Rilke, Elegy 1
Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel
Ordnungen? und gesetzt selbst, es nähme
einer mich plötzlich ans Herz: ich verginge von seinem
stärkeren Dasein. Denn das Schöne ist nichts
als des Schrecklichen Anfang, den wir noch grade ertragen,
und wir bewundern es so, weil es gelassen verschmäht,
uns zu zerstören. Ein jeder Engel ist schrecklich.
The round eye, which in its thinking plenitude links consciousness to the world (so that even the panther, in the poem of the same name, must suffer not from what it cannot do, but from what it cannot see), now gives way to another bodily organ that is not an organ: the mouth. The eye organises; the mouth expresses. The former is a medium of control, a gaze, the product of an equipoise and impassibility that gave rise in Rilke’s Dinggedichte to crafted vignettes, in which the object-world seemingly (in both senses of the word) came to presence on its own terms.
But that eye is not here in the first Duino Elegy. Instead, the opening lines are marked by a voice of supplication, the medium of an abrasive “Ich”, whose pained tones we have not heard since the Stundenbuch (Book of Hours) (“cry out, cry out, perhaps that would help the saviour here”). The Elegy begins with a plaintive interrogation, “wer”, which is linked to a conditional “wenn ich schriee” (and the speaking breath pauses between the two) and separated by a caesura, the first of many that establish the cogitative thrust of the poem. “Schreien” has no simple equivalent in English. The translators avoid dictionary definitions such as “shout”, “yell” or “shriek”. Some choose “scream” (N/K), which is the most literal meaning of “schreien” (Edvard Munch’s painting, “Skirk”, is known as “The Scream” in English and as “Der Schrei” in German), but this is an angular form of utterance directed outwards, and suggests, perhaps, emotional imbalance. “Cry out” (R/S) and “cry aloud” (S/W) are attempts to capture the demonstrative quality of “schreien”, but the simpler “cry” is more in keeping with the dignified interiority of the speaking subject. Phonetically, the initial line ascends with an increasing density of sound, the pinched vowels deepening as the line develops, with the second syllable of “schriee” onomatopoeically transmitting the cry. Metrically, the opening words of four accented syllables assert their expressive selves before giving way to the more recognisable dactylic lines (the standard metre of the Elegies) that follow, and instead of end rhymes, there is alliteration, establishing an affiliation and sense between words, and further caesuras, the latter preventing that sense to settle.
The elegiac tone of the opening lines of Elegy 1 reflects the stoical self-address of a lyrical subject, whose arched quizzicality is heightened by verbs which are largely in the subjunctive, a mood suited to those (as we learn) who are not at home in a world upon which meaning has been imposed (“gedeutet”). The English language has largely lost the subjunctive voice, but it retains something of its mood in modal verbs such as “could” and “should”, and the latter is appropriate here. The lines read, “wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen?” All translators leave the “denn” untranslated, perhaps because of its phatic banality, but it should, nevertheless, be retained (as “then”), for the inwardness of the lyrical voice does not, even in these opening lines, remain in the conditional. On the contrary, the initial lines of the Elegy constitute an almost clinical explication of the predicament of attenuated consciousness, whose parameters of response to the world are stated throughout with an almost syllogistic rigour that is sustained by coordinating conjunctions such as “denn” and “und”. Indeed, the intensity, or hypothetical intensity, of the scream as it is invoked in the text is followed by a formulation of logical exactitude, including the all-important “denn”, and “noch” and “weil”, all of which underscore the careful, precise consequentiality of the poem’s mood and its tone of deliberation, a syntax and a tone that we should attempt to preserve in translating.
“Engel Ordnungen”. Are these “angels’ orders” (R), “orders” (L/S), “dominion” (G) or “hierarchies” (M)? “Choirs” are what the organisation of angels have traditionally been called, but that designation is avoided by all translators, presumably because of its association with choral groups. “Engel Ordnungen” is a compound noun but the equivalent “angel-orders” would not be idiomatic in English. Most translators find the obvious solution and make “Engel’ an adjective, which gives “angelic orders” (L/S), “angels’ hierarchies” (M) and “angelic host” (SW). But we are now faced with the problem that the “es” of the second line must refer to the only preceding noun, which is “orders” and not “angels”. One solution is simply to choose the inversion “the ranks of the angels” (MC).
The angel is invoked, but the lyrical subject feels compelled to stand to one side in its presence. Once again, the use of the subjunctive leads into what might happen: “es nähme/ einer mich plötzlich ans Herz”. There is general agreement on how to translate these lines: “pressed me against his heart” (L/S), “took me suddenly to heart” (R), “hold me to his heart” (R/S), “took me swiftly to his heart” (SW). Translating the consequence of this embrace (“ich verginge von seinem/ stärkeren Dasein”) has, however, proved more difficult, with the key verb giving rise to “fade” (L/S and G), “fade back” (R/S), “dissolve” (SW) and “be consumed” (M). “Fading” suggests a gradual diminution of selfhood, something growing fainter; “be consumed” is stronger, but “to consume” is to take something into oneself, and there is no sense here that the angel is doing this. We are soon to be told that the angel in the form of the beautiful refuses to “destroy” (“zerstören”) us, and a similar drastic reading is required here. The prefix “ver” in “vergehen” (the infinitive form of “verginge”) suggests with “gehen” the carrying through of a process to its end, effecting something total, close to an extirpation of the self, as in “perish” (CFM and R). “Pass away” or “expire” are alternative translations.
Who is this angel? What are these angels? “Angel” in Greek means “messenger” (“angelos”, Ἄγγελος), and all in the Bible are male. In this elegy, however, the angel is originally invoked as an “es”, so “it pressed me to its [rather than his] heart” as a translation might be appropriate. On the other hand, it is possible that Rilke wishes us to hear (or at least allows us to hear, or perhaps cannot stop us from hearing, or is even unaware that we are hearing) the homoerotic component to this engagement. In which case, the preferred translation “his heart” might be appropriate.
The poetic subject cannot afford such an embrace: it would expire from the angel’s “stärkeren Dasein”, which is variously translated as “overwhelming being” (R), “strength of being” (SW), “stronger existence” (L/S and CFM), “intenser existence” (R/S), “completer existence” (G), “overwhelming existence” (M), “stronger nature” 
and “potent Being” (N/K). “Dasein” (literally “there-being”) is a complex term, with a long philosophical lineage. According to Wahrig, Deutsches Wörterbuch, it means “being present, existing, existence, life, particularly the most fundamental preconditions for it”, but in the work of Rilke’s contemporary, Martin Heidegger, it assumed the sense of ontological presence, of authenticity, of life lived beyond the ontic incidental conditions of the quotidian. “Dasein” is thus a (indeed, the) essential quality of selfhood and is better translated as “being” than “existence”, although “presence” might combine the two. That this presence overwhelms the speaking subject because it is “stärker” is clear from the text, and yet “overwhelming” as an adjective does not really work. “Intenser” is not idiomatic English, and “completer” is to offer an interpretation of the nature of the angel (we do not know as yet what this angel is and why it has such power). An alternative translation of “stärker” is “greater”, which gives us for “stärkeren Dasein” its “greater being’ or “greater presence”.
