About

For those who believe that the poetic voice speaks with a depth of its own, Rilke’s Duino Elegies are the ultima Thule. Even in translation, they have spoken to successive generations since their publication in 1923, drawing readers such as André Gide, Paul Valery and W.H. Auden into their chiaroscuro reaches. My focus in this website is on the translations of the Elegies into English, both because I am technically interested in such translations and because it is in translation rather than just reading (where the mind can suspend what it doesn’t quite understand, or at least delay confrontation with it, and where we can lie to ourselves about what words mean) that the nuances of the voice of the lyrical subject and challenging obscurities, thematic and figurative, of Rilke’s original text come to the surface.  In translation the cloud of reading is brought to light. Translation involves choosing one word rather than another. It involves interpretation and putting our understanding on show. Reading is private; translation is public.

This website consists of comparative studies of the translations of  (as from 19/2/2020) all ten Elegies. I have concentrated upon the translations listed below, choosing them not necessarily because they are “the best” (the more “accurate” or “faithful” to Rilke’s text), but because in their varying and often diverging interpretations they not only make visible the difficulties and nodal disagreements in the translation of the text, but also the cleavages, ambivalences and points of often covert dispute within Rilke’s work itself.  In order of publication, they are:

Duineser Elegien. Elegies from the Castle of Duino, translated by Vita Sackville West (London: Hogarth Press, 1931). Cited in the main text as (SW).

Rainer Maria Rilke: Duino Elegies, translated by J.B. Leishman and Stephen Spender (London: The Hogarth Press, 1939). Cited as (L/S).

Rainer Maria Rilke: Duino Elegies, translated by C.F. MacIntyre (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1961). Cited as (C.F.M).

The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, edited and translated by Stephen Mitchell (New York: Random House, 1980). Cited as (M).

The Duino Elegies of Rainer Maria Rilke, translated William H. Gass. In Reading Rilke: Reflections on the Problems of Translation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), pp. 189-220. Cited as (G).

Rainer Maria Rilke: Selected Poems, translated by Susan Ranson and Marielle Sutherland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Cited as (R/S).

Rainer Maria Rilke: Duino Elegies, translated by Martyn Crucefix (London: Enitharmon Editions, 2006). Cited as (C).

Duisener Elegien / Duino Elegies, translated by James D. Reid. In Being Here Is Glorious: On Rilke, Poetry, and Philosophy (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2015), pp. 77-133. Cited as (R).

Other translations consulted and cited are in order of publication:

Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus, translated by Jessie Lamont (New York: Fine Editions Press, 1945).

Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, translated by Nora Wydenbruck (Vienna: Amandus, 1948).

Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, translated and illustrated by Harry Behn (Mount Vernon: Peter Pauper Press, 1957).

Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, translated by Stephn Garmey and Jay Wilson Wydenbruck (New York: Harper and Row, 1972).

Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, translated by Elaine E. Boney (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975).

Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus, translated by A. Poulin, Jr. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1977).

Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, translated by David Young (New York: Norton and Company, 1978).

Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, translated by Gary Miranda (Portland: Breitenbush Books, 1981).

Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, translated by Robert Hunter (Eugene: Hulogos’ Communications, 1987), and http://www.hunterarchive.com/files/Poetry/Elegies/Duino_Elegies.html

Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, translated by Stephen Cohn (Manchester: Carcanet, 1989).

Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, translated by Louis Hammer and Sharon Ann Jaeger (Old Chatham: Sachem Press, 1991).

Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, translated by David Oswald (Einsideln: Daimon Verlag, 1992).

Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, translated by Leslie Norris and Alan Keele (Drawer: Camden House, 1993).

Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, translated by John Waterfield (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1998).

The Essential Rilke: Bilingual Edition, selected and translated by Galway Kinnell and Hannah Liebmann (Hopewell, New Jersey: The Echo Press, 1999), pp. 77-145.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, translated by Edward Snow (New York: North Point Press, 2000).

Rilke’s Late Poetry: Duino Elegies, The Sonnets to Orpheus, and Selected Last Poems,translated by Graham Good (Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2005).

In addition to these single-author translations, I have consulted the various translations of the individual Elegies that appear in Rilke “Duino Elegies”: Cambridge Readings, edited by Roger Paulin and Peter Hutchinson (London: Duckworth, 1996). Elegy One is translated by Peter and Sheila Stern (PSS); Elegy Two by Michael Minden (MM); Elegy Three by Edward Timms (ET); Elegy Four by Patrick Boyle (PB); Elegy Five by Naomi Segal (NS); Elegy Six by David Midgley (DM); Elegy Seven by Peter Hutchinson (PH); Elegy Eight by Terry Llewellyn (TL); Elegy Nine by Karen Leeder (KL); and Elegy Ten by Roger Paulin (RP).

My approach has been to analyse the individual elegies stanza by stanza or section by section, discussing the translations that I feel are most appropriate to the text. In my commentary, I highlight the consequences for choosing one translation rather than another, but I have tried to keep my observations as specific as possible, and have shied away from offering any overall interpretation of Rilke’s work. There was one area of interpretative complexity, however, that could not be avoided: the identity of the enunciating self or voice of these poems. I have called this voice “Rilke” or “the poet” only when I refer to the author of the Elegies, or where its seems probable that there is an autobiographical component to the text. On all other occasions, I refer to the “lyrical subject” or “lyrical voice”. The latter is a highly varied construct, often dispersed grammatically across a number of pronominal positions such as “ich”, “wir” and “du”. It is a matter of interpretation whether we see these various pronouns as indicating different selves (or, at least, different personae) or as indicating the complexity of a single self that is undergoing formation and de-formation, in a rhetorically nuanced process of self-interrogation and even self-distantiation.

Martin Travers

15 August 2018.