in St. Louis, where he was a professor of philosophy (1969 - 1978) and the David May Distinguished University Professor in the Humanities (1979 - 1999). His colleagues there have included the writers Stanley Elkin, Howard Nemerov (1988 Poet Laureate of the United States), and Mona Van Duyn (1992 Poet Laureate). Since 2000, Gass has been the David May Distinguished University Professor Emeritus in the Humanities.
Earning a living for himself and his family from university teaching, Gass began to publish stories that were selected for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories of 1959, 1961, 1962, 1968 and 1980, as well as Two Hundred Years of Great American Short Stories. His first novel, Omensetter's Luck, about life in a small town in Ohio in the 1890s, was published in 1966. Critics praised his linguistic virtuosity, establishing him as an important writer of fiction. In 1968 he published In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, five stories dramatizing the theme of human isolation and the difficulty of love. Three years later Gass wrote Willie Masters' Lonesome Wife, an experimental novella illustrated with photographs and typographical constructs intended to help readers free themselves from the linear conventions of narrative. He has also published several collections of essays, including On Being Blue (1976) and Finding a Form (1996). His latest work of fiction, Cartesian Sonata and Other Novellas, was published in 1998. His work has also appeared in The Best American Essays collections of 1986, 1992, and 2000.
Gass has cited the anger he felt during his childhood as a major influence on his work, even stating that he writes "to get even." Despite his prolific output, he has said that writing is difficult for him. In fact, his epic novel The Tunnel, published in 1995, took Gass 26 years to compose. An unabridged audio version of The Tunnel was released in 2006, with Gass reading the novel himself.
When writing, Gass typically devotes enormous attention to the construction of sentences, arguing their importance as the basis of his work. His prose has been described as flashy, difficult, edgy, masterful, inventive, and musical. Steven Moore, writing in The Washington Post has called Gass "the finest prose stylist in America." Much of Gass' work is metafictional.
Gass has received many awards and honors, including grants from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1965, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 1970. He won the Pushcart Prize awards in 1976, 1983, 1987, and 1992, and in 1994 he received the Mark Twain Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Literature of the Midwest. He has teaching awards from Purdue University and Washington University; in 1968 the Chicago Tribune Award as One of the Ten Best Teachers in the Big Ten. He was a Getty Foundation Fellow in 1991-1992. He received the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997; and the American Book Award for The
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews
September 12, 2014
Rilke is great writer, Gass is a great writer, naturally from a prose point of view this book is excellent.
There are four main sections to the book.
The first, a somewhat subjective biographic sketch of Rilke is intelligent and insightful if debatable on points. 4 stars
The second is Gass comparing his translation of specific lines to those of prior translators and explaining why they are stupid and wrong. This section was an unenjoyable flashback to many academic conferences and lecture room where scholars (usually, like Gass, old white men) did exactly the same thing. Egotism is ugly and egotism at the expense of those who aren't present to defend themselves is uglier. If you insist upon this sort of mine-is-bigger display at least have the modesty to get some friend to do it for you in a review so you don't look like a smug jerk. 2 stars
The third section is a consideration of Rilke's compositional process and the idea of "inspiration" and is focused on the Duino Elegies. 3 stars
The final segment of the book is Gass' translations. Like all later translators of oft-translated authors, Gass is faced with the problem of justifying the need for having another translation at all (not that he explicitly addresses this). Like many in his position he errs on the side of novelty over fidelity. Interesting but I would never recommend Gass as the "best" translation. 3 stars.
May 16, 2010
Spellbinding in a way only a book about translations of a singularly visionary poet could be. Very cordially recommended for any fan of Rilke- and there ought to be many, I say.
It's a really interesting opportunity to really read RMR's poetry from the inside out, as one might look under the bottom of a car and see all the gears, valves, tubes and metals clicking together underneath.
Translation's a bitch and a half, especially if you want to try and carry some of Rilke's work across the threshold to the reader. Incidentally, I'm not being flowery when I say that- the word 'translate' means to carry across...
There's also no lack of the biographical background that contributed but does not define the poems in whole- I mean, honestly, what could?
Gass is more than willing to let Rilke speak for himself, but...ah...just how might that be done?!
December 15, 2024
Essential Gass and essential Rilke. I read the Elegies in here alongside Mitchell’s translation. Went between the books a stanza at a time and then read each translation in its entirety afterward. What an experience. Maybe the closest thing to climbing into someone else’s consciousness. Here is this thing that two different people are looking at, you can’t see the thing itself, but you can enter their heads and hear their thoughts about the thing. Pure perspective, two angles. Anyway, Rilke can make one go momentarily a bit woo. Woo-hoo!
August 16, 2023
As Borges has taught us, all the books in the library are contemporary.
My initial review ascended to the Aether before I was able to publish. Why do we think that the lost works are our best ones?
I give ten stars to the Duino Elegies but there was a fare to be paid for enduring the stations of discussion with Mr. Gass. I tend to chafe at the authorial voice of Gass, both his criticism and his fiction. Maybe it is a Midwestern thing?
Gass gives a series of essays regarding Rilke. There isn't much continuity in terms of sequence nor is there much imbrication if we wish to think spatially. The tone is biographical and somehow irreverent, if only in a folksy manner. Gass surveys other translations of the Elegies and parses words in terms of rhythm and rhyme. He accuses Rilke of lacking an interest in the transcendent. I have a problem with that. Gass estimates that Rilke allowed his art to season in solitude and that was the eschatology necessary. His portrait is like a Wallace Stevens who left the insurance business and then courted hopeless affairs while waiting for disease to claim him.
I think I'm going to read another translation of the Elegies and compare the two.
My initial review ascended to the Aether before I was able to publish. Why do we think that the lost works are our best ones?
I give ten stars to the Duino Elegies but there was a fare to be paid for enduring the stations of discussion with Mr. Gass. I tend to chafe at the authorial voice of Gass, both his criticism and his fiction. Maybe it is a Midwestern thing?
Gass gives a series of essays regarding Rilke. There isn't much continuity in terms of sequence nor is there much imbrication if we wish to think spatially. The tone is biographical and somehow irreverent, if only in a folksy manner. Gass surveys other translations of the Elegies and parses words in terms of rhythm and rhyme. He accuses Rilke of lacking an interest in the transcendent. I have a problem with that. Gass estimates that Rilke allowed his art to season in solitude and that was the eschatology necessary. His portrait is like a Wallace Stevens who left the insurance business and then courted hopeless affairs while waiting for disease to claim him.
I think I'm going to read another translation of the Elegies and compare the two.
April 8, 2018
Helped me understand Gass’ adoration of Rilke which is more than enough.
January 10, 2015
M.J.'s review of Habitations of the Word: Essays reminded me that I had reviewed this book by Gass for the Washington Post way back in 1999, and forgot to include it here.
Translating a literary work tends to be more an act of love than does literary criticism or biography. But sadly, translating rarely accompanies, not to mention animates, these more common scholarly acts. Love gives way to analysis, theory, and exposure.
Thus it is fortunate that the award-winning literary essayist and novelist William H. Gass has approached the great early-twentieth-century German-language poet Rainer Maria Rilke not only through criticism and biography, but also by translating his poetry. And translating it with much more than love: with the understanding of a first-rate critic and the ear, imagination, and other skills of a first-rate writer.
The result is a genre-free book that is a joy to read, reflecting Gass's own joy in reading Rilke. Like most of Gass's essays, it wanders through a jungle of ideas and images, and then suddenly beats a series of clearly marked, though often forking, paths toward a clearing. For Gass's free-wheeling imagination is balanced by a philosopher's love of order. Reading Rilke is not, then, a book easy to describe; it's hard even to say whom it is primarily for: newcomers to Rilke or long-time lovers of his work. It is more like a work of art itself, being rather than serving a purpose.