We are then told (as if what follows is a logical explanation of the preceding sentiments), “denn das Schöne ist nichts/ als des Schrecklichen Anfang, den wir noch grade ertragen”. There is general agreement on how to translate these famous lines, but the almost casual “noch gerade” gives rise to some awkward formulations, as in “which we may barely endure” (R/S), “still just able to bear” (L/S), “which we endure but barely” (SW) and “we can scarcely endure” (N/K). But is this “terror” or “a terror”? And should this be “a terror that we are just able to bear …” or “terror, which we are just able to bear …”? There are a number of possibilities: “for beauty’s nothing but the birth of terror; / which …” (SW), “for beauty’s nothing / but beginning of Terror we’re …” (L/S), “for beauty is nothing / but the beginning of terror we …” (CFM), “for beauty is nothing / but the beginning edge of the dread we …” (R/S), “for beauty is nothing / but the beginning of terror, which …” (M), “for their beauty / is nothing but the first stirrings of a terror/ we …” (MC). The relationship between syntax and sense here is complex. Is it the specific terror of beauty that is being addressed here, or terror in general? And then we are given what looks like a further qualification of this terror: “weil es gelassen verschmäht,/ uns zu zerstören”. If it is possible in an English translation to retain the comma after the German “verschmäht”, then we should do so, because the effect of Rilke’s lines depends on the disjunction between the calmness of the angel and the destructive power it possesses. For (and we do not need a further “denn” to discern the logic here) “jeder Engel ist schrecklich”. This has been translated as “every angel is terrifying” (R), “every angel is dread” (R/S), “every angel is terrifying” (MC and R) and “each angel burns” (sic) (Waterfield). The preferred approach is to retain the copulative syntax of the line (the “ist” verb) and look for an adjectival qualifier to complete the description of the angel, such as “terrible” (L/S) or “awesome” (G). In contemporary English, “terrible” has, however, lost all sense of the original meaning of “terror”, becoming merely a synonym for “very bad” or “atrocious”. “Awesome” has also been appropriated in the same fashion (but this time as meaning something positive, such as “really good”, “great”). But even if we could somehow argue that the discourse of poetry occupies a realm beyond the demotic, awe and dread are not the same. Awe is “a feeling of referential respect mixed with fear or wonderment” (OED), and dread is what we fear may happen. Terror, however, is what happens, and when it does happen we have no time for dread. Terror is not mixed with anything: it is pure, the thing itself, a dark ens realissimum. Terror leaves us with nothing, not even with the dignity of incomprehension: because we know why it is there. One alternative translation of this crucial line is to turn the copulative into a simple verb and say: “every angel brings terror”.
An alternative translation:
Who, if I should cry, would hear me then
from amongst the order of angels? And even if one should
suddenly take me to its heart, I would expire
from its greater presence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of a terror that we are just able to bear,
and which we so admire because it serenely disdains
to destroy us. Every angel brings terror.
The second section of eleven lines (including one single-word line) in unrhymed verse explores the existential consequences of remaining distant from the potency of the angel. Stepping back from the sublime means stepping back into a prescribed world (“gedeutete Welt”) of familiar custom and habit:
Und so verhalt ich mich denn und verschlucke den
Lockruf
dunkelen Schluchzens. Ach, wen vermögen
wir denn zu brauchen? Engel nicht, Menschen nicht,
und die findigen Tiere merken es schon,
daß wir nicht sehr verläßlich zu Haus sind
in der gedeuteten Welt. Es bleibt uns vielleicht
irgend ein Baum an dem Abhang, daß wir ihn täglich
wiedersähen; es bleibt uns die Straße von gestern
und das verzogene Treusein einer Gewohnheit,
der es bei uns gefiel, und so blieb sie und ging nicht.
Once again, in the absence of end rhyme or consistent metre (the underlying foot is iambic, but is constantly disrupted by dactyls and spondees), alliteration and anaphoric repetition (“nicht”, “nicht”, “daß”, “daß”) serve to structure the discourse of the stanza, whose consequential tone is underscored by flowing enjambments. The theme of the stanza is postponed despair: “und so verhalt ich mich denn”. The speaker is preventing him or herself from crying out. The line has proved difficult to translate. Some attempts include “I pull myself back” (R), “I master myself” (G), “I repress myself” (L/S), “I hold myself back” (M), “I restrain myself” (CFM) and “curbing myself” (R/S). “Repress” has unwanted Freudian connotations and “master” suggests something more systematic than a single response. “Restrain myself” or “hold back” (MC) are alternatives. What is important to register is the poise of the words, the fact that here, as throughout the Elegies, anguish is allowed to enter the soul but only on terms that are defined by the poetic persona. In German, “sich verhalten” denotes, both through the meaning of the word and through its reflexive pronoun, composure and self-control, forms of comportment that can be heard in the seme of the phrase, “Haltung”. We are then told: “[ich] verschlucke den Lockruf/ dunkelen Schluchzens”. The cry is stifled, and its swallowing is transmitted in onomatopoeically crafted phonetics (secured by alliteration), which represent the choking down of dark sound. The “Schrei” has now become a “Lockruf”, whose importance is foregrounded through its status as a single-word line. This has been variously translated as “luring call” (CFM and R), “the appeal” (SW), “call-note” (L/S and M), “birdcall” (Y), “mating song” (G) or simply “call” (R/S). A “Lockruf” is a call made by one animal to another, or by a human to an animal as a ploy to lure it: it involves contact with the other, and reciprocation.
That contact, that reciprocation, is not available to the lyrical subject. Indeed, “wen vermögen/ wir denn zu brauchen?” “Vermögen” is a slightly archaic term (“können” is more common), but the former has a broader provenance than the latter, meaning not only to be able to do something or to be capable of doing something, but also to induce, to move someone to doing something. It is difficult to find in English a word to cover both meanings, and matters are further compounded when “brauchen” (“need”) is brought into the equation (which is treated by some translators as if it were “Gebrauch machen von”), a term that introduces a sense of compulsion into what had been a state of volition or at least capability. Attempting to reproduce both meanings has led to some awkward translations, as in “who is there that we can make use of?” (L/S), “whom can we use then?” (CFM), “whom can we ever turn to in our need?” (M), “who answers to / our nameless need?” (R), and “of whom shall we have need?” (SW). “Who is it that we can turn to for help?” (MC) is elegant but omits the “brauchen” component, while “Who answers to our / nameless need?” (R) is an effective paraphrase but interlards an “answer” that is not there in the text. An alternative translation might be the simple “whom should we need?” But (and this is a question that cannot be answered yet, although it must be asked): who is this “we”? This personal pronoun is used throughout the Elegy, as is its companion “us”. Is this a singular subject or a collective? The poet as an individual or a representative of the humanity? Could this “we” simply be Rilke? The shifts in self-articulation are so rhetorically complex that any analysis that posits a clear speaking subject, even one that is talking to itself, is already lost.
The “findigen Tiere”, “animals canny” (R/S), “noticing animals” (L/S), “shrewd animals” (CFM) or simply “clever” animals know that “wir nicht sehr verläßlich zu Haus sind/ in der gedeuteten Welt” (and “we” seems here a demotic collective subject, although it is also possible that Rilke means “I”). In German, “deuten” means “to construe”, “to explain” or “to interpret”, and the last is the preferred translation of “gedeutete” as “interpreted world”. But interpreting involves an interpreter and a text that is interpreted for someone else. It is a functional communicative act, and that surely is not what Rilke is describing here. An early translation is “intelligible world” (SW), and this has been followed by “in the world we’ve expounded” (FMC), “deciphered world” (Y), “in the world of the sense” (N/K), “our conceptualised world” (EB), “translated world” (P) and “in our interpreting of the world” (MC). The problem with this last translation is that it suggests that we are simply inept at interpreting the world, and that if we were more adroit we would feel more at home in it. What Rilke is saying is that all interpretations alienate us from what truly matters: self-determining life. “Gedeuteten” also connotes “deuten” (“to mean”) and its substantive, “Bedeutung”, which translates as “meaning” or “significance”. A “gedeutete” world is thus a world that is (already) invested with meaning. As R/S explain in their gloss of the word, “gedeutet” describes “the world as filtered by human understanding, which is therefore a reduced and defensive sphere, in which the full extent of human experiential possibility cannot be realised” (R/S). We live in a world that has already been invested with meaning by other people, a pre-scribed world, a fact that Rilke communicates through the weighty finality of “gedeutete”, an adjective drawn from a preterite whose uncompromising assertiveness is sustained by the repetition of its concluding dental phoneme. An alternative translation would be “a prescribed world”.
