Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus

by Rainer Maria Rilke, Stephen Mitchell (Translator)

Rilke's poems of spiritual quest and ecstatic identification with the world have exerted a perennial fascination for contemporary readers. In Stephen Mitchell's versions of Rilke's two greatest masterpieces, readers will discover an English rendering that captures the lyric intensity, fluency, and reach of his poetry. Mitchell adheres impeccably to Rilke's text, to his formal music, and to the complexity of his thought; at the same time, his work has authority and power as poetry in its own right.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, German Literature, Fiction, Literature, Germany, 20th Century

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1923

About the author

A mystic lyricism and precise imagery often marked verse of German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, whose collections profoundly influenced 20th-century German literature and include The Book of Hours (1905) and The Duino Elegies (1923).

People consider him of the greatest 20th century users of the language.

His haunting images tend to focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety — themes that tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist poets.

His two most famous sequences include the Sonnets to Orpheus , and his most famous prose works include the Letters to a Young Poet and the semi-autobiographical The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge .

He also wrote more than four hundred poems in French, dedicated to the canton of Valais in Switzerland, his homeland of choice.

Reviews

[Flo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who's turned us around like this,
so that whatever we do, we always have
the look of someone going away? Just as a man
on the last hill showing him his whole valley
one last time, turns, and stops, and lingers -
so we live, and are forever leaving. (70)

When was the last time you look at the stars? Feeling the bittersweet breeze of the night in your face. A face only illuminated by the distant light of the stars. Alone with your thoughts, feeling you can do anything. Go anywhere.
This book is an invitation to look above and ponder about your own existence. About what makes you feel happiness, what troubles the mind, what confuses the heart. What you need. Time is merciless and will not stand still.
Will you look at the stars tonight?


This book includes Rilke's most celebrated works: Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus. The latter are masterfully written, faithfully portraying what a creative mind is capable of. They are also the most accessible part of the book. Written with a superb language, they are made of metaphors that express many emotions and reflections that define human beings. So I would recommend people to start with these sonnets first, and then tackle the elegies, a challenge in verse.

Like I said, this book starts with ten elegies. They contain an intense amount of mysticism. I wouldn't have like them if it wasn't for the fact that they are not like Sunday psalms but heartfelt manifestations of existential doubts and human suffering. So religion is also seen from a philosophical point of view. I think. That is what I understood, at least. Angels are a recurrent theme and they are used to express different thoughts, especially the contrast between their perfection and human flaws.

And if I cried, who'd listen to me in those angelic
orders? Even if one of them suddenly held me
to his heart, I'd vanish in his overwhelming
presence. Because beauty's nothing
but the start of terror we can hardly bear,
and we adore it because of the serene scorn
it could kill us with. Every angel's terrifying. (16)

Angels depict the distant and unbearable beauty that humans apparently will never reach on Earth. According to one of the notes in the book (I am extremely grateful for them, but they weren't enough), these angels have nothing to do with the angels of the Christian heaven. "The angel of the Elegies is that creature in whom the transformation of the visible into the invisible, which we are accomplishing, appears already consummated ... " (205)
There are also many images that portrays the fervent yearning for love in all its forms, but with more emphasis on the transcendental side of it, something that should define humanity. A spiritual experience that would elevate us all to where angels dwell without leaving life on Earth.

Hostility
is second nature to us. Having promised
one another distance, hunting, and home,
don't lovers always cross each other's boundaries? (38)

There is too much longing in his writing.

O hours of childhood,
when more than the mere past was behind
each shape and the future wasn't stretched out
before us. We were growing; sometimes we hurried
to grow up too soon, half for the sake of those
who had nothing more than being grown-up.
Yet when we were alone, we still amused
ourselves with the everlasting and stood there
in that gap between world and toy,
in a place which, from the very start,
had been established for a pure event. (42)

But there is also hope. And a strong desire to achieve something greater. And so much more.
Due to Rilke's symbolism, this book doesn't represent an easy read, at all. His exquisite lyricism and the images he described left me in awe. Mostly because while reading Rilke, I wasn't reading anyone else. I am certainly not an expert but I found his poetical melody quite unique. I must say, I haven't read something so beautifully strange since my encounter with Rimbaud.

It is a cruel norm established by one merciless being: tormented souls are the ones that can bring beauty to everything they touch. While purging themselves, they convert their sorrow into beautiful images that delight every reader willing to be taken for an intrepid journey without knowing the destination. Perhaps, it is a cruel norm. Or a blessing in disguise. A blessing that transforms a man into an artist, something that lets him live without drowning in a loud sea of despair.