To the extent the book is biographical, it is not descriptive of the subject's life as much as it is descriptive of (and speculative about) the forming of his consciousness. That is, Gass is most interested in looking at how Rilke's life and thought affected his poetry. His biography is focused, an attempt to explain how the poetry came to come from Rilke when it did, and especially how it culminated in the book's destination, the Duino Elegies (Gass's translation of these complete the book).
I appreciate a focused biography, where the author has a reason for including each of its details, and cares more about the work than the man. This book is an excellent realization of what Gass said about biography in his collection The World Within the Word. Reviewing a biography of William Faulkner, he wrote, "Faulkner's life was nothing until it found its way into Faulkner's language." I wonder how many of us there are who would like this to form the basis of more literary biographies.
The translations themselves reflect Gass's love of form, affinity with Rilke, and devotion to writing that cries to be read out loud, as Rilke's poetry does. His criticism, too, is full of wonderful images, epigrams, and prose.
The major weakness of Reading Rilke is the subject of its subtitle, that is, Gass's "reflections on the problems of translation." We can start with the subtitle itself: why the "problems" of translation? Why not its challenges, its joys, its possibilities? Also, the subtitle incorrectly makes the book seem akin to John Felstiner's book Translating Neruda, where, unlike here, translation is the central act of interpretation.
Fortunately, the two chapters on translation make up only a quarter of the book. Gass does not say anything new about translation, and what he does say is disrespectful of translators and the art of literary translation. He sees translators as people who are out to harm art, to force their lesser selves upon greater things. At one point, he writes disparagingly, "'it's my translation,' [translators] say as they sign it, as if their work were the work of art. How should we fare if printers did the same . . . ?" As if literary translators were no more artists than printers.
Because he so worships the original work, the usually free-thinking Gass unquestioningly accepts the usual prejudices against translation, talking negatively about its impossibility, its sacrifices, and its mistakes. And he states his prejudices with unattractive venom.
Translating a poet as difficult as Rilke is hardly typical literary translation. Attacking translation on the basis of translating Rilke is like attacking acting on the basis of portraying Hamlet. Acting too would seem nearly impossible, and it would be easy to show how actor after actor fell short. Given less extreme challenges, actors and translators both seem more competent performers.
Thankfully, while Gass falls short as a critic of translation, he does not fall short as a translator or as a critic or as a biographer. He is at his best as a critic who is translating, interpreting poetry both from the outside and the inside, both in the form of an essay and in the form of poetry. This is where his love is most valuable to the reader: his love of Rilke's alliteration, his love of Rilke's contradictions, his love of Rilke's transformations (the subtitle should have been "Reflections on Transformation"), and his joy at seeing and showing how they all fit together.
Translating a literary work tends to be more an act of love than does literary criticism or biography. But sadly, translating rarely accompanies, not to mention animates, these more common scholarly acts. Love gives way to analysis, theory, and exposure.
Thus it is fortunate that the award-winning literary essayist and novelist William H. Gass has approached the great early-twentieth-century German-language poet Rainer Maria Rilke not only through criticism and biography, but also by translating his poetry. And translating it with much more than love: with the understanding of a first-rate critic and the ear, imagination, and other skills of a first-rate writer.
The result is a genre-free book that is a joy to read, reflecting Gass's own joy in reading Rilke. Like most of Gass's essays, it wanders through a jungle of ideas and images, and then suddenly beats a series of clearly marked, though often forking, paths toward a clearing. For Gass's free-wheeling imagination is balanced by a philosopher's love of order. Reading Rilke is not, then, a book easy to describe; it's hard even to say whom it is primarily for: newcomers to Rilke or long-time lovers of his work. It is more like a work of art itself, being rather than serving a purpose.
To the extent the book is biographical, it is not descriptive of the subject's life as much as it is descriptive of (and speculative about) the forming of his consciousness. That is, Gass is most interested in looking at how Rilke's life and thought affected his poetry. His biography is focused, an attempt to explain how the poetry came to come from Rilke when it did, and especially how it culminated in the book's destination, the Duino Elegies (Gass's translation of these complete the book).
I appreciate a focused biography, where the author has a reason for including each of its details, and cares more about the work than the man. This book is an excellent realization of what Gass said about biography in his collection The World Within the Word. Reviewing a biography of William Faulkner, he wrote, "Faulkner's life was nothing until it found its way into Faulkner's language." I wonder how many of us there are who would like this to form the basis of more literary biographies.
The translations themselves reflect Gass's love of form, affinity with Rilke, and devotion to writing that cries to be read out loud, as Rilke's poetry does. His criticism, too, is full of wonderful images, epigrams, and prose.
The major weakness of Reading Rilke is the subject of its subtitle, that is, Gass's "reflections on the problems of translation." We can start with the subtitle itself: why the "problems" of translation? Why not its challenges, its joys, its possibilities? Also, the subtitle incorrectly makes the book seem akin to John Felstiner's book Translating Neruda, where, unlike here, translation is the central act of interpretation.
Fortunately, the two chapters on translation make up only a quarter of the book. Gass does not say anything new about translation, and what he does say is disrespectful of translators and the art of literary translation. He sees translators as people who are out to harm art, to force their lesser selves upon greater things. At one point, he writes disparagingly, "'it's my translation,' [translators] say as they sign it, as if their work were the work of art. How should we fare if printers did the same . . . ?" As if literary translators were no more artists than printers.
Because he so worships the original work, the usually free-thinking Gass unquestioningly accepts the usual prejudices against translation, talking negatively about its impossibility, its sacrifices, and its mistakes. And he states his prejudices with unattractive venom.
Translating a poet as difficult as Rilke is hardly typical literary translation. Attacking translation on the basis of translating Rilke is like attacking acting on the basis of portraying Hamlet. Acting too would seem nearly impossible, and it would be easy to show how actor after actor fell short. Given less extreme challenges, actors and translators both seem more competent performers.
Thankfully, while Gass falls short as a critic of translation, he does not fall short as a translator or as a critic or as a biographer. He is at his best as a critic who is translating, interpreting poetry both from the outside and the inside, both in the form of an essay and in the form of poetry. This is where his love is most valuable to the reader: his love of Rilke's alliteration, his love of Rilke's contradictions, his love of Rilke's transformations (the subtitle should have been "Reflections on Transformation"), and his joy at seeing and showing how they all fit together.
July 15, 2019
Greater appreciation for Rilke from reading this. I need to get some Gass essays. Loved his prose in this.
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May 20, 2017The appeal of Reading Rilke is the same appeal of many of Gass’s essays ;; looking over the shoulder of a Master Reader as he.... reads.
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A Note on the Type
“This book was set in Fairfield, the first typeface from the hand of the distinguished American artist and engraver Rudolph Ruzicka (1883-1978). In its structure Fairfield displays the sober and sane qualities of the master craftsman whose talent has long been dedicated to clarity. It is the trait that accounts for the trim grace and virility, the spirited design and sensitive balance, of this original typeface.
“Rudolph Ruzicka was born in Bohemia and came to America in 1894. He set up his own shop, devoted to wood engraving and printing, in New York in 1913 after a varied career working as a wood engraver, in photoengraving and bank-note printing plants, and as an art director and freelance artist. He designed and illustrated any books, and was the creator of a considerable list of individual prints--wood engravings, line engravings on copper, and aquatints.
