Reading Rilke (25 page)

THE DEATH OF THE POET

He lay. His pillow-propped face could only stare

with pale refusal at the quiet coverlet,

now that the world and all his knowledge of it,

stripped from his senses to leave them bare,

had fallen back to an indifferent year.

Those who had seen him living could not know

how completely one he was with all that flowed;

for these: these deep valleys, each meadowed place,

these streaming waters
were
his face.

Oh, his face embraced this vast expanse,

which seeks him still and woos him yet;

now his last mask squeamishly dying there,

tender and open, has no more resistance,

than a fruit’s flesh spoiling in the air.

THE
DUINO ELEGIES
OF
RAINER MARIA RILKE

Among the papers of the Duchess Marie von Thurn und Taxis-Hohenlohe

THE FIRST ELEGY

Who, if I cried, would hear me among the Dominions

of Angels? And even if one of them suddenly

held me against his heart, I would fade in the grip

of that completer existence—a beauty we can barely

endure, because it is nothing but terror’s herald;

and we worship it so because it serenely disdains

to destroy us. Every Angel is awesome.

And so I master myself and stifle the beseeching

heart’s cry that’s my mating song. Alas, who is there

we can call on? Not Angels, not men,

and even the observant animals are aware

that we’re not very happily home here

in this—our interpreted world. Perhaps

some tree on a slope remains for us, allowing our look,

day after day; perhaps yesterday’s walk,

and a habit that liked us, like an aging retainer,

loyally stays, and never gives notice.

Oh, then there’s Night, when a wind, full of the hollow where the world is,

feeds on our faces: who could refuse her,

when she’ll gently let us down, though so long longed for

by our heart’s solitude? Is she lighter for lovers?

Ah, they only hide their loneliness in one another.

Don’t you know that yet? Fling the emptiness out of your arms

to broaden the spaces we breathe—maybe then birds

will feel the amplified air with more fervent flight.

Yes, the springtimes have needed you. There’ve been stars

to solicit your seeing. In the past, perhaps,

waves rose to greet you, or out an open window,

as you passed, a violin was giving itself

to someone. This was a different commandment.

But could you obey it? Weren’t you always

anxiously peering past them, as though

they announced a sweetheart’s coming? (Where would you

have hidden her, with those heavy foreign thoughts

tramping in and out and often staying overnight?)

But should you long like this, sing of love’s ultimate lovers:

the fame of their feeling is not yet immortal enough.

Those—the forsaken—you envied them almost, they so outstripped

all love-appeased lovers in loving. Begin

continually to accomplish their unachievable praise.

Think: the hero endures, even his fading

is a phase of renewal, he burns fresh each day.

But weary Nature gathers back her lovers,

as if she had no second strength to send them forth again.

Have you thought sufficiently of Gaspara Stampa yet,

so that any jilted maiden might, from that more praiseworthy

fashion of loving, feel: can I become like you?

Should not these ancient sorrows finally be

more fruitful for us? Isn’t it time that we lovingly

freed ourselves from our lovers and, although shaken, endure it,

as the arrow stands in the string to become, upon its momentous release,

something more than itself? For staying is nowhere.

Voices, voices. Listen, Oh, my heart, as hitherto only

holy men have listened, listened so the mighty call

lifted them straight from the ground, although they kneeled on,

these magicians—and paid no attention,

they so utterly listened. Not that you could bear

the voice of God—far from it. But hear the flowing

melancholy murmur which is shaped out of silence

wafting toward you now from those youthfully dead.

Whenever you entered a church in Rome or in Naples,

did not their fate speak insistently to you?

or a lofty inscription impose itself upon you

as lately the tablet in Santa Maria Formosa?

What do they want of me? that I should gently cleanse them

of the tarnish of despair which hinders a little,

sometimes, the pure passage of their spirits.

True, it is strange not to live on the earth any longer,

no longer follow the folkways you’ve only just learned,

not to interpret roses and other promising things

in terms of a rich human future;

then to be no longer the one who once lay

in ceaselessly anxious hands, and to have to put aside

even one’s proper name like a broken toy.