We remain within this world, drawing upon habit and the familiar to sustain our sense of belonging: “es bleibt uns vielleicht/ irgend ein Baum an dem Abhang, daß wir ihn täglich/ wiedersähen; es bleibt uns die Straße von gestern”. The casual “vielleicht” suggests the tenuousness of this recourse to the quotidian, and the anaphoric “bleibt/ blieb” (used three times in these concluding lines), suggests the sterility of repetition. It is important to note that the subordinating clause is proceeded by “daß”, so that “some tree on a hillside, which every day we take /into our vision” (M) cannot be right, because it is not the tree that is the object of the sentence but the fact that we see it every day. “Some tree on a slope, to be looked at day after day” (L/S) and “some tree left us, so that we see it daily” (R/S), and “some tree remains for us, that we can see again daily” (R) are perhaps more appropriate. “Die Straße von gestern” (“the street of yesterday”) is an image worthy of Proust, a glancing fixing of time and space that in its simplicity takes us beyond both. There is no need to add that this street was “strolled” (MC), or to turn it into a “walk” (L/S).
This retrospective account of the quotidian culminates in the “verzogene Treusein einer Gewohnheit”. This has variously been translated as “gnarled fidelity of an old habit” (CFM), “loyalty of habit that once moved in with us” (R/S), “long-drawn loyalty of habit, that once moved in with us” (L/S), “a loyalty of habit … that moved in with us” (M), “a habit that liked us as an ageing retainer” (G). “Verzogen” is the past tense of “verziehen” and when used as an adjective means “warped or “distorted” (literally, something that has been “pulled away”). But “verziehen” also means to change location, and Rilke wishes us to hear both meanings here. It qualifies “Treusein”, which is a neologistic formation, constituted from “true” and “sein” (being “true” or “faithful”). The two words linked in this fashion represents a characteristically Rilkean condensation of meaning, intended to capture both the lure of the self to a familiar space and the recurring occupancy of that space through habit, but also the impersonality of this process. “Verzogen” then joins up with the “bei uns” (“to be at home”) of the following line to suggest a cosy if sinister complacency. Throughout these lines, Rilke’s persona remains the grammatical and thematic object, the “uns”; the real subject is “Gewohnheit”, dull habit, which installs itself through custom, and over which we have no control, its obstinacy reinforced by the caesura and the heavily accented syllables of the final words of these lines.
An alternative translation:
And so, I hold myself back, burying deep within me
the calling sound
of dark-sobbing. Oh, whom should we then have need of? Not angels or people,
and the canny animals already know
that we are not entirely at home in this prescribed world.
There is perhaps some tree or other on a slope that
we see again each day; or a street left over
from yesterday, or the familiarity of a habit that
has taken up residence with us and, happy there,
remains and will not go away.
Attempts to lose ourselves in the anonymity of night, where we can no longer discern the contours of individual selfhood, or to immerse ourselves in relationships with others (and Rilke probably wants us to equate the two) are also doomed to failure. The eleven lines of the third part of the stanza (two of which merely contain a single word) are structured around a series of questions that occur midway through the stanza, and which emerge from the almost impatient interrogative tone that characterises the text. Once again, in the absence of end rhyme, alliteration acts as the metrical unifying principle:
O und die Nacht, die Nacht, wenn der Wind voller
Weltraum
uns am Angesicht zehrt –, wem bliebe sie nicht, die ersehnte,
sanft enttäuschende, welche dem einzelnen Herzen
mühsam bevorsteht. Ist sie den Liebenden leichter?
Ach, sie verdecken sich nur mit einander ihr Los.
Weißt du’s noch nicht? Wirf aus den Armen die Leere
zu den Räumen hinzu, die wir atmen; vielleicht daß
die Vögel
die erweiterte Luft fühlen mit innigerm Flug.
As if following Blaise Pascal and his terror of infinite space, Rilke invokes a similar space, a “Weltraum”, in which unhappy consciousness is rooted. “Der Wind voller Weltraum” has been translated as “when a wind full of infinite space” (M), “when the wind full of welkin [an archaic term for “sky” or “heaven”]” (CFM), “when wind full of cosmic space” (L/S), “when a wind, full of the hollow where the world is” (G), “where the outer-spaced-filled wind” (R/S) and “when winds from space” (SW). An alternative is not to attempt to translate “Weltraum” as a substantive, but rather to paraphrase it as in “when a wind, blown from a greater space beyond”. Notions of space, and the interaction for the experiencing self between space and time, constitute a defining paradigm in Rilke’s Elegies, the “Weltraum” itself reappearing in the second and fourth Elegy as a totality of existential space. We are told that this space “uns am Angesicht zehrt”, which has been translated as “feeds on our faces” (L/S, CFM and G). “Zehren” does indeed mean “to sap” the strength of someone or something, and used with “von” means to “live of” of “feed on” something. But with the preposition “an…”, it simply means “to gnaw at”. “Tears at” (R), however, best captures the intensity of the experience.
This experience of metaphysical destitution is open to us all: “wem bliebe sie nicht, die ersehnte, / sanft enttäuschende, welche dem einzelnen Herzen/ mühsam bevorsteht”. One interpretation of these lines is that the night, which is stealthily, anxiously or “painfully” (L/S and M) approaching for the solitary or lonely heart, is longed for, because it provides a time when that heart might forget its woes. The solace that it brings, however, will be temporary or even illusionary. The density of meaning of Rilke’s words has proved difficult to translate. “Ersehnte” and “enttäuschende” are adjectives transformed into nouns, grammatical formations that are not possible in English, which requires in such formulations an object, even something as vague as “thing”. Dispensing with this object in translation can lead to lack of clarity, as in “with whom should it not stay, longed for, gently disillusioning, painful to meet/ in the heart’s solitude?” (R/S). An object for these lines has been provided in different ways: “for whom would she not remain, / longed for, mild disenchanteress, painfully there/ for the lonely heart to achieve?” (L/S), and “whom would it not remain for – that longed-after/ mildly disillusioning presence, which the solitary heart so painfully meets” (M). The simplest solution is to return to the invoked subject of this section, “night”, which gives us “the gently-disenchanting, / much-longed for night, wearily immanent/ for lonely hearts, – this must remain for all” (SW), “for whom wouldn’t it stay, / yearned-for, gently disappointing night/ that wearily confronts the solitary heart?” (CFM). Matters are further compounded when the main verb, which is in a terminal position, is moved into the centre of these lines, “bevorstehen” (meaning to “lie ahead” or “to be in the offing”). This change of syntax produces confusion regarding the apposition of the verb, where it seems to govern both night and lovers. As always, Rilke’s syntax, although highly nuanced, is clear and supportive of meaning. We make it more complex than it is at our cost. An alternative translation is: “to whom does it not offer itself, this longed-for/, this gently disillusioning night, which anxiously lies ahead/ for the solitary heart”.