“Composed by Dix Type, Syracuse, New York
Printed and bound by R.R. Donneley and Sons,
Harrisonburg, Virginia
Designed by Peter A. Anderson.”
______________
A Note on the Type
“This book was set in Fairfield, the first typeface from the hand of the distinguished American artist and engraver Rudolph Ruzicka (1883-1978). In its structure Fairfield displays the sober and sane qualities of the master craftsman whose talent has long been dedicated to clarity. It is the trait that accounts for the trim grace and virility, the spirited design and sensitive balance, of this original typeface.
“Rudolph Ruzicka was born in Bohemia and came to America in 1894. He set up his own shop, devoted to wood engraving and printing, in New York in 1913 after a varied career working as a wood engraver, in photoengraving and bank-note printing plants, and as an art director and freelance artist. He designed and illustrated any books, and was the creator of a considerable list of individual prints--wood engravings, line engravings on copper, and aquatints.
“Composed by Dix Type, Syracuse, New York
Printed and bound by R.R. Donneley and Sons,
Harrisonburg, Virginia
Designed by Peter A. Anderson.”
April 18, 2024
Is poetry the elevation of silliness into the sublime??? Gass is onto something there!
In all seriousness, I loved most of this work. Really fascinated by Rilke’s life (and loves!), supplemented with rich prose on the fruit rind that is the poet (you’ll get this if you’re Rilke-pilled…I’m sobbing as I write this). Gass has an incredible style. I wanted to eat this book.
The star that got knocked off is on account of Gass’ translations of the Duino Elegies. While amazing works, I didn’t think they compared well to the softer, reverent translations by Mitchell. The Sixth Elegy hit better when the fig tree was almost bursting rather than just plain bursting.
In all seriousness, I loved most of this work. Really fascinated by Rilke’s life (and loves!), supplemented with rich prose on the fruit rind that is the poet (you’ll get this if you’re Rilke-pilled…I’m sobbing as I write this). Gass has an incredible style. I wanted to eat this book.
The star that got knocked off is on account of Gass’ translations of the Duino Elegies. While amazing works, I didn’t think they compared well to the softer, reverent translations by Mitchell. The Sixth Elegy hit better when the fig tree was almost bursting rather than just plain bursting.
January 25, 2010
Gives a crack of light into Rilke’s DUINO ELEGIES (Gass includes his translation of the ELEGIES in this book of biography and sharp literary criticism, with a dose of philosophy); very dense but clear prose, slow going; triggers that too-familiar sense of disappointment in the Great Artist who’s (no surprise) a lousy husband who abandons his child and who prefers the rich for company and the poor for writing material, but the book triggers more than that too—this bit helps to dethrone my inner judge and helps me to see some of myself in him:
“…Rilke felt himself to be a failure and a fraud except when he was writing. Then he was the writer who he wished was the man he wasn’t. Then he was the lover he hoped could—as we say now—commit. Rilke understood his shortcomings so thoroughly that his knowing was a shortcoming. But on the page, in a poem, the contradictions which were his chief affliction could be reconciled. There he could answer every question with ‘I praise.’” (170)
Gass is amazing, razor-sharp; I love how he synthesizes all the research; he offers fascinating comparisons of translated lines, reminding me of Eliot Weinberger’s NINETEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT WANG WEI.
Another gem: “Finally, Rilke learned what seeing is, and then he learned to see. ‘To see’ means to taste and thereby to ‘dance the orange,’ to touch and feel at one’s finger end a little eternity, to smell ourselves cloud like steam from a warm cup, to hear voices, to listen so intensely you rise straight from the ground.” (41)
“…Rilke felt himself to be a failure and a fraud except when he was writing. Then he was the writer who he wished was the man he wasn’t. Then he was the lover he hoped could—as we say now—commit. Rilke understood his shortcomings so thoroughly that his knowing was a shortcoming. But on the page, in a poem, the contradictions which were his chief affliction could be reconciled. There he could answer every question with ‘I praise.’” (170)
Gass is amazing, razor-sharp; I love how he synthesizes all the research; he offers fascinating comparisons of translated lines, reminding me of Eliot Weinberger’s NINETEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT WANG WEI.
Another gem: “Finally, Rilke learned what seeing is, and then he learned to see. ‘To see’ means to taste and thereby to ‘dance the orange,’ to touch and feel at one’s finger end a little eternity, to smell ourselves cloud like steam from a warm cup, to hear voices, to listen so intensely you rise straight from the ground.” (41)
September 30, 2024
For a book on translating Rilke, Gass is by far one of Rilke's worst translators. He breaks down the Duino Elegies to compare a dozen English versions, and his is usually the clumsiest. With the famous first line, he prefers "angels' dominion" to "hierarchy of the angels" though it's a politico-legal term that doesn't capture the sense of vertical space. (In his letters, Rilke was thinking of Florentine paintings in the Uffizi, not the boundaries of city-states, which he could not have been less interested in.) Elsewhere the "terror of the angels" is scrapped for a defunct adjective in "The angels are awesome." Mitchell and Snow are the best in English, but Rilke is so often published in cheap bilingual editions that I wonder why people like Gass pay more attention to all the bad translations.
Another problem is how Gass relies on the Ralph Freedman biography which is notoriously nasty. (Donald Prater is more fair, but Rilke still has no great biographer in English.) One example is how Freedman pathologizes Rilke's love affairs: they begin passionately, then cool off. Apparently this is unusual! Gass cites it as one of Freedman's great insights. Rilke was hardly a morally upstanding person, but not everything about him needs to be treated like a special case.
Another problem is how Gass relies on the Ralph Freedman biography which is notoriously nasty. (Donald Prater is more fair, but Rilke still has no great biographer in English.) One example is how Freedman pathologizes Rilke's love affairs: they begin passionately, then cool off. Apparently this is unusual! Gass cites it as one of Freedman's great insights. Rilke was hardly a morally upstanding person, but not everything about him needs to be treated like a special case.
March 15, 2013
How do you pronounce Rilke? Probably not as I pronounce it, for the way I pronounce it is fluid, every changing, poetic even. William H. Gass, now that's a name I can wrap my lips around. I've wanted to read both writers and here they are hiding together in plain sight, so I thought why not kill two birds with one book. I'll definitely read more of both of these odd ducks. I'll need to, I only understood about a third of what I read, but I liked the way it sounded. That's been my thing with poetry. It never came to me as comfortably as prose, but when I gave up trying to understand and listened I found an entry. Gass does his best to explain Rilke through biography and translation, by focusing almost exclusively and granularly on Rilke's Elegies -- all ten of which are translated in their entirety at the end of the book. There's a lot of playful, dense language that i often had to read aloud to get through, but it was nice hearing my own voice in such company.