...we vanish in our feelings. (24)

After reading Rilke's poetry, I experienced an overwhelming sense of smallness. The last two elegies are brilliantly written. And yet, I think there is still so much mystery surrounding these verses. Mystery I hope I can unveil the next time I read this book.






June 1, 14
* Also on my blog.
Notes:
-This is a bilingual edition, so those who speak German will be able to appreciate Rilke's magnificent poetry without the intervention of another person.
** Painting: The Guardian, Marina Petro / via druma.co

[katie luisa borgesius · Rating 5 out of 5]

It seems wrong to mark this as "read", as I don't think I will ever be done with it. There is infinity here.

[João Barradas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Num mundo eminentemente magnetizado, torna-se fisicamente entendível que, quais ímanes, sejamos sugados para determinado pólo, em detrimento de outro - do qual nos afastamos. Quanto à natureza desses extremos, poderão eles pertencer ao mundo físico, numa atração mais carnal, ou, por outro lado, a uma vertente mais interior, esse oásis das emoções. Este lugar, não descrito em mapas, é balizado por duas frentes opostas: o positivo, alegre, e o negativo, triste.

Com uma tendência bucólica, tão característica dos poetas, Rilke escreveu estes versos sofridos, num ambiente álgido, cuja temperatura sofre ainda um decréscimo, devido à envolvência terrena: os anos negros da Primeira Grande Guerra e a morte de uma pessoa amiga. Aprisionado nestas grilhetas psíquicas, o autor canta emoções duradouras e sentimentos perenes, numa reflexão extremada sobre a existência, como um espelho fluído. Esta é uma poesia em casulo, fechada em si, com uma construção frásica não usual, que nos enreda na leitura, com um fito: ver para lá do real. Findada a metamorfose, é admirável enxergar a natureza, plena de comparações e imiscuída nos terrenos recônditos da metafísica.

Retornando à física, aceita-se que possamos ser peças de engrenagem de uma máquina maior - um Uno que respira em simultâneo. Nascido desse ovo cósmico, chamado Big Bang, que se expandiu e expande, com um respeito desmesurado a Lavoisier. Tudo está aqui, nada nasce e nada perece. Vida e morte apresentam-se com um mero ciclo. Porventura, será por esse motivo que estas duas obras foram aglutinadas num volume exímio. A audácia de Orfeu, em salvar a sua amada, é a mesma que o leitor terá de ter para desbravar estas letras.

"Mas porque estar aqui é muito, e porque aparentemente
precisa de nós tudo o que é daqui, esta efemeridade que
estranhamente nos respeita. A nós, os efémeros. Cada
uma vez, só uma vez. Uma vez e não mais. E nós também
uma vez. Nunca outra. Mas ter sido
esse uma vez, ainda que só uma vez:
ter sido terrestre não parece revogável."

[Adam Floridia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've never really liked poetry unless I'm teaching it because only then do I take the time to appreciate it. Yet, even without deep analysis so many poems can elicit immediate visceral responses to poignant imagery and intense emotion. For that reason, I've decided to make this Jameson's bedtime reading :-)

Different poems have different effects on his slumber:



Some cause him to think deeply




Others drive him into hiding




Some inspire a triumphant cheer



And others he just fucking hates



Finally, some are so shocking that he can't even sleep

[coda wei · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yesterday our campus bookstore had a sale and so I went and bought books including this one. Then instead of doing math homework I laid in the grass and read Rilke out loud to myself for two hours. I didn't mind that my throat got dry after a while.

[Yules · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't read a lot of poetry because I have trouble getting "inside" of it. With prose, I feel like I can instinctually move around between the words; sometimes it even seems to me I can see their original order and the phases they went through to get to their final form. Poetry doesn't let me in like that. But whatever Rilke did here, it was worth peeking through the cracks in the wall, however slant they might be for me, to get even a partial look at that revelation.

Of the dead, he says:

"Of course, it is strange to inhabit the earth no longer,
to give up customs one barely had time to learn,
not to see roses and other promising Things
in terms of a human future; no longer to be
what one was in infinitely anxious hands"
"Strange to no longer desire one’s desires. Strange
to see meanings that clung together once, floating away
in every direction. And being dead is hard work
and full of retrieval before one can gradually feel
a trace of eternity.—Though the living are wrong to believe
in the too-sharp distinctions which they themselves have created.
Angels (they say) don’t know whether it is the living
they are moving among, or the dead. The eternal torrent
whirls all ages along in it, through both realms
forever, and their voices are drowned out in its thunderous roar."