Perhaps those in love find it easier to find solace than we do: “Ist sie den Liebenden leichter?” This should be simply translated as “is it easier for lovers?”, but not “is it lighter for lovers?” (L/S and R) or “more easy on lovers?” And the answer is no, because: “sie verdecken sich nur mit einander ihr Los.”, “they only hide their fate from themselves by using each other” (CFM), “only covering each other over do they hide their lot” (R/S), “they make use of each other” (MC), “with each other they only conceal their lot” (L/S). “Verdecken sich” is possibly a sexual metaphor, describing the covering of one body by another, but meanings around “obscuring” and “concealing” are also there, and the use of the reflexive pronoun, combined with the reciprocal pronoun, “einander”, suggests the self-enclosing totality of the act. One interpretation of these lines is that in their intimacy lovers seek to flee from, or at least hide from themselves, their existential reality, their “Los” or “fate” (possibly the fact that they are ultimately isolated individuals; possibly that they too will die). To assert that they are using one another (CFM and MC) may be true, but this implication is not in the text, and it also loses the pathos of their situation.
With “Weißt du’s noch nicht?”, the abrasive “Ich” of the opening lines of the Elegy now moves into the second person voice, and the effect is equally abrasive. The “du” appears from nowhere, in a way that is reminiscent of the concluding lines of Rilke’s poem, “Archaïscher Torso Apollos” (“Archaic Torso of Apollo”), and its concluding injunction: “Du mußt dein Leben ändern” (“you must change your life”). The poet’s question here, “Weißt du’s noch nicht?”, is posed in medias res, as if we are overhearing a debate that has already started (as signalled by the “noch”). But what is the “it” that is not known here? Is it an object of knowledge or just the formal “es” in the common German phrase, “ich weiss es” (“I know”)? The translation “don’t you know yet?” (L/S and M) is not idiomatic English, because “know” requires an object, as in “you still don’t know this” (R/S) and “don’t you know that yet?” (CFM). It might be better to replace “know” with a different verb such as “see” (MC), which does not require an object, or simply translate it as “do you still not understand?”
That question is now followed by an exhortation: “wirf aus den Armen die Leere / zu den Räumen hinzu, die wir atmen”. The gesture is expansive, involving a purging of emptiness, and its conversion of this emptiness into an energy for the flight of birds. What is this emptiness? In German, all nouns that are generalisations or abstractions take a definite article, but it is not always necessary to retain it when translating the word into English. “Die Leere” is largely translated as “the emptiness”, but it is possible that this should simply be “emptiness”. In which case, translations such as “fling your arms’ emptiness from you into the space we breathe” (R/S), and “fling this emptiness/ out of your arms, back into the spaces/ into which we breathe” (MC) are perhaps not appropriate. Emptiness is thrown outwards; it has a direction but not necessarily a purpose, as in “fling the emptiness out of your arms/ to broaden the spaces we breathe” (L/S). Translations such as “throw the emptiness from your arms into the spaces we breathe” (CFM), “and “fling the emptiness out of your arms/ into the spaces we breathe” (M), are perhaps more appropriate. The emptiness is thrown and becomes flight. The tropes of emptiness, space, air and flight form a trajectory, whose narrative of liberation is enjoyed (here as elsewhere in Rilke’s poetry) by birds, who take up this expanded breeze (the spiritus, perhaps), allowing their “fervent flight” (L/S and R/S) to be empowered by a greater inwardness.
An alternative translation:
Oh, and the night, night, when the wind blown from
a greater space beyond
tears at our faces.
To whom does it not offer itself, this longed-for,
this gently-disillusioning night, which
anxiously lies ahead for the solitary heart?
Is it easier for lovers? By clinging to one another,
they too attempt to avoid their fate.
Do you still not understand? From your arms throw emptiness
into the spaces in which we breathe, so that
the birds, perhaps, will feel the greater air
in their more ardent flight.
The poem now enters what is seemingly an autobiographical, indeed a confessional mode in the second stanza, as the lyrical voice takes stock of its past, both poetic and personal, in a series of self-addressed questions. The metre is largely iambic, which befits the descriptive ambit of the stanza and its pensive evocation of past events. The tone hovers between uneasy pathos and irony:
Ja, die Frühlinge brauchten dich wohl. Es muteten manche
Sterne dir zu, daß du sie spürtest. Es hob
sich eine Woge heran im Vergangenen, oder
da du vorüberkamst am geöffneten Fenster,
gab eine Geige sich hin. Das alles war Auftrag.
Aber bewältigtest du’s? Warst du nicht immer
noch von Erwartung zerstreut, als kündigte alles
eine Geliebte dir an? (Wo willst du sie bergen,
da doch die großen fremden Gedanken bei dir
aus und ein gehn und öfters bleiben bei Nacht.)
Sehnt es dich aber, so singe die Liebenden; lange
noch nicht unsterblich genug ist ihr berühmtes Gefühl.
Jene, du neidest sie fast, Verlassenen, die du
so viel liebender fandst als die Gestillten. Beginn
immer von neuem die nie zu erreichende Preisung;
denk: es erhält sich der Held, selbst der Untergang war ihm
nur ein Vorwand, zu sein: seine letzte Geburt.
Aber die Liebenden nimmt die erschöpfte Natur
in sich zurück, als wären nicht zweimal die Kräfte,
dieses zu leisten. Hast du der Gaspara Stampa
denn genügend gedacht, daß irgend ein Mädchen,
dem der Geliebte entging, am gesteigerten Beispiel
dieser Liebenden fühlt: daß ich würde wie sie?
Sollen nicht endlich uns diese ältesten Schmerzen
fruchtbarer werden? Ist es nicht Zeit, daß wir liebend
uns vom Geliebten befrein und es bebend bestehn:
wie der Pfeil die Sehne besteht, um gesammelt im Absprung
mehr zu sein als er selbst. Denn Bleiben ist nirgends.
Self-interrogation elides in this stanza into a probing retrospective, and then into a hypothetical construction of a future, created out of what are clearly personal experiences from the past. The frequent caesuras force us to start each line again in the middle, in lines that possess a complex inner rhyme and end with enjambments, where alliteration takes over the structuring function of conventional metre. As if in empathy with the self-questioning of the speaking voice, we are, through a web of subordinating clauses (introduced by “daß” and “als”), constantly brought to a stop and made to take stock, to query where we are. We can never find repose, and we shouldn’t: “denn Bleiben ist nirgends”.
The stanza begins: “Ja, die Frühlinge brauchten dich wohl”. Is this “Ja” interjection an ironic “yes” or one used largely to ground the dactylic metre? And should we understand the hyperbolic conceit of these lines as simply a variation of the pathetic fallacy? Or are these hackneyed tropes from an earlier poetic idiom that the poet is jettisoning in favour of a new idiom that is the process of formation, and precisely in the Duino Elegies? In their brashness, we can discern a distance between the poetic voice and its past. But how great a distance? Translating this section involves more than ever an interpretation of Rilke’s position of speech, and an understanding of what he is trying to achieve in the Elegies. “Es muteten” and “es hob” are impersonal constructions and, in their aggregated universalism, suggest perhaps the self-importance of the poet (the world is seeking him out), a self-importance consolidated through the use of “dich” and “du”, second person self-addresses that are also implied in the “hin” and “heran” formations. An ego, however vulnerable, is speaking here. “Spring times” and “the stars” are active agents, but the casual “wohl”, which is best translated here as “truly (R), and “manche” (meaning “probably” or “to be sure” and “a lot of”) hold them at an almost trivialising distance in the text. The “spring times” (or perhaps the less successful “the springs”, as in CFM and L/S), provide no problems for the translators, but the enigmatic “es muteten manche/Sterne dir zu, daß du sie spürtest” has proved more difficult, particularly the crucial “spürtest”. Most translators unnecessarily and incongruously anthropomorphise the stars, as in “and many stars expected you to feel them” (CFM), “often a star was waiting for you to notice it” (M), “many a star was waiting for you to perceive it” (L/S), “numbers of stars looked for you to perceive them”, “there were stars waiting to be seen by you” (MC). “Zumuten” means to expect something of someone, or to ask something of someone. “The stars made claims upon you, and you knew this” is an alternative translation.