January 24, 2018
If Rilke when Rilke is perfect is indeed perfect I think it is because in Rilke we find a whole insoluble metaphysics magisterially conjoined w/ work that is always addressing in its business the matter of the poet's vocation. Gass knows the poems as well as anyone possibly can and has no peer when it comes to unpacking the vocation. I love that Gass makes mention of Cézanne. I have often said that Cézanne (as a painter) is my favourite poet. I have said this (repeatedly) not just to be provocative (but yes to be provocative), but because I mean it; I mean that poetry and painting and music and cinema and all the arts are one and that Impressionism is their proper name and poetry their degree zero. It may be the poet who most purely breathes the world in and then breathes something of it, altered indelibly, back out again. Oh, Gass makes explicit mention of breathing, as he must, as we must. (There is a chapter entitled "Inhalation in a God.") The breathing in: what Gass has as "Withinwarding" in his translation of the extraordinary seventh elegy. The breathing out: yes, out comes the annunciation stamped w/ impression, a fledgling Angel-work, song, Orpheus-stuff as (to paraphrase Gass) immortal as anything in our mortal world can be. READING RILKE is one of the finest things I have ever read, written by the finest writer of English sentences I know. The writing is decorous and sublime, but the critical eye is humbling in its lucidity as well. The book is composed of seven chapters followed by Gass's translations of the ten DUINO ELEGIES. Each of the seven chapters is conceived and executed as a very separate self-contained block, though all unfailingly serve the whole. The book is both about Rilke (it begins w/ the biographical) and reading Rilke, especially reading Rilke from the perspective of the translator. I love Rilke. Rilke is a God to me. And Gass does sublime service to this God. But as for the epistemology and mechanics of translation, subjects about which I have read absolutely nothing at its level of mastery, I find myself incomparably enriched by my encounter w/ READING RILKE. The reader and the translator both participate in a withinwarding of the text. The translator breathes out celestial music, altered, sure, but if he or she has done service to the work (each work demanding different kinds of reverence) he or she will have done a very commendable service indeed (both to his or herself and to the reader). I would say without compunction that Gass's essay on Gertrude Stein from his collection THE WORLD WITHIN THE WORD is possibly the most virtuoso writing I have ever read in the realm of textual analysis (or, more strictly, close reading). "Ein Gott Vermags," the chapter where Gass gets into the minutiae of all the extant translations of the elegies, comparing them, parsing them, sharing the what, the why, and the wherefore of his own contributions, is a dazzling tour de force. This is writing about writing (and re-writing, counter-writing) that produces total awe. Elsewhere Gass goes deeper into the depths, dances more enigmatically. He never puts a foot wrong. READING RILKE is a stupefying achievement (the translations alone!). Should I be surprised? William H. Gass continues to be one of the greatest things that ever happened to me.
February 21, 2020
Love Rilke; love Gass; did not love Gass' Rilke. For someone who consistently (pettily and often nonsensically) badmouths translators throughout, Gass' own translations are often quite bad. There isn't much evidence of a sophisticated command of translation theory or its large and varied body of scholarship--and why should there be, when he dismisses most of it out of hand? Other reviewers have also noted his problematic over-reliance on a single, somewhat sensational biography of Rilke... I would have much preferred just a series of essays on Rilke, leaving aside translation altogether: Gass is much more congenial as a Reader than as a Philosopher (and, we should add, a Translator).
July 4, 2020
"Love is always dreamed before it is performed"
Yo descubrí a Rilke gracias a Gass, y leerlo a Gass hablando sobre Rilke, en cualquier circunstancia, es un golazo. ¿Qué mas puedo pedir?
Yo descubrí a Rilke gracias a Gass, y leerlo a Gass hablando sobre Rilke, en cualquier circunstancia, es un golazo. ¿Qué mas puedo pedir?
August 2, 2025
9 'It would be tempting to organize Rilke’s biography around such themes, because the themes are there: the significance of the rose, the mirror, the unicorn, the puppet, the fountain, or the pathos (as for Poe) of the death of a young woman; his increasing “belief in animism (that all things, as well as the parts of all things, are filled with life); the notion that we grow our death inside us like a talent or a tumor; that we are here to realize the world, to raise it, like Lazarus, from its sullen numb- ness into consciousness; that differences are never absolute, but that everything (life and death, for instance) lies on a con- tinuum, as colors do; that we are strangers in a world of strangers; that simple people have a deeper understanding of their existence than most, and an insight into the secret rhythms of nature. These themes are like tides that rise and fall inside him, as if he were just their bay and receptive shoreline.'
20 'So when one of us turns aside from living in order to admire life; when a rose petal is allowed to cool an eyelid; when a line of charcoal depicts the inviting length of a thigh; we are no longer going in nature’s direction but contrary to it. What was never meant for us becomes ours entirely; what never had a use is suddenly all we need.'
34 'Hence all those letters, of course, a prodigious output of prose, prose which rehearsed his life so it might play as a poem.'
44 'Rilke s strategy for the defeat of time was to turn it into space. In that way what was passing—and everything was—merely passed on to another part of reality. Sometimes, if it were the water of a fountain, its changing never changed. And the observer s inner world would be spread out inside him like an alpine meadow or even an armed camp or an independent country, despite the fact that consciousness has no objective location. Emotions could be measured and sited among the mountains of the heart, so when love died, it died of closeness and confinement, not from aging or duration.'
44 'It was leukemia, the cancer that kills children, the cancer that claimed his daughter’s playmate Wera Knoop; an illness of the blood we know now is most often borne by our genes, and is therefore the death sent by our ancestors: the ragged core of a sweet apple to erupt—sore and swollen—in the poet's mouth [...] Refusing narcotics in order to keep a clear head, the better to confront his illness, Rilke wrote letters to friends describing his agony, a few lines of verse too, no longer French, inscribed on flyleafs. He also composed his testament in which he begged his intimates, should his faculties be dimmed, to prevent any priestly intervention when his soul "moved into the open."'
49 'And there is no reason at all why we should have to forget, reading Holderlin, everything we know that came after him. As Borges has taught us, all the books in the library are contemporary. Great poems are like granaries: they are always ready to enlarge their store.'
50 'Holderlin’s swan, sailing between earth and water, its own image riding beside it, and drunk with the kisses which convey the primeness of life, sobers itself by sipping from the cup of consequence: that the first half of one’s history will linger on in the second half only in recollection.'
52 'The sonnet shape is as powerful as a right-wing religious group, however, conservative to the core, and snooty to boot.'
58 'No one. The mountains of the heart entertain no echo. The Abyss does not respond. Heaven is as indifferent as the land. The ocean holds no intermission.'
69 'To this point the translators’ task has been reasonably easy which has not prevented a number of them from creating special difficulties of their own the way a drunk will bend the straightest road'
71 'The [translation] result, of course, is the record of a reading, and almost never a poem—not the economical setting down of a critical interpretation, although the interpretation must take place, but one step beyond that toward the compound, multispliced and engineered, performance which emerges from a recording studio.'
105 'One night, standing on one of the bridges that spans the Tagus, Rilke watched a meteor sear the dark sky, and retained its image for several poems. Were the Elegies to arrive in a brightness like the meteor's, only to burn up in the blaze of their own being?'
109 'Of course we cannot ignore the differences between mathematical discoveries and poetic connections, because mathematical problems are well-defined and specific (for the most part), whereas poems can seem to pop up like toast from an empty toaster [...] Better than almost any other poet, Rilke understood that relations between elements, not the elements themselves, were at the heart of any art, and that these relations made up its "space," and were the source of a poem's "geometry."'
from Requiem for a Friend
I’ve had my dead, and l let them go
and was surprised to see them so consoled,
so soon at home in being dead, so right,
so unlike their reputation. Only you,
you come back, brush by me, move about,
bump into something that will betray
your presence with a sound. Oh, don’t take frommewhatI wasslowlylearning.You’remistaken if you feel homesick for anything here.
We alter all of it; whatever we perceive
is instantly reflected from ourselves,
and is no longer there. (125)
142 'To breathe, to see, feel, touch, taste, hear, smell, realize the world, widely, without judgment or repudiation: this was the first task—to allow the world in. To inhale all, to swallow all, to become the place observed. For no more reason than its recognition. Such openness permits the initial transformation that the Elegies demand; for when we breathe, when we see, feel, touch, taste, hear the world, we alter its materiality profoundly. What was simply an emitted signal, the outcry of a thing to let us know it was there, becomes a quality in consciousness. The object is visible because its messages can be received, but the message itself is invisible; it is nowhere; or, rather, it is now in an inner space, not the space between our ears, but the space between what our ears hear. Rilke called it innerworldspace. He liked to imagine that the material world of flux was, with its signaling, beseeching us to become conscious of it, to realize it fully, free it from its grave.'