Yesterday I walked outside and saw hawks flying in the sky and was struck by an immense, overwhelming joy; when it vanished the next instant, it seemed, by contrast, tragically absent from the overwhelming majority of my life. But how greedy that is of me. Later in the day, Rilke told me:

"Silken thread, you were woven into the fabric.
Whatever the design with which you are inwardly joined
(even for only one moment amid years of grief),
feel that the whole, the marvelous carpet is meant."

These poems left me with more energy, which is strange, as though I had sucked the lifeblood out of a person.

[Lola D. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Que cela est frustrant de lire de la poésie. Un instant, les mots m'emportent et, pris par une émotion violente et pourtant indescriptible, je sens les larmes poindre. Mais l'instant d'après, je suis de glace, étrangère à l'univers qui s'offre à moi, comme prisonnière d'un sort qui me permet de voir la beauté mais m'empêche de la ressentir et de la comprendre - si tant est qu'une telle chose soit possible. 

Je cherche alors toutes les raisons à mon atonie ; la poésie je la préfère récitée, je trouve que la voix de son interprète lui insuffle toujours de la vie ; la poésie je la préfère non traduite, en version originale ou en français, parce que les sonorités me permettent de ressentir à l'unisson du rythme cardiaque du poète mis à nu, ; mais, en vérité, la poésie n'est-elle vraiment accessible ? 

Incapable de la lire au diapason de mes instincts et de mes sensations, je cherche désespérément un guide pour y pénétrer coûte que coute. Pourquoi la poésie me résiste t-elle ainsi ? Est-ce mon coeur qui est trop petit ?

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

"A pantera

De percorrer as grades o seu olhar cansou-se
e não retém mais nada lá no fundo,
como se a jaula de mil barras fosse
e além das barras não houvesse mundo.

O andar elástico dos passos fortes dentro
da ínfima espiral assim traçada
é uma dança da força em torno ao centro
de uma grande vontade atordoada.

Mas por vezes a cortina da pupila
ergue-se sem ruído — e uma imagem então
vai pelos membros em tensão tranquila
até desvanecer no coração."

[liv ❁ · Rating 5 out of 5]

The more works of Rilke’s I read, the more convinced I am that no poet will ever be able to top him for me. This is perfection and there is nothing I can say that can come close to reaching how I feel about these works.

[Mads · Rating 5 out of 5]

After a second reading (31 December 2020):

My gods. Every time I pick up Rilke I seem to read him all at once in a kind of trance. In him whatever Life Source exists comes to pause for a moment at the threshold of the seen and unseen, only to rush in and whisper each Truth in a hot breath. As Mitchell's introduction reviews and Rilke's own letters and journals reveal (the latter are excerpted in the Notes section), the poet felt that the Elegies and the Sonnets had simply descended upon him. He was a conduit, shocked into inspiration by the angels or the muses or both. Truth reveals herself to those of us willing to face Death, Rilke says. And clearly, he wasn't wrong.

This is an eternal book. Mitchell as translator is a poet in his own right. I'll be returning soon for a third helping.

—————————

Extraordinary.

I am neither a Rilke expert or German linguist but, from what little I know, Stephen Mitchell's translations here are exquisite. Rilke's poems are notoriously difficult to capture in other languages, and the Elegies and Sonnets are no exception. However, Mitchell not only takes each line into consideration, he also accounts for the whole of each piece. It is clear that his translations are thoughtful and intelligent, emotional and trustworthy. Within this, Rilke's poems themselves are stunning, and I can see myself returning over and over again to this volume for insight and inspiration.

I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in seeing the original German alongside Mitchell's translation and also for anyone fascinated by the most essential "Things" in life. Rilke's work will make you investigate yourself and your grief and your love for the world. I am grateful for it.

[Edita · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lonelier now, dependent on one another
utterly, though not knowing one another at all,
*
Does it really exist, Time, the Destroyer?
[…]
Are we really as fate keeps trying to convince us,
weak and brittle in an alien world?
*
Silent friend of many distances, […]
Let your presence ring out like a bell
into the night.
*
More than we experienced has gone by.
*
All is far - and nowhere does the circle close.

[Mesoscope · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a moment in Rilke’s novel Malte Laurids Brigge in which the narrator confides to us that once, alone in the house as a boy, he saw a ghost. He never told anyone about it because he strongly felt that such moments are not to be shared. Rilke’s career, it could be said, is dedicated to sharing these unshareable moments, these brief flashes of inwardness and intensity, and to finding within them the redemption of life’s sorrows. And when he is at his best, we somehow go with him, inward and upward, until we are alone as the stars are alone, and we blaze with a silver light in the nighttime sky of solitude, alone and together.