Two further moments from the poet’s memory are evoked: a wave that emerges from the past, and a fiddle that is overheard from an open window, images that belong to experiences that once formed for the poet an “Auftrag”. “Auftrag” is a mechanical word (and even the syntax of the line in which it is embedded is pragmatically brief), but it is in keeping with the distancing language of this section of the poem, which signals inauthenticity or, if not inauthenticity, then at least points to a jejune poetic idiom, which in its recourse to the familiar late-romantic topi of spring times, stars, waves and fiddles, has not fully engaged with the human condition. “Auftrag” has been translated as “mission” (MC, R/S, R and M), “commission” (L/S), “assignment” (CFM) and “commandment” (G) “Auftrag”, however, possesses none of the idealistic or quasi-religious overtones of “mission”. A commission comes from without; a mission comes from within. “Auftrag” is something more pragmatic: a mandate or a brief, as in a set of instructions, or a “task” (GG) that has to be accomplished, seen through, dealt with as in the ensuing “bewältigen” (to “deal with”, “overcome”), whose functionality mirrors the no-nonsense “Auftrag” that precedes it. It seems that a process of distantiation is taking place, which is evident in the impatient tone of the text, the question marks and conjunctions of interrogation such as “wo?”. A judgement is being made on past poetic goals and achievements, a stripping away of an inauthentic self, such as that embodied here in the hero who chooses death as a pretext for his rebirth through fame or legend. “Vorwand” (“pretence” or “subterfuge”) suggests a self-constructive attitude, pointing perhaps to the Rilke’s earlier self-stylisation as a “poet”.
The process of self-interrogation continues in the remaining lines of the this section. “Warst du nicht immer/ noch von Erwartung zerstreut, als kündigte alles/ eine Geliebte dir an?”, Rilke’s persona asks itself, announcing one of the major themes of the Elegies: love and loving. A representative translation is “weren’t you always/ distracted (“distraught”, L/S, and “side-tracked”, R/S) by expectation, as if every event announced a beloved?” (M). We should continue to sing of lovers, not only of those who were happy in love, the “Gestillten”, “the requited” (L/S), the “gratified” (M) or “the satisfied and stilled” (R) but, and particularly, of the “Verlassenen”, “the unrequited” (L/S), those who were “forsaken, abandoned and unrequited” (MC). Unlike the dead hero who disappears into history, dead lovers are absorbed by an “exhausted” nature (although for MC it is the lovers who are “sapped and spent”), which takes them to itself, because it does not have the strength to continue producing their like.
The lovers, their fate in love and the poet’s attitude to their recall, is further extended by the introduction of the figure of the sixteenth-century Italian lyricist, Gaspara Stampa. Should those in love not become like her, the poet asks (in the first of a series of negative main clauses), accepting the irrevocable pain and loss that resides in love? Should not the poet also become like her? Indeed, is it not finally time for the “ältesten Schmerzen”, the “oldest of heartaches’ (M C), “most ancient of torments” (R/S), “oldest of all griefs” (SW), to bear greater fruit? It is the theme of kairos, of the emancipation of self in a critical moment of judgment and action. It is time that, while continuing to love, we should, nevertheless, free ourselves from the beloved and “es bebend bestehn:/ wie der Pfeil die Sehne besteht/ um gesammelt im Absprung/ mehr zu sein als er selbst.” The poet must free himself from his memories of the past; not deny them but to hold them at a “loving” distance so that he can move forward, remaining “gesammelt” (“collected”) for the future. The memories are still a part of him, as the arrow is still in the bow, but its anticipation of flight makes it greater than it is. It suffers restraint so that it can be released. “Bestehen” means to “persist”, “survive”, “exist”, “stand firm”. “Endures” is chosen by R, L/S and M and MC, whilst others prefer “stand it/ stands” (CFM) and “resist” (SW). Some translators choose not to repeat “bestehn”. G replaces the second use of the verb with “stands”, R/S opt for “survived” and “withstands”, and SW “resist” and “strives”. MC translates the lines as “though trembling, / endure as the arrow endures the tensed bowstring, / becomes something more than itself in the leap/ of release.” Removing the colon admirably opens up the syntax and inverted language of the text in the service of readability, but it loses thereby the angularity of Rilke’s writing and its subtle use of emphasis.
The arrow broaches within itself stasis and movement: both are required if the future is to be gained, “denn Bleiben ist nirgends”. This is an audacious formulation, which condenses two spatial motifs into a single elliptical statement by combining an adverb of place, not with a noun but with a verb. This has disconcerted some translators, who have attempted to find a noun equivalent for “bleiben” (a common word simply meaning “to remain”, but here used as an infinitive noun). It has been translated as “for abiding is nowhere” (CFM), “for our point of rest is nowhere” (MC), “there is no place for staying” (R/S), “for there is no place where we can remain” (M), and through the paraphrase “Nothing which is, is static” (SW). All are possible translations, but they have the effect of normalising Rilke’s text, depriving it of its radical message: that time and space can be conflated, that as experiential possibilities they might, in fact, be the same, a daring conceit that other translators retain by choosing the literal “staying is nowhere” (L/S and G). Rilke’s lines tease us also through the contradiction of their logic, since “to remain” means precisely to be somewhere, that somewhere being here. But here is not good enough, for non-movement means non-growth, a failure to grasp potentiality: it means the arrow remaining in the bow. The literal “remaining is nowhere” (R) conveys this.
An alternative translation:
Yes, the springtimes truly needed you. Amongst the stars,
many called to you, and you listened. And a wave rose
towards you from the past, or
as you passed by an open window,
a fiddle gave itself in sound. All of that was your task.
But did you complete it? Have your expectations
not always distracted you, as if every event
announced a new lover? (but where could you have hidden her,
with those strange powerful thoughts
going in and out of you, and often lasting into the night).
But if you are taken with longing, so sing of those lovers,
the famous ones, whose passions still stand in need
of immortalising, those whom you almost envied,
the betrayed ones, whom you found so much dearer
than those happy in love.
Strike up your eulogy once more from the beginning.
And think of this: the hero survives: even his death was only a pretext
to give birth to himself. Exhausted nature takes back lovers
into itself, as if it lacks the strength to
generate a similar pair again. Have you not read deeply enough
into Gaspara Stampa to see that any young woman,
in the presence of that more intense example of loving,
and who has lost her lover, might feel: “I could be like her”?
Is it not finally time for those long-felt pains to bear
a deeper fruit? Is it not time that we, loving, should free ourselves
from the loved-one and, trembling, resist: as the arrow
resists the bowstring tension, in order to become,
gathered in its release, greater than itself.
For remaining is nowhere.
The poet now exhorts unspecified voices (of the angels, of his conscience or memory?) to bring him back into contact with those friends and loved ones who died young. The section develops an argument, or series of arguments, in language that, if not exactly prosaic, is structured around a series of functional adverbs (“so”, “aber”, “oder”) that establish the discursive nature of the writing. The stanza depicts the poet’s peeling away of memory (almost in the form of a talking cure), as he attempts to uncover the inner core of his attitude to his dead friends. It is a process of recollection that involves an ethical responsibility to their memory:
Stimmen, Stimmen. Höre, mein Herz, wie sonst nur
Heilige hörten: daß sie der riesige Ruf
aufhob vom Boden; sie aber knieten,
Unmögliche, weiter und achtetens nicht:
So waren sie hörend. Nicht, daß du Gottes ertrügest
die Stimme, bei weitem. Aber das Wehende höre,
die ununterbrochene Nachricht, die aus Stille sich bildet.