Strange, to wish one’s wishes no longer. Strange,

to see all that was one time related, fluttering now

loosely in space. And it’s difficult to be dead.

There’s all that catching up to do before one feels

just a little eternity. All of the living, though,

mistakenly make these knife-like distinctions.

Often Angels (it’s said) cannot say if they linger

with the living or the dead. The eternal current

carries every age through either realm

forever, and drowns their voices with its roar in both.

In the end, those taken early no longer need us;

they are tenderly weaned from worldly things,

even as one gently outgrows the breasts of a mother.

But we who have need of such sacred secrets;

we, for whom sorrow’s so often the source

of our happiest progress; could
we
survive without them?

Is the legend useless that once, in the lamentation for Linos,

a few adventuresome first notes pierced the barren numbness,

and in the startled space this almost godlike youth

had suddenly forsaken forever, vacancy first felt

the vibration which now carries us, comforts, and helps?
¹

THE SECOND ELEGY

Every Angel is awesome. And yet, alas,

knowing that, I still sing my welcome to you,

almost deadly birds of the soul. Where have the days of Tobias gone,

when one of the most fiery-feathered could stand on a simple threshold

(disguised for the journey and no longer appalling,

but a youth to the curious youth who peered out).

Yet if the archangel, perilous now, were to step but a step

down toward us from behind the stars, our own heartbeaten

heart would burst our chest. Who
are
you?

Lucky from the cradle, Creation’s chosen darlings,

mountain ranges, ridges red from the first sun’s rise,

the pollen of a blossoming godhead, crossroads of light,

corridors, staircases, thrones,

space breathed by Being into being, shields of delight, storms

of uninterrupted rapture, and, suddenly, isolate,

mirrors
, drawing back, as whole as an echo,

the beauty that has streamed from their face.

But we, when we feel, evaporate; oh, we

breathe ourselves away; from coal to coal

we cool as perfume fades. Though someone may tell us:

“You’ve got into my blood, into this room, the springtime

is rich with you …” What good is that? He can’t keep us;

we disappear within, on either side, of him. And those who are

beautiful, who can capture them? Expressions go forth from their faces

only to be reabsorbed. Like dew from morning grass

we relinquish what is ours as easily as steam from a warm dish.

O smile, where are you going? O upturned glance:

gone in the glitter of a fresh splash, and its little ripple across the heart …

nevertheless, that’s what we
are
. Does the great world we dissolve in

taste of us, then? Do the Angels really

recapture only the radiance that’s streamed out from them,

or sometimes, by mischance, is there a bit of our being

brought back? Do we ever figure in their features

even so little as that light vague look

which pregnant women wear? a line not noticed

as they pirouette upon themselves. (Why should they?)

Lovers, if they knew what Angels know, might write

strange words on the night air. For it seems everything

wants to conceal us. Look: trees exist, the houses

we live in still stand. We alone

fly freely by things like loose exchanges of air.

And all conspire to keep quiet about us, partly

out of shame, perhaps, and partly from wordless hope.

Lovers, satisfied by one another, I am asking you

about us. You embrace, but where’s the proof?

Look, sometimes it happens that my hands grow to know

one another, or that my weary face seeks their shelter.

This yields me a slender sensation. But who dares to believe he exists because of that?

You, though, who from one another’s passion

grow until, quite overcome, you plead: “No more …”

you, who beneath one another’s groping swell

with juice like the grapes of a vintage year;

you, who may go like a bud into another’s blossoming:

I am asking you about us. I know

you touch so blissfully because your touch survives such bliss,

because just below your finger’s end you feel the tip of pure duration.

So you expect eternity to entwine itself in your embrace.

And yet, when you have dealt with your fear of that first look,

the longing, later, at the window, and your first turn

about the garden together: lovers, are you any longer what you were?

When you lift yourselves up to one another’s lips—chalice to chalice—

and slip wine into wine like an added flavor: oh, how strangely

soon is each drinker’s disappearance from the ceremony.

On Attic gravestones, did not the discretion in each human gesture

amaze you? Weren’t love and parting draped

so gently on those shoulders they seemed to be made

of a different stuff from ours? Remember the hands,

how lightly they lay, despite the power in the torsos.