In my estimation, Rilke and Heidegger mark the terminus of the great period of German letters, an epoch that began with Klopstock’s revival of German-language poetry, culminated in the period of classicism, idealism, and early romanticism, and gradually exhausted itself through a long, gradual decline, punctuated periodically by meteoric geniuses like Heine, Nietzsche, and Wagner.

Rilke’s late work, which is epitomized by the Duineser Elegien and Die Sonette an Orpheus, shows many unmistakable signs of decline. He himself was fixated on images of death and darkness, and where his early and middle-period poems were often strikingly clear (see, for example, his extraordinary “Spanische Tänzerin”), his poetics became increasingly murky. It becomes difficult for the reader to picture or even understand what Rilke is describing, at times because the poems are linguistically complex, but sometimes because Rilke is willfully obscure. The fifth elegy, for example, is impossible to understand unless you are told that the poem is about the Picasso painting “Les Saltimbanques”, while the seventeenth sonnet in the first Orpheus collection, as we learn from a letter to his sister, is addressed to a dog.

I have little patience with willful obscurity, and as a matter of aesthetics, I respond much more strongly to poems and to literature that paint clear pictures. I also believe this aesthetic plays to his worst tendencies, such as his urge to pose as an esoteric initiate.

In his waning clarity, the influence of the late Hölderlin is unmistakable - Rilke himself described Hölderlin as "overpowering." A reader could be forgiven for mistaking the first stanza of the fourth elegy for something from Hölderlin’s late body of work:

O Bäume Lebens, o wann winterlich?
Wir sind nicht einig. Sind nicht wie die Zug-
vögel verständigt. Überholt und spät,
so drängen wir uns plötzlich Winden auf
und fallen ein auf teilnahmslosen Teich.

And this excerpt from Hölderlin’s second version of “Mnemosyne” could just as easily be mistaken for Rilke:

Ein Zeichen sind wir, deutungslos,
Schmerzlos sind wir und haben fast
Die Sprache in der Fremde verloren.

Consider this early poem from Rilke’s Buch der Stunden:

Ich liebe meines Wesens Dunkelstunden,
in welchen meine Sinne sich vertiefen;
in ihnen hab ich, wie in alten Briefen,
mein täglich Leben schon gelebt gefunden
und wie Legende weit und überwunden.

Aus ihnen kommt mir Wissen, daß ich Raum
zu einem zweiten zeitlos breiten Leben habe.

Und manchmal bin ich wie der Baum,
der, reif und rauschend, über einem Grabe
den Traum erfüllt, den der vergangne Knabe
(um den sich seine warmen Wurzeln drängen)
verlor in Traurigkeiten und Gesängen.

Much of the matter that will occupy the late Rilke’s work is expressed here with simplicity, clarity, and beauty.

So the Rilke I would choose is the Rilke of the middle period, the Rilke of Neue Gedichte, of “Der Panther”, “Archaïscher Torso Apollos”, “Liebes-Lied”, “Eranna an Sappho”, or “Römische Fontäne”. It therefore required a certain discipline for me to read the entirety of this collection of late work, but whatever my aesthetic objections, the effort was more than repaid by the periodic moments of penetrating beauty and genius. Whatever the shortcomings of his late approach may be, Rilke remains Rilke, the genius of moments of quiet intensity.

I believe posterity is right in generally preferring the Elegien to the Sonnette - the quality of sonnets is highly variable, and there are large number that I would have cut out as a pitiless editor. And Rilke, with his great love of enjambment, is not well-served by the sonnet form - in many cases, these are sonnets in shape alone, as his sentences frequently spill into the next stanza and find their stop mid-line.

I enjoyed going through them for the first time, and I believe I will get even more enjoyment out of a second read in a few months, when I will skip the poems that didn’t work for me. Rilke is not a poet who is easy to like, but like a difficult but brilliant and loyal friend, staying in relationship with him is worth the patience and labor it requires.

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my introduction to Rilke, in the Stephen Mitchell, bilingual translation.

The nicest thing about not being in school anymore is I can read about a text before I read it without feeling like I'm cheating. I get to watch for moves I've been prepared for as well as finding new layers on my own. It lessens the head-scratching phase of confronting truly new material. Here, for example, is the opening of the First Elegy:

"Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angel's
hierarchies? and even if one of them pressed me
suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed
in that overwhelming existence. for beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains
to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying."

So beautiful! But what are we to think of Rilke's angels? They don't sound like greeting card angels... But a read of the forward tells us that to Rilke, the angels are "creatures in whom the transformation of the visible into the invisible, which we [as people still here on earth] are accomplishing, already appears in its completion."

so the Elegies are about time, and death, and love, and transcendence.