Es rauscht jetzt von jenen jungen Toten zu dir.
Wo immer du eintratst, redete nicht in Kirchen
zu Rom und Neapel ruhig ihr Schicksal dich an?
Oder es trug eine Inschrift sich erhaben dir auf,
wie neulich die Tafel in Santa Maria Formosa.
Was sie mir wollen? leise soll ich des Unrechts
Anschein abtun, der ihrer Geister
reine Bewegung manchmal ein wenig behindert.
There is general agreement on how the opening lines of the third stanza should be translated: the poet exhorts his heart to listen to the deeper voices within him, as only the holy men of old knew how to listen when they prayed, remaining in prayer even as a mighty call from above might raise them from the ground. These holy men or saints Rilke calls the “Unmögliche”. It is, once again, an adjective turned into a noun, and difficult to translate. The literal “impossibles” (L/S) and “impossible ones” (CFM) are not idiomatic English. Other attempts are “strangest of beings” (R/S) and “magicians” (sic) (G). One solution is to treat the word as an adverb as if it were “unmöglich”, which would give “impossibly”, as in “they rose, impossibly, still kneeling” (MC), but this would involve levitation, and that is probably not what Rilke intends. A further solution is to play down the literal meaning of “aufhob” and translate it more in more general terms as “carried them away” (R). The holy men are “unmöglich” because they are indescribable; “impossible” in the intensity of their veneration. “Ineffable” might be an alternative translation.
The poet realises that he does not possess the faith of the saints, and has not been able to bear God’s word. And yet he has heard the “Wehende”, that “ceaseless message that forms itself out of silence” (M). But what is this “Wehende”? “Wehen” means “to blow” or “to waft” and is here used as a noun. Most translators have converted the word into “wind”, but this is to substantiate it unnecessarily. What the poet is describing is a presence that is moving towards him, bringing a prescience of knowledge, “Nachricht”, something that he divines, senses within himself in his memory of those who have died young. We are told: “es rauscht jetzt von jenen jungen Toten zu dir”. This has been variously translated as “rustling towards you from those youthfully-dead” (L/S), “they sweep toward you now from those who died young” (CFM, “it is murmuring toward you know from those who died young” (M), “a whisper of it approaches from those young dead” (R/S) and “bringing whispers of all who died young” (MC). One alternative translation involves making “dir” the subject of these lines, which gives us “you can now hear it murmuring of those who died young”.
But do these sentiments simply register a sympathetic soul opening itself to the tragedy of the past. The tone of the passage is difficult to judge, because the impersonal forms “es rauscht” and “es trug” suggest a certain detachment towards the events described. Is this possible: both to reconstitute the past with sensitivity, and at the same time to distance yourself from it? And what do these visitations from the past want from him? Both M and MC turn the question into a statement (“what they ask of me …”), but in doing so lose the pathos and sense of vulnerability revealed in the text. The poet feels that he has remained in communion with the young people that he once knew and who have died. These visitations from the past are asking or commanding the poet “leise soll ich des Unrechts/ Anschein abtun, der ihrer Geister/ reine Bewegung manchmal ein wenig behindert”. “What they want of me is that I gently remove the appearance/ of injustice about their death – which at times/ slightly hinders their souls from proceeding onward” (M) is a representative translation. The “Unrecht” (“injustice” or “wrong”) that is evoked by their memory is the injustice of their early deaths, and the poet is asked to remove this. The text says “soll” (“should”), which implies a moral obligation, and it is necessary to retain this sense of obligation. “Manchmal ein wenig” is difficult to translate. A literal rendition, such as “sometimes a little”, would risk trivialising the experience. An alternative translation is “undo the semblance of injustice, which may hinder at times the pure motion/ of their spirits”.
An alternative translation:
Voices, voices. Listen, my heart, as only
holy men did once listen, until the mighty call
raised them from the ground; but they arose,
ineffable, still kneeling, and did not heed it:
so did they listen. Not that you could endure
God’s voice – not in the least. But listen to
the murmurings, the ceaseless message
that forms itself from silence. You can now hear it whispering,
telling of those who died young. Wherever you went,
in the churches of Rome or Naples,
did not their fates in hushed tones speak to you?
And have you not been moved by epitaphs of noble lineage,
such as one a while ago on a plaque
in the Santa Maria Formosa?
What do they want from me? That I should
silently undo the semblance of injustice, which
may sometimes hinder the pure motion of their spirits.
In the fourth stanza, the poet speculates on his distance from the world and his disengagement from the past. The latter is seen as a form of death but, as the angels testify, the dead and the living are essentially one:
Freilich ist es seltsam, die Erde nicht mehr zu bewohnen,
kaum erlernte Gebräuche nicht mehr zu üben,
Rosen, und andern eigens versprechenden Dingen
nicht die Bedeutung menschlicher Zukunft zu geben;
das, was man war in unendlich ängstlichen Händen,
nicht mehr zu sein, und selbst den eigenen Namen
wegzulassen wie ein zerbrochenes Spielzeug.
Seltsam, die Wünsche nicht weiter zu wünschen. Seltsam,
alles, was sich bezog, so lose im Raume
flattern zu sehen. Und das Totsein ist mühsam
und voller Nachholn, daß man allmählich ein wenig
Ewigkeit spürt. – Aber Lebendige machen
alle den Fehler, daß sie zu stark unterscheiden.
Engel (sagt man) wüßten oft nicht, ob sie unter
Lebenden gehn oder Toten. Die ewige Strömung
reißt durch beide Bereiche alle Alter
immer mit sich und übertönt sie in beiden.
The metre of the stanza is largely dactylic and, although alliteration plays its role again, what holds the text together is a certain rhetorical pressure, which is evident in the repetition of “seltsam” and in the anaphoric “nicht – nicht mehr”, “nicht weiter”, adverbs of exclusion that reflect the poet’s devastation of purpose and sense of belonging. The opening words of the stanza, “Freilich ist es seltsam, die Erde nicht mehr zu bewohnen”, is a succinct avowal of this radical disengagement from the world. The conversational interjection “freilich” (as with the later “seltsam” and “ein wenig”) contrasts with the deeper existential sentiments of the line. Once again, Rilke carefully manipulates the linguistic register to achieve the greatest effect. “Freilich” has been variously translated as “of course” (M), “it’s true enough” (MC), “true” (G and CFM), and “yes” (R/S), all of which possess slightly different inflexions of conversational agreement.
The poet has lost contact with customs of the past, which he had barely mastered, and, at the same time, has lost the ability to give voice to objects of beauty (including his beloved roses) that had once promised so much. What this separation presages is a loss of selfhood and even, through a loss of name, identity. It is a process that brings forth a deep-seated quizzicality (“seltsam” is repeated three times in the passage). There is general agreement on how these lines should be translated. The lost material objects include “other auspicious things”, which are not given meaning “in a human future” (MC), and “other things rich in peculiar promise” which are now without “that meaning accrued from our human future” (R/S).