186 'The poem is thus a paradox. It is made of air. It vanishes as the things it speaks about vanish. It is made of music, like us, "the most fleeting of all” yet it is also made of meaning that’s as immortal as immortal gets on our mortal earth; because the poem will return, will begin again, as spring returns: it can be said again, sung again, is our only answered prayer; the poem can be carried about more easily than a purse, and I don’t have to wait, when I want it, for a violinist to get in key, it can come immediately to mind—to my mind because it is my poem as much as it is yours—because, like a song, it can be sung in many places at once—and danced as well, because the poem becomes a condition of the body, it enlivens our bones, and they dance the orange, they dance the Hardy, the Hopkins, the Valery, the Yeats; because the poem is a state of the soul, too (the soul we once had), and these states change as all else does, and these states mingle and conflict and grow weak or strong, and even if these verbalized moments of consciousness suggest things which are unjust or untrue when mistaken for statements, when rightly written they are real; they themselves are as absolutely as we achieve the Real in this unrealized life—are—are with a vengeance; because, oddly enough, though what has been celebrated is over, and one’s own life, the life of the celebrant, may be over, the celebration is not over. The celebration goes on.'
from The Eighth Elegy
All other creatures look into the Open
with their whole eyes. Our eyes, instead, go round the other way,
setting snares and traps on every path to freedom.
[...]
We've never had that sort of pure space before us,
into which flowers endlessly open—no, not for a single day—
there's always the interpreted world, and even our
abstract realms reflect a repeated yes or no:
never that pure unmonitored element one breathes,
naturally knows, and never craves. (210)
20 'So when one of us turns aside from living in order to admire life; when a rose petal is allowed to cool an eyelid; when a line of charcoal depicts the inviting length of a thigh; we are no longer going in nature’s direction but contrary to it. What was never meant for us becomes ours entirely; what never had a use is suddenly all we need.'
34 'Hence all those letters, of course, a prodigious output of prose, prose which rehearsed his life so it might play as a poem.'
44 'Rilke s strategy for the defeat of time was to turn it into space. In that way what was passing—and everything was—merely passed on to another part of reality. Sometimes, if it were the water of a fountain, its changing never changed. And the observer s inner world would be spread out inside him like an alpine meadow or even an armed camp or an independent country, despite the fact that consciousness has no objective location. Emotions could be measured and sited among the mountains of the heart, so when love died, it died of closeness and confinement, not from aging or duration.'
44 'It was leukemia, the cancer that kills children, the cancer that claimed his daughter’s playmate Wera Knoop; an illness of the blood we know now is most often borne by our genes, and is therefore the death sent by our ancestors: the ragged core of a sweet apple to erupt—sore and swollen—in the poet's mouth [...] Refusing narcotics in order to keep a clear head, the better to confront his illness, Rilke wrote letters to friends describing his agony, a few lines of verse too, no longer French, inscribed on flyleafs. He also composed his testament in which he begged his intimates, should his faculties be dimmed, to prevent any priestly intervention when his soul "moved into the open."'
49 'And there is no reason at all why we should have to forget, reading Holderlin, everything we know that came after him. As Borges has taught us, all the books in the library are contemporary. Great poems are like granaries: they are always ready to enlarge their store.'
50 'Holderlin’s swan, sailing between earth and water, its own image riding beside it, and drunk with the kisses which convey the primeness of life, sobers itself by sipping from the cup of consequence: that the first half of one’s history will linger on in the second half only in recollection.'
52 'The sonnet shape is as powerful as a right-wing religious group, however, conservative to the core, and snooty to boot.'
58 'No one. The mountains of the heart entertain no echo. The Abyss does not respond. Heaven is as indifferent as the land. The ocean holds no intermission.'
69 'To this point the translators’ task has been reasonably easy which has not prevented a number of them from creating special difficulties of their own the way a drunk will bend the straightest road'
71 'The [translation] result, of course, is the record of a reading, and almost never a poem—not the economical setting down of a critical interpretation, although the interpretation must take place, but one step beyond that toward the compound, multispliced and engineered, performance which emerges from a recording studio.'
105 'One night, standing on one of the bridges that spans the Tagus, Rilke watched a meteor sear the dark sky, and retained its image for several poems. Were the Elegies to arrive in a brightness like the meteor's, only to burn up in the blaze of their own being?'
109 'Of course we cannot ignore the differences between mathematical discoveries and poetic connections, because mathematical problems are well-defined and specific (for the most part), whereas poems can seem to pop up like toast from an empty toaster [...] Better than almost any other poet, Rilke understood that relations between elements, not the elements themselves, were at the heart of any art, and that these relations made up its "space," and were the source of a poem's "geometry."'
from Requiem for a Friend
I’ve had my dead, and l let them go
and was surprised to see them so consoled,
so soon at home in being dead, so right,
so unlike their reputation. Only you,
you come back, brush by me, move about,
bump into something that will betray
your presence with a sound. Oh, don’t take frommewhatI wasslowlylearning.You’remistaken if you feel homesick for anything here.
We alter all of it; whatever we perceive
is instantly reflected from ourselves,
and is no longer there. (125)
142 'To breathe, to see, feel, touch, taste, hear, smell, realize the world, widely, without judgment or repudiation: this was the first task—to allow the world in. To inhale all, to swallow all, to become the place observed. For no more reason than its recognition. Such openness permits the initial transformation that the Elegies demand; for when we breathe, when we see, feel, touch, taste, hear the world, we alter its materiality profoundly. What was simply an emitted signal, the outcry of a thing to let us know it was there, becomes a quality in consciousness. The object is visible because its messages can be received, but the message itself is invisible; it is nowhere; or, rather, it is now in an inner space, not the space between our ears, but the space between what our ears hear. Rilke called it innerworldspace. He liked to imagine that the material world of flux was, with its signaling, beseeching us to become conscious of it, to realize it fully, free it from its grave.'
186 'The poem is thus a paradox. It is made of air. It vanishes as the things it speaks about vanish. It is made of music, like us, "the most fleeting of all” yet it is also made of meaning that’s as immortal as immortal gets on our mortal earth; because the poem will return, will begin again, as spring returns: it can be said again, sung again, is our only answered prayer; the poem can be carried about more easily than a purse, and I don’t have to wait, when I want it, for a violinist to get in key, it can come immediately to mind—to my mind because it is my poem as much as it is yours—because, like a song, it can be sung in many places at once—and danced as well, because the poem becomes a condition of the body, it enlivens our bones, and they dance the orange, they dance the Hardy, the Hopkins, the Valery, the Yeats; because the poem is a state of the soul, too (the soul we once had), and these states change as all else does, and these states mingle and conflict and grow weak or strong, and even if these verbalized moments of consciousness suggest things which are unjust or untrue when mistaken for statements, when rightly written they are real; they themselves are as absolutely as we achieve the Real in this unrealized life—are—are with a vengeance; because, oddly enough, though what has been celebrated is over, and one’s own life, the life of the celebrant, may be over, the celebration is not over. The celebration goes on.'
from The Eighth Elegy
All other creatures look into the Open
with their whole eyes. Our eyes, instead, go round the other way,
setting snares and traps on every path to freedom.
[...]