This book took me on a line by line journey as I put together the pieces of a world-view in the margins while I lingered over the beautiful lines I didn't really have to understand but just take in their music... For some reason, I was more reluctant to leave these poems half-understood than I usually would have been. If it was Dylan Thomas, I would just think 'Altarwise by owl-light in the halfway house..." and think Oh, okay. But for some reason I wanted to really understand this as well as love the music.

So the margins are full of writing, trying to tease out what things might mean. The dates were very helpful.

The first two were written all at once, in January 1912, at Duino Castle in Spain, along with the first stanza of the 10th, and in 1913, most of the Sixth, and then the third and fourth in November 1915. These are important years in European culture, 1912-13 being the years leading up to WW1, a huge moment, a sense of something immense and dark on the way--(1912-13 saw Kandinsky's turn from figuration to abstraction, the pressure weighing upon many artists) and I feel it in the first two elegies. 1915, war had already broken, and Rilke was drafted, and it broke him mentally. Then, in 1922, he completed the fifth to the tenth in one burst of energy, after the Sonnets to Orpheus were written. I feel the weight of those times.

The Fifth Elegy was inspired by Picasso's Saltimbanques, the painting of the acrobats in a netherworld...

"But tell me, who are they, these wanderers, even more
transient than we ourselves, who from their earliest days
are savagely wrung out
by a never-satisfied will (for whose sake)? yet it wrings them,
bends them, twists them, swings them and flings them
and catches them again, and falling as if through old
slipper air, they land
on the threadbare carpet, worn constantly thinner
by their perpetual leaping, this carpet that is lost
in infinite space.
Stuck on like a bandage, as if the suburban sky
had wounded the earth..."

Such beauty, as he struggled to solve the difficulty of living in this world and the potential and the disappointment of love, the problem of death, the nature of transcendence. If you want a deep dive, you should have this book on your shelf.

Here's a view of death from the First Elegy:

"Of course, it is strange to inhabit the earth no longer,
to give up customs one barely had time to learn,
not to see roses and other promising Things
in term so a human future; no longer to be
what one was in infinitely anxious hands; to leave
even ones's own first name behind, forgetting it
as easily as a child abandons a broken toy.
Strange to no longer desire ones' desires. Strange
to see meanings that clung together once, floating away
in very direction. And being dead is hard work
and full of retrieval before one can gradually feel
a trace of eternity. --Though the living are wrong to believe
in the too-sharp distinctions which they themselves have created.
angels (they say) don't know whether it is the living
they are moving among, or the dead. The eternal torrent
whirls all ages along in it, though both realms
forever, and their voices are drowned out in its thunderous roar."

It's dense stuff, but well worth the investigation, the asking of questions line by line.

[Alma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quem me dera ser como os que em si são secretos:
Não mostrar na fronte os pensados pensamentos,
oferecer só uma saudade em minhas rimas,
dar com os meus olhares só um germinar breve,
dar com o meu silêncio só um arrepio.

Não trair mais, entrincheirar-me todo
e ficar solitário; que assim fazem os completos:
só quando a multidão ruidosa se ajoelha
como derrubada por luminosas lanças,
só então tiram eles os corações do peito
como custódias, e abençoam-na com eles.

[Jared Kassebaum · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not entirely well versed in poetry, but this collection, centered mainly on the themes of transformation and limitations and nature's role in those processes in our lives, was a beautiful thing to read out loud to myself little by little before I went to bed. Rilke's collections of letters have already become my most re-read books, and this will join them. The second book of Rilke's Sonnets (in this book) as well as Elegies #7 and #9 I have re-read already. The Elegies speak to a part of my inner self I didn't know outside words could get in to.

[Steve]

The ten poems contained in the Duino Elegies and the fifty-five poems in The Sonnets to Orpheus are wonderful spiritual meditations; they are mature, ethereal expressions that speak of larger meaning to our lives. This poetry swayed through communion with angels, the universe, our environment, life, death, affection, and our being now – as embodiment of all that came before and all that will follow. Herr Rilke further mentions the special place in nature accorded human understanding. I also caught a concern for the effects of technology on our lives.

I did wonder, was Herr Rilke in a romantic trance, affected by a beauty that caused his heart cycle to run five beats rather than the usual four? If so, the source of that irregular heart rhythm was not the Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis-Hohenlohe, to whom Duino Elegies is dedicated. Herr Rilke spent the winter of 1911–1912 as a guest of that princess at Duino Castle on the Adriatic Sea, and I did not notice mention of a liaison in the translator’s notes. At the risk of admitting to an errant thought, I couldn’t help but think of Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time with the use of Dasein – I can easily imagine Heidegger denying any association.