No longer being able “to wish his wishes” and seeing everything with which he once had meaningful connection simply fluttering in empty space (“lose im Raum”), the poet experiences a form of death-in-life. And he tells us, “und das Totsein ist mühsam/und voller Nachholn, daß man allmählich ein wenig/ Ewigkeit spurt”. It is a cryptic phrase. Some translations verge upon the comically macabre, as in “being dead is hard work” (M and R), “and it is hard being dead” (L/S), “being dead is a struggle” (R/S), “to be dead is hard” (MC) and “it’s difficult to be dead” (G). Rilke is possibly not talking here about physical or biological death, but about spiritual, intellectual or even artistic death (“Totsein” is not the same as “tot sein”). This is a rare occasion when it is best to retain the substantive form of the original German and try something such as “in the state of death”, and for “mühsam” not “hard” but “strained” or “fraught”. “Nachholn” has been translated as “making up lost ground” (MC), “making good” (R/S) and “catching up” (G). The state of death inaugurates a process of re-formation that is “full of retrieving before one begins to perceive/ a little eternity” (L/S). These lines might be paraphrased: “once you have emptied yourself of what was negative in your previous existence, what remains as positive must be retrieved as the basis for the future, and in this retrieval, which links the past, present and the future, lies a touch of eternity”.
The distinction between death in life and life in death is being blurred. We humans draw an easy contrast between the two; angels do not. At a deeper level, the two realms are joined: not as a sequence but as a simultaneity, where the eternal flow (of time) sweeps away the living and the dead, irrespective of their age, stifling the cries of both. Rilke’s German is “die ewige Strömung/reißt durch beide Bereiche alle Alter/ immer mit sich und übertönt sie in beiden”. It is a powerful image and it has been translated as “through both these realms, and forever/ eternity’s flood tumbles all the ages and in both/ their cries are drowned out by its roar” (MC) and (perhaps a little more literally, but with greater emphasis on blind devastation) “through either realm the eternal river/ tears all ages along in its flood, relentless,/ drowning out their voice in its thunder” (R/S).
An alternative translation:
Yes, it is indeed strange no longer to live in this world,
no longer practice customs barely learnt,
no longer to give the sense of a human future
to roses and to other things that promised so much,
no longer to be the person that one was,
held in eternally anxious hands, and even to put aside
one’s own name as if it were a broken toy.
Strange, no longer to wish one’s wishes. Strange,
to see everything that mattered fluttering
in an empty space. The state of death is fraught
but full of retrieval, where one gradually tastes
a little eternity. – But those alive all make
the same mistake of too easily drawing distinctions.
Angels (it is said) often do not know whether they are moving amongst
the living or the dead. And the eternal flow sweeps away
both realms, uncaring of age, drowning out their cries.
The final section of the stanza asserts the dependence of the living on the dead through memory and sentiment, and concludes with an example of this drawn from classical mythology: the near-god Linos. According to Rilke’s reading of the myth, Linos’ vitalising music transformed the moribund culture of the Greek world, bringing to it new life before he departed for ever. Remembering him (as Rilke does here) and the vitalising energy of his person and art, is to hold open the possibility of a future for us and perhaps for Rilke, in his discovery of a new poetic idiom:
Schließlich brauchen sie uns nicht mehr,
die Früheentrückten,
man entwöhnt sich des Irdischen sanft, wie man den
Brüsten
milde der Mutter entwächst. Aber wir, die so große
Geheimnisse brauchen, denen aus Trauer so oft
seliger Fortschritt entspringt –: könnten wir sein
ohne sie?
Ist die Sage umsonst, daß einst in der Klage um Linos
wagende erste Musik dürre Erstarrung durchdrang;
daß erst im erschrockenen Raum, dem ein beinah
göttlicher Jüngling
plötzlich für immer enttrat, das Leere in jene
Schwingung geriet, die uns jetzt hinreißt und tröstet
und hilft.
The first Elegy thrives on a tension between the discursive and the poetic, between writing that interrogates, admonishes and hypothesises, and language that through tropes that are angular (and perhaps even obscure) cut across that discourse. This stanza begins in the former mode, only to quickly move into the latter. “Schließlich brauchen sie uns nicht mehr, die Früheentrückten” is, once again, an opening line that begins on a casual note before stating its challenging philosophy. There is general agreement on how to translate this line and the lines that follow. As the poet explains, it is not the dead, the “Früheentrückten” (a noun formed from a compound adjective), meaning “those taken early” (FM and G) or those “snatched too soon” (R/S) who need us: they have no trouble disengaging themselves from earthly matters, weaning themselves from the maternal breast. It is we who need them, hoping to extract deep secrets out of our sorrow, that “seliger Fortschritt” (literally, “blessed progress”) that will take us into the future. What, however, appears to be the straightforward, “könnten wir sein ohne sie?”, causes problems. The literal translation, “could we be without them?” (CFM and R), is not chosen by most translators, presumably because there seem to be more words deserving of emphasis. In his translation, M italicises “them” (“sie” in the original German); G “we” (“wir” in the original); and SW and L/S employ no stress at all. But once again, Rilke is foregrounding the possibility of a state of being; it is a hypothetical projection into the future, and thus the italicised “könnten” should perhaps be retained as “could”.
The final lines of the poem introduce the figure of Linus, the son of Apollo who appears in Homer’s Iliad (Book 18). The player of the lute and singer of songs, he is associated in mythology with music that extols the passage of nature and the harvest season, the rites of death and regeneration, for whom (in some versions of the legend) the young god offered himself as a symbol of sacrifice. Linus represents thus not only the renewal of life but also that of the poetic muse. Linus’ music was radically new, and (in Rilke’s version of the legend) it sent reverberations through the “dürre Erstarrung”, “barren numbnesss” (M and R), “stiffened congealment” (R/S) or “barren wilderness” (MC) of Attic Greece. He entered this “erschrockene Raum”, “startled space” (M), transforming it through galvanising tones that “das Leere in jene/ Schwingung geriet”. “Schwingung” literally means “oscillation” or “vibration” and the latter is chosen by L/S, CFM and SW. Others, concerned perhaps about the technical overtones of “vibration”, have chosen alternatives such as “harmony” (M) and “pulsing” (R/S). CM turns the noun into a verb with “rang”. Linos then departed forever, but he lives on in the memory of his person and his art, which “uns jetzt hinreißt und tröstet und hilft”. “Hinreißt” is a vitalistic trope and has been variously translated as “transports” (R/S), “enraptures” (M and CFM), “holds us rapt” (MC) and “lifts us” (L/S). All are possible translations, but “hinreißen” is more dynamic than any of these: it is an energy that tears us along with it, towards elation. It is force of which we are not in control.
The final five lines of the Elegy consist of a single sentence, which begins “Ist die Sage umsonst” …, and conclude “jene/ Schwingung geriet, die uns jetzt hinreißt und tröstet /und hilft”. Although these lines do not end with a question mark, they are, in fact, a question. G and CFM use the question mark; but most translators, including MC, R/S and M, omit it. It is not simply in the service of bland symmetry that we might want to reinstate it (allowing a poem that begins with a question to end with one). The question mark holds the text open at this crucial concluding juncture, allowing the interpretive eye a space in which it must search for an answer. Rilke, however, chose not to use it, preferring to achieve the same effect through typography, by placing the final two words in a space of their own. It is a technique used throughout the Elegy, where individual words, such as “Lockruf” and “Weltraum”, are placed in isolation on a single line to allow their full potential to emerge. Here, in the final lines of the poem, the same technique is used, to force the reading eye to disengage itself from linearity and from the bland closure that the humble “hilft” (“sustains”) would otherwise achieve.
An alternative translation:
Ultimately, they no longer need us, those
who have died young:
they quickly disabuse themselves of all things earthly,
as we comfortably wean ourselves from our mother’s
breast. It is we who need such deep secrets,
for whom a redeeming way forward so often arises
out of mourning: – Could we exist without them?