We've never had that sort of pure space before us,
into which flowers endlessly open—no, not for a single day—
there's always the interpreted world, and even our
abstract realms reflect a repeated yes or no:
never that pure unmonitored element one breathes,
naturally knows, and never craves. (210)
December 20, 2021
Meh. Gass feels like he's straining to write "poetically," and the result is prose both affected and flat.
June 14, 2018
reading rilke is an interesting book (of course, given its writer and subject) for its oddness.
here we have gass, the arch materialist of american fiction, the man who believed there was nothing at all beyond this world (if there is he knows what it is now, and is hopefully pleasantly surprised) the man who used his lifelong engagement with philosophy to pick holes in its abstractions, who didn't have a philosophical standpoint because he was so smart he could pick holes in anyone else's; on the other hand we have possibly /the/ transcendental poet, the man who shaped his life so that his art would strike him like lightning suddenly when the time was right.
one would think gass would oppose himself to this man he thinks represents everything foolish about artists. but rilke is his favourite writer.
of course he once said this in an interview only to follow it up by saying rilke was full of shit and his ideas were totally worthless, and that heidegger's ideas were worthless too (even absent the naziism gass also scorned (especially elsewhere)) because he took rilke seriously.
gass denigrates the very application of the word "philosophical" to rilke's work, which is unserious in its thinking, its serious in its feelings. committed atheist that he is gass also denies the religiosity of rilkes poetry as the reason for its power.
so what does this leave? the poems themselves of course, the words on the page. this is what gass cares about, and what he gives us. gass's words in themselves are overwhelmingly gorgeous and powerful for their sheer beauty, so he is a good match for his subject here. this is a man who denies all other forms of transcendence faced with one he cannot deny, one that makes him raise his arms and cry out (as rilke does, although gass's cry is ecstatic).
as a dimwit monoglot i cannot speak to gass's translations as to how well they carry across rilke himself into english, but his versions make me feel everything he says rilke makes him feel, so he is a success for that.
again as a dimwit who's never read rilke before (and a devoted gass fanatic) i cannot even speak to gass's translations as compared to others, i much preferred his to the snippets he gave us of the competition.
now in the gassian style i will pick apart the approaches of those before me, although since my subjects are in fact here to defend themselves i'll not name names.
to address those who came before you is common practice for translators of much translated works, and of course a translator is going to prefer their version because its going to emphasise what they think most important and fill gaps where they've felt them previously. especially in works like this one, labours of love rather than of commission. from the way these passages were talked about i assumed they appeared much more, and given the usual ratio of matter about the translation to the translations themselves in this volume is inverted it's not surprising they appear more than once. but gass's attitude does not (to me) read like the vanity he's accused of elsewhere, he recognises where he falls short and admits the successes of others. he disparages failures because he cares, and i'd much rather read someone who cares enough to be wounded by someone affronting rilke by translating him poorly than someone who doesn't.
he is accused of attacking those not there to defend themselves, well of course they're not, it's a work of criticism, it's a book about his theory of translation and his translations. if you want to read about someone else's translations go read them write about it.
as for the critical matter itself it is like an extended gassian essay, which is of course something we should savour every drop of. even his acknowledgements are more beautifully written than most writers' entire careers, at points i found myself more carried away by the glory of it than by almost anything. i knew nothing about rilke before and now i want to know more, although even if denied anything else about him this book would be more than enough. isn't that all you can hope for in non-fiction?
i read this in preparation for a forthcoming reread of gravity's rainbow, for which i am now drooling at the mouth even more, and in odd moments between my daily chunk of women and men (which i hit page 1000 of today and should be done with soon)
here we have gass, the arch materialist of american fiction, the man who believed there was nothing at all beyond this world (if there is he knows what it is now, and is hopefully pleasantly surprised) the man who used his lifelong engagement with philosophy to pick holes in its abstractions, who didn't have a philosophical standpoint because he was so smart he could pick holes in anyone else's; on the other hand we have possibly /the/ transcendental poet, the man who shaped his life so that his art would strike him like lightning suddenly when the time was right.
one would think gass would oppose himself to this man he thinks represents everything foolish about artists. but rilke is his favourite writer.
of course he once said this in an interview only to follow it up by saying rilke was full of shit and his ideas were totally worthless, and that heidegger's ideas were worthless too (even absent the naziism gass also scorned (especially elsewhere)) because he took rilke seriously.
gass denigrates the very application of the word "philosophical" to rilke's work, which is unserious in its thinking, its serious in its feelings. committed atheist that he is gass also denies the religiosity of rilkes poetry as the reason for its power.
so what does this leave? the poems themselves of course, the words on the page. this is what gass cares about, and what he gives us. gass's words in themselves are overwhelmingly gorgeous and powerful for their sheer beauty, so he is a good match for his subject here. this is a man who denies all other forms of transcendence faced with one he cannot deny, one that makes him raise his arms and cry out (as rilke does, although gass's cry is ecstatic).
as a dimwit monoglot i cannot speak to gass's translations as to how well they carry across rilke himself into english, but his versions make me feel everything he says rilke makes him feel, so he is a success for that.
again as a dimwit who's never read rilke before (and a devoted gass fanatic) i cannot even speak to gass's translations as compared to others, i much preferred his to the snippets he gave us of the competition.
now in the gassian style i will pick apart the approaches of those before me, although since my subjects are in fact here to defend themselves i'll not name names.
to address those who came before you is common practice for translators of much translated works, and of course a translator is going to prefer their version because its going to emphasise what they think most important and fill gaps where they've felt them previously. especially in works like this one, labours of love rather than of commission. from the way these passages were talked about i assumed they appeared much more, and given the usual ratio of matter about the translation to the translations themselves in this volume is inverted it's not surprising they appear more than once. but gass's attitude does not (to me) read like the vanity he's accused of elsewhere, he recognises where he falls short and admits the successes of others. he disparages failures because he cares, and i'd much rather read someone who cares enough to be wounded by someone affronting rilke by translating him poorly than someone who doesn't.
he is accused of attacking those not there to defend themselves, well of course they're not, it's a work of criticism, it's a book about his theory of translation and his translations. if you want to read about someone else's translations go read them write about it.
as for the critical matter itself it is like an extended gassian essay, which is of course something we should savour every drop of. even his acknowledgements are more beautifully written than most writers' entire careers, at points i found myself more carried away by the glory of it than by almost anything. i knew nothing about rilke before and now i want to know more, although even if denied anything else about him this book would be more than enough. isn't that all you can hope for in non-fiction?
