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| Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) |
[Originally published on January 22, 2012.]
About three years ago, I included myself among “others of a mystical bent,” and I even quoted Rilke. Admitting to a mystical bent surprised me as much as quoting Rilke; I hadn’t meant to get into anything like that.
Maybe I’m ready to try to say what spirituality (or being spiritual) means for me?
Phrases like reverence for life (Albert Schweitzer), benevolence toward the humblest living creature (Charles Darwin), practice compassion (Dalai Lama), and The earth does not belong to us; we belong to the earth (Chief Seattle) come to mind.
What can I say? Dwelling on such concepts in the awareness of nature and of our life on Earth casts a sort of numinous spell over me, a feeling that resonates with William James’s characterization of mystical experience as “a deepened sense of significance.” And, even when I’m not “having the experience,” I try to maintain an abiding sense of the deep significance of things, the deep significance of choices and actions.
James even excuses my inability to say much about this deep sense: “There is ineffability: the subject of a mystical experience cannot find words to describe it.”
Rainer Maria Rilke came close, very close indeed, in his Duino Elegies and other writings:
Silent friend of many distances, feel[–Sonnets to Orpheus, XXIX, Stephen Mitchell’s translation]
how your breath enlarges all of space.
Let your presence ring out like a bell
into the night. What feeds upon your face
grows mighty from the nourishment thus offered.
Move through transformation, out and in.
What is the deepest loss that you have suffered?
If drinking is bitter, change yourself to wine.
In this immeasurable darkness, be the power
that rounds your senses in their magic ring,
the sense of their mysterious encounter.
And if the earthly no longer knows your name,
whisper to the silent earth: I’m flowing.
To the flashing water say: I am.
| Copyright © 2014 by Morris Dean |
Interesting---very interesting! (Laugh In) if you didn't catch it.
ReplyDeleteA better translation of the first line of Rilke's Sonnet 29, "Stiller Freund der vielen Fernen," is "Mute friend of many distant places." Ah, wonderful alliteration of the three f-sounds in the original, after the rolling stiller: Freund, vielen, Fernen.
ReplyDeleteUntranslatable.
The problem with the translation you used is that "Was an dir zehrt" was grotesquely translated to "What feeds upon your face." Terrible!
"Was an dir zehrt" has numerous meanings: What lives off you, or what feeds on you, which is the simplest and most inappropriate translation. The translation you used is even more inappropriate: what eats your face. Disgusting!
Other possible translations are:
What saps your energy
What wears you out
What ruins your nerves
What gnaws at you – i.e., sorrow
What undermines your health
All of those are meant in the poem.
Rilke's sonnets in German are incredibly tightly and precisely written, where small changes in usual wordings provide unusual, multiple shades of meaning. Thus, they are really untranslatable. Every translation has to be a fine poem on its own merits. You have to have a very good knowledge of German to be able to understand Rilke.
I've just skimmed a 40-page wonderful interpretation of Rilke's Sonnet 27, "Giebt es wirklich die Zeit, die zerstoererische?" (Does it really exist, the time that destroys?), by Christoph Koenig, 2013.
There is really a lot in Rilke's poems.
Rolf, you are right. I became so generally enamored of Stephen Mitchell's translations of Rilke (which do seem to be better, as a whole, than other translations I've looked at), that I uncritically swallowed "what feeds upon your face." I hope it was but a weak moment in Mitchell's work, but why did no editor urge him to find something else to rhyme (or near-rhyme) with "space"? (not easy) And "...nourishment thus offered," in the next line is regrettable.
ReplyDeleteI think you're right, too, that Rilke says so much, his language is so packed, that worthy translation is simply well nigh impossible.
This discussion makes me want to read some of Rilke's poems again, and read about them. I have read the Duino Elegies several times, but they can't be read enough. Is Rilke’s Readers. On the Theory and Critique of Interpretive Conflicts in Rilke’s Cycle The Sonnets to Orpheus by any chance the work of Christoph König that you read? The UNC-Chapel Hill libraries have many works by him, but not that one, unfortunately.
We once performed a setting by Hindemith of some Rilke ("Six Chansons") . A Francophone in the chorus said that the translation we were offered was astonishingly inaccurate. Great piece of Hindemith, though. Pre-serialist, with really beautiful harmonies.
ReplyDeleteMost poetry suffers in translation. It's a problem when vocal music is translated, because the phrasing can't even roughly follow the musical phrase in a new language. Translations that seriously try are often cringeworthy.
I once did see a rendition of "The Jabberwocky" into German. I showed it to a German friend, and got a priceless doubletake.