Admittedly, this writing is not for everyone. Indeed, transcendent considerations for the here and now may be too much for those wed to their here and now. I am moved, though; maybe because I've experience enough of life, death, and wonderment to sympathize throughout. How could I not be a better person were I to dwell on a portion of these poems each remaining day of my life? I wish I could consistently live up to the spirit of these words.

[Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

"A saudade é isto: viver nas ondas
E não ter pátria no tempo."

"Que este contemplar de mim para fora, que me consome e esvazia, seja substituído por uma solicitude cheia de amor pela plenitude interior."

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

I imagine I will continue returning to these poems always.

[lucy✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

“But we still linger, alas, / we, whose pride is in blossoming; we enter the overdue / interior of our final fruit and are already betrayed.”

“Who has not sat, afraid, before his heart’s / curtain?”

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

[Emily Wood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Favourite passages;

First Elegy–

"For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which still we are just able to
endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains
to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying."

"Already the knowing animals are aware
that we are not really at home in
our interpreted world."

"Voice. Voices. Listen, my heart, as only
saints have listened: until the gigantic call lifted them
off the ground; yet they kept on, impossibly,
kneeling and didn't notice at all:
so complete was their listening. Not that you could endure
God's voice–far from it. But listen to the voice of the wind
and the ceaseless message that forms itself out of silence."

"Strange to no longer desire one's desires. Strange
to see meanings that clung together once, floating away
in every direction. And being dead is hard work
and full of retrieval before one can gradually feel
a trace of eternity."


Second Elegy-

"But we, when moved by deep feeling, evaporate; we
breathe ourselves out and away; from moment to moment
our emotion grows fainter, like a perfume."

"Does the infinite space
we dissolve into, taste of us then? Do the angels really
reabsorb on the radiance that streamed out from
themselves, or
sometimes, as if by an oversight, is there a trace
of our essence in it as well?"

"For it seems that everything
hides us. Look: trees do exist; that houses
that we live in still stand. We alone
fly past all things, as fugitive as the wind.
And all things conspire to keep silent about us, half
our of shame perhaps, half as unutterable hope."


Third Elegy-

"Listen to the night as it makes itself hollow. O stars,
isn't it from you that the lover's desire for the face
of his beloved arises?"

"But inside: who could ward off,
who could divert, the floods of origin inside him?"

"How he submitted–. Loved.
Loved his interior world, his interior wilderness,
the primal forest inside him, where among decayed
treetrunks
his heart stood, light-green. Loved. Left it, went through
his own roots and out, into the powerful source
where his little birth had already been outlived. Loving,
he waded down into more ancient blood, to ravines
where Horror lay, still glutted with his fathers. And every
Terror knew him, winked at him like an accomplice.
Yes, Atrocity smiled . . ."

"No, we don't accomplish our love in a single year
as the flowers do; an immemorial sap
flows up through our arms when we love."

"And you yourself, how could you know
what primordial time you stirred in your lover. What
passions
welled up inside him from departed beings."


Fourth Elegy–

"Flowering and fading come to us both at once."

"But we, while we are intent upon one object,
already feel the pull of another. Conflict
is second nature to us. Aren't lovers
always arising at each other's boundaries?"

"We never know
the actual, vital contour of our own
emotions–just what forms them from outside.
Who has not sat, afraid, before his heart's
curtain?"

"One can always watch."

"And you, dear women
who must've loved me for my small beginning
of love toward you, which I always turned away from
because the space in your features grew, changed,
even while I loved it, into cosmic space,
where you no longer were–"

"If no one else, the dying
must notice how unreal, how full of pretence,
is all that we accomplish here, where nothing
is allowed to be itself."


Fifth Elegy–

"This carpet that is lost
in infinite space.
Stuck on like a bandage, as if the suburban sky
had wounded the earth."

"The rose of Onlooking
blooms and unblossoms."

"The specious fruit of displeasure: the unconscious
gaping face, their thin
surfaces glossy with boredom's specious half-smile."

"And suddenly in this laborious nowhere, suddenly
the unsayable spot where the our Too-little is transformed
incomprehensibly–, leaps around and changes
into that empty Too-much;"

[Jeffrey Bumiller · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful book. I find it very surprising that this somewhat new (2009) book marks the first time these two works have been collected together, considering how strongly Rilke felt about them working in tandem. I find the story of the genesis of these poems almost as interesting as the poems themselves: Rilke's years of depression, his experience in WWI, the somewhat exotic location of their composition, all culminating in Rilke's "hurricane of the spirit" and the feverish completion of these poems.