i read this in preparation for a forthcoming reread of gravity's rainbow, for which i am now drooling at the mouth even more, and in odd moments between my daily chunk of women and men (which i hit page 1000 of today and should be done with soon)
July 5, 2023
If, from earliest youth, your inmost self had cried out to escape its circumstances; if you’d looked about and wondered why your presence had been needed even for a moment where you were; and if that meant you had to disappear into an inner distance, leaving your face and figure to fend for themselves, seeking a realm where you could claim an absolute autonomy; if, somewhat to your shame, considering your abject and unaccomplished condition, you had immortal longings in you; if you knew without being told, without having seen any evidence, without therefore knowing, that you were unique, that inside your small delicate body, behind your heavy-lidded eyes, a wide world was contained, and every house there was haunted by dreams, dreams of greatness, ambitions that Ewald Tragy, your namesake, gave away in a petulant moment—“I am my own lawmaker and king,” he’d said, “nobody is above me, not even God”—and furthermore, if, to write the great poetry you meant to write, you had first to be a great poet (for where would this sublime stuff come from if not from a sublime soul?), then the fatal division of the self is set; then that hidden ruler must remake both actor and role and push them onto the stage. So his childhood name is eventually altered; so is his handwriting, at Lou Salomé’s suggestion, though that is accomplished through the persistent efforts of his will; consequently he must change his nature, change his life; change… change… with the worry that (in unhappy harmony with his mother’s practice) a fine label would not improve the cheap wine that had been decanted down the bottle’s slender throat to create a successful deception. Henceforward the poet will be nothing but a Poet, and wander if he must, free to find his inspiration, free to wait for the Muses’ touch, despite life’s temptations, despite the need for the crowd’s applause, because he’ll be Orpheus, singing though he seems only a head now, floating downriver in the furious flux of things, for really he’ll be whole, head and heart will be at last one. Yet in all this there is the possibility that he’ll fail in the role he has assigned himself: which is? that the perfect self (an Angel) must play the part of a perfect appearance (the puppet); in other words, in the first place, that the poetry won’t come, and he’ll be an ape or a mimic, or, in the second place, that the audience will not be there to applaud, will see the puppet is a puppet, and that, in the third place, the puppet, full of resentment at having lost a normal life for nothing, will turn upon this inside Angel and pull upon his strings, the strings once, solely in his hands, and haul him down from on high (since he’s not as on-high as all that, not as perfect as the imagined Angels of the Elegies); whereupon the whole show will be over, Doctor Serafico will have failed to heal himself—and there will be no Angel, no poetry, and no poet.
March 26, 2018
I have long had a problem appreciating the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke. I have read a handful of biographies, “Duino Elegies,” “Sonnets to Orpheus,” and various other poems. And I have come away empty, puzzled at his reputation as the finest German poet since Goethe. I just don’t “get” him. I don’t read him the original German, and I often worry that it’s the translations that are at least partly to blame.
Unfortunately, Gass’s book did not help much. The book does three things. It provides a sketchy biography of Rilke, it attempts to explain Rilke’s poetry, and it looks at some of the difficulties inherent in translating poetry. None of the three sections, in my opinions, achieves its goals. The biography is too patchy and too quirky. The explanations of the poetry are as vague and wooly as the poems themselves. The thoughts on translation are sometimes interesting but too often self-congratulatory and smug.
Unfortunately, Gass’s book did not help much. The book does three things. It provides a sketchy biography of Rilke, it attempts to explain Rilke’s poetry, and it looks at some of the difficulties inherent in translating poetry. None of the three sections, in my opinions, achieves its goals. The biography is too patchy and too quirky. The explanations of the poetry are as vague and wooly as the poems themselves. The thoughts on translation are sometimes interesting but too often self-congratulatory and smug.
March 10, 2025
Stunning book. Only read it because I am obsessed with William Gass, didn't even know who Rilke was. Now I am a major Rilke-head.
Supposedly about translation but really will just make you a better reader of poetry across the board.
Supposedly about translation but really will just make you a better reader of poetry across the board.
April 9, 2020
excellent critic, respectable rilke fan, average translator
January 15, 2025
He uses the word „Rubududubing“ in the tenth elegy. I have no idea why. Hass himself probably regrets this from his grave. The rest of the book is A1 scholarship.
October 5, 2016
Reading Rilke is a strange mix of biography, analysis, and translation. It provides a great deal of information on the poet but its aim is scattershot. Rather than offer an account of Rilke's life from conception to death we are often left to focus on moments instead, from the significant to the unusually minute. There's a tremendous amount of incredibly interesting and insightful analysis into Rilke's poetry but the book does not pretend to be academic about this. What is more, Reading Rilke is as much about the poet as it is about the author William Gass. If anything, it is an account of William Gass' adoration of Rilke, his poetry and the endlessly tricky issue of translation. And it is all the better for it.
In my view, a collection of essays by an author is more about spending time with someone whose company you enjoy more than it is about being convinced by their opinions. I didn't always agree with Christopher Hitchens but I certainly enjoyed visiting him every time I read something he wrote. The same goes for William Gass, whose collections of essays have provided me with as much insight as they have entertainment. His love of Rilke seems highly appropriate too, as Gass is a writer who can turn out a passage equal to any poem. Case in point, consider this passage where Gass waxes philosophical (he does this quite a lot) on Rilke's childhood:
"During childhood, contradiction paves every avenue of feeling, and we grow up in bewilderment like a bird in a ballroom, with all that space and none meant for flying, a wide shining floor and nowhere to light. So out of the lies and confusions of everyday the child constructs a way to cope, part of which will comprise a general manner of being in, and making, love. Thus from the contrast between the official language of love and the unofficial facts of life is born a dream of what this pain, this passion, this obsession, this belief, this relation, ought to be."
Does this have much to do with Rilke? Probably not. Is it beautiful and compelling to read? To me at least it most certainly is.
Gass extends this passion for Rilke to the practice of translation. Anyone familiar with Gass' non-fiction will not be surprised, as Gass is a man who obsesses over every word and every sentence. Like every translator I've ever read, he does not miss an opportunity to dismiss and scoff at a previous translator's efforts and the whole thing can often take on a "they did this but I did that" tone. But if it sounds frustrating to see pages upon pages of several translators reprinted efforts at lines of Rilke's poetry (including Gass' for comparison) often accompanied by further intense scrutiny of small descriptions such as what best suits the phrase "Dunkelen Schluchzens", it is because the topic is in itself frustrating. Gass is all too aware of the near impossibility of achieving fidelity to both the words and the true meaning of a poem that comes from a different language. And frankly despite his efforts, his version of the Duino Elegies is far from the best (I don't speak German but I do know that in terms of eloquence and readability in English at least this prize goes to Stephen Mitchell), where perhaps too often he lets his own style intrude too much into Rilke. But be that as it may, Gass' ruminations on the problem of translation are as compelling as anything else the man chooses to muse over. Consider this passage:
"Every line of fine literature forms a secure, seemingly serene, yet unquiet community. As in any community, there are many special interests and the groups which promote them; there are predominating concerns, persistent problems; and, as in the psyche of any individual, or in the larger region of the body politic, there are competing aims, anxieties, habits, anticipations, perplexities, memories, needs, and grievances. When the line is a good one, their clamor is stilled because its constituents are happy, their wants appeased, their aims fulfilled"
Reading Rilke won't satisfy as a biography and its translations of Rilke's work may never become the authoritative version. That said, it left me more interested than ever in Rilke and I found myself highly entertained. As a celebration of Rilke, a meditation on translation and as a book by William Gass, it more than succeeded to this readers taste.
In my view, a collection of essays by an author is more about spending time with someone whose company you enjoy more than it is about being convinced by their opinions. I didn't always agree with Christopher Hitchens but I certainly enjoyed visiting him every time I read something he wrote. The same goes for William Gass, whose collections of essays have provided me with as much insight as they have entertainment. His love of Rilke seems highly appropriate too, as Gass is a writer who can turn out a passage equal to any poem. Case in point, consider this passage where Gass waxes philosophical (he does this quite a lot) on Rilke's childhood:
"During childhood, contradiction paves every avenue of feeling, and we grow up in bewilderment like a bird in a ballroom, with all that space and none meant for flying, a wide shining floor and nowhere to light. So out of the lies and confusions of everyday the child constructs a way to cope, part of which will comprise a general manner of being in, and making, love. Thus from the contrast between the official language of love and the unofficial facts of life is born a dream of what this pain, this passion, this obsession, this belief, this relation, ought to be."
Does this have much to do with Rilke? Probably not. Is it beautiful and compelling to read? To me at least it most certainly is.