I can't comment on the translation of these poems since this is the only time I've read them. Stephen Mitchell has also translated every other book of Rilke's that I've read. He is, apparently, The man to turn to for translations of Rilke's work.

I found these highly intense, powerful poems inspiring and they renewed my belief in, and fascination with the idea of the "muse." (Rilke apparently heard the first line of the first elegy from a disembodied voice while out on a walk.)

The Endnotes, some of which are made up of Rilke's letters, add a whole other layer to the poems as well.

This is an incredible book, an important book, and it will remain very close to me.

[Armin]

امتیاز دادن واقعا کار دشواری است، به خاطر ترجمه جناب شرف الدین خراسانی. من صرفا به یک مثال بسنده می‌کنم. در "برگردان" سطری از ترانه‌ها (و برگردان عنوانی است که ناشر - هرمس - برای کار شرف انتخاب کرده و روی جلد آورده) می‌خوانیم: «او زمین به کجا فرو می‌شود؟» و انصاف دهید و بگویید چنین جمله‌ای در چه زبانی، در چه بستری و در چه شرایطی می‌تواند معنایی داشته باشد؟ و چنین ترجمه‌ای چه تحسینی می‌تواند برانگیزد؟ حیف از اشعار ریلکه که چنین فاجعه‌وار به فارسی درآمده‌اند و به دست ناشری اسم و رسم دار چون هرمس با همین برگردان آزارنده به دست مخاطب رسیده‌اند.

هیچ امتیازی ثبت نمی‌کنم که هیچ اعتباری به ترجمه شرف نداده باشم و هیچ جفایی نیز در حق آثار ریلکه نکرده باشم.

[Philippe · Rating 3 out of 5]

I dragged these Elegies with me for a long time, never really warming to them. As a collection they strike me as too disjointed. The centerpiece for me are the Eighth, Sixth and Seventh Elegies, in that particular order. The Eighth is a masterful poem in which Rilke articulates his worldview in a sober, almost didactic tone. We, human beings, are never able to get in touch with the Ding-an-sich, with what Rilke calls 'the Open'. From early on in life we wrap ourselves in inadequate intellectual categories, shielding the World from us by a motley collection of objects and a unidirectional sense of time.

Animals, to an extent, still inhabit that primordial world: “ … it feels its life as boundless, unfathomable, and without regard to its own condition: pure like the outward gaze. And where we see the future, it sees all time and itself within all time, forever healed.” But even they are not pure dwellers in that ‘first home’. Here Rilke astonishes with a superb image: “And look at the half-assurance of the bird, which knows both inner and outer, from its source, as if it were the soul of an Etruscan, flown out of a dead man received inside a space but with a reclining image as the lid. And how bewildered is any womb-born creature that has to fly. As if terrified and fleeing from itself, it zigzags through the air, the way a crack runs through a teacup. So the bat quivers across the porcelain of the evening.” For the finale of this shortest of the Elegies we have turn to the original version:

Und wir: Zuschauer, immer, überall,
dem allen zugewandt, und nie hinaus!
Uns überfüllts. Wir ordnens. Es zerfällt.
Wir ordnens wieder und zerfallen selbst.

Wer hat uns also umgedreht, daß wir,
was wir auch tun, in jener Haltung sind
von einem, welcher fortgeht? Wie er auf
dem letzten Hügel, der ihm ganz sein Tal
noch einmal zeigt, sich wendet, anhält, weilt-,
so leben wir und nehmen immer Abschied.

What an unforgettable, sober and acute articulation of our human predicament …

There are many felicities and moving stanzas in the other elegies as well. Here is a section from the First Elegy that resonates particularly strongly:

Of course, it is strange to inhabit the earth no longer,
to give up customs one barely had time to learn,
not to see roses and other promising Things
in terms of a human future; no longer to be
what one was in infinitely anxious hands; to leave
even one’s own first name behind, forgetting it
as easily as a child abandons a broken toy.
Strange to no longer desire one’s desires. Strange
to see meanings that clung together once, floating away
in every direction. And being dead is hard work
and full of retrieval before one can gradually feel
a trace of eternity. -

I had difficulties with the ponderous angel-centered allegory of the second Elegy, couldn’t penetrate the claustrophobic and troubled meditations on parentship in the Third and Fourth. I’ve always passed quickly over the Fifth. It strikes me almost as pure gobbledegook. But then the Sixth and Seventh Elegies form a moving triptych with the Eighth, my favourite. Rilke muses on the human condition filtered through the archetypes of the hero and those who die young.