Gass extends this passion for Rilke to the practice of translation. Anyone familiar with Gass' non-fiction will not be surprised, as Gass is a man who obsesses over every word and every sentence. Like every translator I've ever read, he does not miss an opportunity to dismiss and scoff at a previous translator's efforts and the whole thing can often take on a "they did this but I did that" tone. But if it sounds frustrating to see pages upon pages of several translators reprinted efforts at lines of Rilke's poetry (including Gass' for comparison) often accompanied by further intense scrutiny of small descriptions such as what best suits the phrase "Dunkelen Schluchzens", it is because the topic is in itself frustrating. Gass is all too aware of the near impossibility of achieving fidelity to both the words and the true meaning of a poem that comes from a different language. And frankly despite his efforts, his version of the Duino Elegies is far from the best (I don't speak German but I do know that in terms of eloquence and readability in English at least this prize goes to Stephen Mitchell), where perhaps too often he lets his own style intrude too much into Rilke. But be that as it may, Gass' ruminations on the problem of translation are as compelling as anything else the man chooses to muse over. Consider this passage:
"Every line of fine literature forms a secure, seemingly serene, yet unquiet community. As in any community, there are many special interests and the groups which promote them; there are predominating concerns, persistent problems; and, as in the psyche of any individual, or in the larger region of the body politic, there are competing aims, anxieties, habits, anticipations, perplexities, memories, needs, and grievances. When the line is a good one, their clamor is stilled because its constituents are happy, their wants appeased, their aims fulfilled"
Reading Rilke won't satisfy as a biography and its translations of Rilke's work may never become the authoritative version. That said, it left me more interested than ever in Rilke and I found myself highly entertained. As a celebration of Rilke, a meditation on translation and as a book by William Gass, it more than succeeded to this readers taste.
August 11, 2016
Spellbinding. Not meant to be an introduction to Rilke, but I can't imagine how you could really dig deeper than surface level into Rilke without this book. Rilke's poetry takes serious effort, and yet: huge depths here, an amazing thicket of words and insight.
Gass doesn't throw a lot of German into this book, and you don't need to know German to get one of the main points, which is that every translation ought to be based on a good reading, not just a linguistic rendering, and that translation requires a sound interpretation of the whole of an author's thought, not just "every jig and trot.... every la-di-da and line length."
I don't think Gass compared his translations to other translators' work here to enthrone himself, as another reviewer here thought. He did it to back up his point that translators sometimes have agendas that have nothing to do with the work being translated. "Many of our translators have programs -- organized preconceptions -- which drive and direct their labors," Gass writes. "Hölderlin must sound as if written now. Why? ...let's have a Hegel for our time [they say], a Kant for the country club... Many translators do not bother to understand their texts. That would interfere with their own creativity and with their perception of what the poet ought to have said. They do not wish to become the trumpet through which another's breath blows..." This ruins the work.
Some of the blatantly colloquial translations of the Duino Elegies that Gass cites in this book, for example, prove the point that translators might be good linguistic technicians, but not always good readers or "engineers." Gass would prefer that a translator have a better understanding of the target language than of the original, if that translator is a more competent reader and thinker -- a reader, in other words, who knows that "kill" is "metaphysically quite the wrong word," as he puts it. (Gass is certainly such a reader.) Considering that the greatest translations are usually done by poets, not professional academic linguists, I'm with Gass here.
The book includes some fabulous insights into Rilke's Duino Elegies based on the need to read closely, creating something akin to what emerges from a recording studio, a "compound, multi-spliced and engineered performance."
Reading Rilke isn't a heavy academic book, but it's not for the lazy general reader afraid to be challenged. Like Rilke, it's a dense read at times: always the best reason to pick up a book....
Gass doesn't throw a lot of German into this book, and you don't need to know German to get one of the main points, which is that every translation ought to be based on a good reading, not just a linguistic rendering, and that translation requires a sound interpretation of the whole of an author's thought, not just "every jig and trot.... every la-di-da and line length."
I don't think Gass compared his translations to other translators' work here to enthrone himself, as another reviewer here thought. He did it to back up his point that translators sometimes have agendas that have nothing to do with the work being translated. "Many of our translators have programs -- organized preconceptions -- which drive and direct their labors," Gass writes. "Hölderlin must sound as if written now. Why? ...let's have a Hegel for our time [they say], a Kant for the country club... Many translators do not bother to understand their texts. That would interfere with their own creativity and with their perception of what the poet ought to have said. They do not wish to become the trumpet through which another's breath blows..." This ruins the work.
Some of the blatantly colloquial translations of the Duino Elegies that Gass cites in this book, for example, prove the point that translators might be good linguistic technicians, but not always good readers or "engineers." Gass would prefer that a translator have a better understanding of the target language than of the original, if that translator is a more competent reader and thinker -- a reader, in other words, who knows that "kill" is "metaphysically quite the wrong word," as he puts it. (Gass is certainly such a reader.) Considering that the greatest translations are usually done by poets, not professional academic linguists, I'm with Gass here.
The book includes some fabulous insights into Rilke's Duino Elegies based on the need to read closely, creating something akin to what emerges from a recording studio, a "compound, multi-spliced and engineered performance."
Reading Rilke isn't a heavy academic book, but it's not for the lazy general reader afraid to be challenged. Like Rilke, it's a dense read at times: always the best reason to pick up a book....
January 31, 2015
I finished reading this book yesterday, or at least the exposition. I am still reading his translation of Duino Elegies, reading each Elegy in his translation and then Poulin's. Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus the book is more than a reflection on translation; translation is embedded in an artistic biography, Rilke's development as a man, and the artistic demons and angels he wrestled with. Mr. Gass has opened Rilke; I have read poetry with the feeling that it meant something important behind the flashes of beauty that came through the translations I read, but never got what that something was. I don't get it all now, but I get more. I was always conscious of Mr. Gass telling the story; since he has a Ph.D in philosophy and Rilke's poetry is often philosophical, there is philosophy and aesthetic theory. Mr. Gass also shows a wry sense of humor: "Rust destroys, but it creates character more surely than most playwrights." I liked it.
April 17, 2008
I have such fond memories of reading this book in grad school: there are notes all over the margins of my copy. As silly as this sounds, reading it made me feel like such a scholar--I felt as though I were taking part in a secret society of knowledge. Plus, I've never read another book like it; you're studying Rilke, but his work is really a vehicle for the study and "problem" of translation.
October 19, 2008
A very creative look at Rilke's life and poetry, especially the magnificent if sometimes turgid ocean of The Duino Elegies, which William Gass has also retranslated... He has a novelist's way of approaching Rilke, imperfect man, inspired poet, whether in sponsored hotel rooms or on the windy parapets of howling windy voices at the Duino castle... I seem to be reading it all the way through... sometimes a feat for me I must admit.
August 8, 2014
Gass writes with great brio about the problems of translating Rilke while providing illuminating details about his life. Rilke as a man was heavily flawed and suffered greatly but used this to supreme advantage in his art. Gass's translation of the Duino Elegies is, alongside Snow's and Mitchell's, among the best. For those interested, the interview he gives on KCRW's Bookworm with Michael Silverblatt about this book, is well worth checking out.
October 5, 2019
This would have been worth it for the "Inhalations of a God" chapter and Gass' translation of the Duino Elegies alone. The biography, translations of other Rilke poems, and selections by Hardy, Pope, and Poincaré made it a fascinating and rewarding hybrid, though. It was a pleasure to read another book by one of my favorite writers as he closely read and lovingly re-presented the work of his favorite poet.
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