Unser Leben geht hin mit Verwandlung …

Also the Ninth Elegy has a lot to offer:

Aber weil Hiersein viel ist, und weil uns scheinbar
alles das Hiesige braucht, dieses Schwindende, das
seltsam uns angeht. Uns, die Schwindendsten.

Or in Stephen Mitchell’s admirable translation:

But because truly being here is so much; because everything here apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which in some strange way
keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all.

And Rilke continues:

Ein Mal jedes, nur ein Mal. Ein Mal und nichtsmehr. Und wir auch ein Mal. Nie wieder. Aber dieses
ein Mal gewesen zu sein, wenn auch nur ein Mal:
irdisch gewesen zu sein, scheint nicht wiederrufbar.

The Tenth Elegy remains a riddle to me.

We drove to Duino, to experience the ambience in which Rilke composed these poems. It truly is a magical place, with the cliffs perched high above the Adriatic.

[Alex Reséndiz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Creo que ni de rollo entendí la mitad de las referencias, pero creo que es de las mejores cosas que alguna vez he leído.

[sophie esther · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars, six stars, I'd give any work of Rilke's countless stars if I could (but I don't really have to, do I?)

Absolutely no words but Rilke's poetry itself, can even fathom the absolute brilliance, heartbreaking and touching, that fills any page that is graced with the words of this man. I was hooked by his poetry immediately, and absolutely no poem was passed with a thought like "meh" after reading it. Rilke's poems capture the realities--beautiful and tragic--of humanity: how we feel, how we wish to feel; how we are, how we wish we could be. His poems are painful a lot of the time, and at least for me, could only be taken in a little at once. It's nearly physically impossible not to tear up sometimes at his poetry.

I would recommend this book, or any other copies of his work (but Stephen Mitchell translated Rilke's words so, so, so well) a thousand times, but I must say, it is not for everyone. Rilke is a writer for writers; for artists and creative minds. If you are someone who isn't very much into poetry or is first getting into poetry, I'm not sure if Rilke is the poet for you.

Nevertheless, this man is, to put it short: a god. One quote of his really does not do justice but here you go:

" You, God, who live next door--

If at times, through the long night, I trouble you
with my urgent knocking--
this is why: I hear you breathe so seldom.
I know you're all alone in that room.
If you should be thirsty, there's no one
to get you a glass of water.
I wait listening, always. Just give me a sign!
I'm right here... "

[Ernie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A constant companion.

Rilke's verse has been attempted by many a translator (Edward Snow and Stephen Mitchell are favorites), but not one has truly approached the master himself. For the Greeks, the poet was a "maker" (poeites) who coaxed new creations out of language. Rilke does not merely create from language; he recreates language itself, bending the rigid German language into fluid shapes, startling sounds. For these final poems to the Angel and to Orpheus, Lorca's poem "Abajo" might serve as the best commentary:

El espacio estrellado
se refleja en sonidos.
Lianas espectrales.
Arpa laberíntica.

The expansiveness of starspace
reflects itself in sounds.
Phantasmatic creepers.
Labyrinthine harp.

[B. Rule · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is probably the best translation of Rilke into English. Mitchell doesn't keep the rhyme scheme in the Sonnets, but he captures the tone better than anyone. On re-reading these for the nth time, the Elegies spoke to me more. Rilke's ecstatic annihilation of the space between life and death, and his passion for mystical union with the immense void, are in line with my own current place in life. It's that metaphysical yearning that can consume a person and subsume all other realities to the roaring void of pure being. The Sonnets, while beautiful, don't have that same wild ecstasy.

[Simon Robs]

These works were channeled, born of the sea winds and castle rock, the words on reach to angels call; I choose to read them that way, too. They should be reread as many times at different times, and then maybe. So, no review just praise of a reader.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75/5

De mi experiencia en el género, la poesía de Rainer Maria Rilke es la más abstracta, profunda y llena de simbolismo que he leído hasta ahora. Para un amateur como servidora es absolutamente necesario leer una edición con anotaciones ya que a veces es dificil seguir al autor en lo que quiere decir, haciendo que perdiese un tanto el ritmo de lectura y se me hiciese en ocasiones pesado.

Aún así puedo entender el por qué de la fama y reconocimiento del autor, la poesía de Rilke es una parada obligatoria para todo lector de la poesía. Sus páginas se me han hecho mucho más satisfactorias que la recopilación de historias cortas "A lo largo de la vida", leído el mes pasado. Ya solo queda aventurarme (por ahora) con "Cartas a un joven poeta".

[Mason MB · Rating 4 out of 5]

i’m basically a poetry critic now