Is that story told in vain, how once in the lament of Linus
the sounds of a daring new music to pierced arid sterility;
where for the first time in a shocked arena, which a near
godlike youth left suddenly and for ever,
transforming emptiness into an energy that now enraptures, consoles,
and sustains us?
Rilke, Elegy 2
Jeder Engel ist schrecklich. Und dennoch, weh mir,
ansing ich euch, fast tödliche Vögel der Seele,
wissend um euch. Wohin sind die Tage Tobiae,
da der Strahlendsten einer stand an der einfachen Haustür,
zur Reise ein wenig verkleidet und schon nicht mehr furchtbar;
(Jüngling dem Jüngling, wie er neugierig hinaussah).
Träte der Erzengel jetzt, der gefährliche, hinter den Sternen
eines Schrittes nur nieder und herwärts:
hochaufschlagend erschlüg uns das eigene Herz. Wer seid ihr?
We begin with what we already know. But now we know it for a second time: “jeder Engel ist schrecklich”. Preferred translations follow those in Elegy I: “every angel is terrible” (L/S), “every angel is terrifying” (M, R and MC), “every angel is dread” (R/S) and “every angel is awesome” (G). An alternative is “every angel brings terror”. In Elegy I, the distance between the lyrical subject and the angel was absolute; it formed, or at least gestured at that empty space, the “Leere”, that defines the pathos of selfhood in a prescribed world. The voice, directed outwards, was impotent, or perhaps did not choose, to close that distance. But here in Elegy II, that voice is freed into song: “und dennoch, weh mir,/ ansing ich euch, fast tödliche Vögel der Seele”. As the “dennoch” suggests, a rapprochement, at least in attitude or disposition, is taking place. The preferred translation of “dennoch” is “and yet”, although there are other possibilities such as “still, though” (L/S). “Nevertheless”, “however” and “in spite of that” are also possible. “Weh mir” is translated by all as “alas”, but literally it means “woe is me”, which is now regarded as archaic. But “alas” is only marginally less archaic, and it signifies something slightly different, meaning to feel sorrow about someone or something. The simple “Oh woe!” might be an alternative. We are then told: “ansing ich euch”. In spite of misgivings (a sense of danger, perhaps), Rilke’s persona celebrates the angels, and he addresses them, we should note, in the familiar form of the personal pronoun, “euch”, instead of “Sie”, as if they are already known to him. “Ansingen” means “to start singing”, and most translations retain the aspect of song, as in “I sing my welcome to you” (G), “I sing out to you” (R/S), “I go on singing at you” (CM), but “I welcome you” (CFM) loses this aspect. “I invoke you” has also been used (L/S and M), but “invoke”, although it suggests the use of voice (from the Latin vocare, “to call”), does not mean to address someone or something, but rather “to appeal to”, “to call to” or “to summon”. One invokes something that is not present. The difference is important, because the poet is not bringing these angels into existence through his song; they are already there. An alternative translation is “I sing of you”. The lyrical subject greets these “all but fatal birds of the soul” (R/S and MC), in full knowledge of what they are. The German phrase is “wissend um euch”, and, once again, the familiar form is used. “Knowing about you” is the literal translation (as in L/S, M and CFM), but what is brevity in Rilke’s German comes across as an understatement in English. The phrase needs to be given a little more weight, as in “in the knowledge of what you are” (MC), or in the alternative translation as simply “knowing what you are”.
The angels have already been associated with death, and hence depart from their namesakes in Christian religion such as the Archangel Raphael, who in the Book of Tobit appeared to Tobias, as a “youth to a youth”, to cure him of blindness. But those days have gone. There is general agreement on how to translate this section of the poem, although finding words for the angelic presence of Raphael, the “Strahlendsten”, proves difficult. Attempts are “shining-most” (L/S), “most-shining” (CFM), “brightest being” (R/S), “most fiery-feathered” (G), “his radiance” (M) and “most radiant creature” (MC). Raphael was known as the “burning one”, and that is a possible translation. He brought no fear to Tobias; on the contrary, this was simply one youth in the presence of another. Should, however, this mighty archangel now appear to us (and, as so often in the Elegies, the identity of this “us” is held open), it would cause fatal consternation. Rilke’s words are: “Träte der Erzengel jetzt, der gefährliche, hinter den Sternen/ eines Schrittes nur nieder und herwärts: hochauf/schlagend erschlüg uns das eigene Herz”. The initial line, although syntactically complex, causes few problems, with “But if the archangel now, perilous, from behind the stars / took even one step down towards us …” (M) being representative. The second line, after the colon, describing the beating of a heart, is more problematic. Rilke’s “hochauf” is a neologism, formed from “hoch” (“high”) and “auf” (“up”), and used as an adverbial prefix of “schlagend” (“beating’). Some of the resulting translations are “beating higher and higher” (M), “high-up beating” (L/S), “high-beating” (G and MC) and “beating in leaps” (R/S). Most translators wish to keep the affinity between “schlagend” and “erschlüg” (the subjunctive of “erschlagen”, meaning “to beat to death”), as in “we would be beaten to death/ by our own high-beating heart” (MC). But, precisely because it is a phrase in English rather than a single word, “to beat to death” possesses a graphic physicality that is not present in the German. Those who wish to avoid these connotations choose “our own high-beating heart would slay us” (CFM), “our own heartbeaten heart would burst our chest” (G), “our own rising heart / would pound us down to dust” (R) and “high up-beating, / our heart would out-beat us” (L/S). An alternative is “in a surge of beating, / our own hearts would tear us apart”.
The stanza ends with a characteristic Rilkean strophe, the plaintive query: “wer seid ihr?” The preferred, indeed, the only possible translation is “who are you?”, although the English translation cannot capture the familiar form of the voice. Emphasising the “seid”, as in “who are you?” (M), adds an important quality, but it is not one supported by the text. A similar effect might be achieved by putting the words into a line of their own, and allowing them to conclude the stanza.
An alternative translation:
Every angel brings terror. And yet, oh woe, and knowing
what you are, I will sing of you,
almost deadly birds of the soul.
Where are the days of Tobias,
when one, the burning one, did stand at a simple doorway,
his intention to journey lightly disguised, and no longer provoking fear
(a youth appearing to a youth, who was looking out in curiosity)?
If the archangel should enter now, that dangerous one, and take
but one step down from behind the stars and towards us:
in a surge of beating,
our hearts would pull us apart.
Who are you?
The second stanza consists of a single sentence of eight lines without a main verb, and is comprised, in the form of an accumulatio, of rhapsodic epithets that fall over one another in breathless profusion. Rilke returns here to the theme of those privileged spirits, the “happy ones” who, like the lovers or the young dead in Elegy I, are touched by something that is close to the divine, something that brings them, perhaps, within the ambit of the angelic:
Frühe Geglückte, [die] Verwöhnten der Schöpfung,
Höhenzüge, morgenrötliche Grate
aller Erschaffung, – Pollen der blühenden Gottheit,
Gelenke des Lichtes, Gänge, Treppen, Throne,
Räume aus Wesen, Schilde aus Wonne, Tumulte
stürmisch entzückten Gefühls und plötzlich, einzeln,
Spiegel: die die entströmte eigene Schönheit
wiederschöpfen zurück in das eigene Antlitz.
The first line apostrophises the “frühe Geglückte, ihr Verwöhnten der Schöpfung”. It is important to recognise that “frühe Geglückte” is describing a human subject and not simply an abstraction, and hence the literal translation, “early successes” (L/S, M and R), is perhaps not appropriate. “Young fortunates” (R/S) and “perfection’s firsts” (MC) are preferable. That human subject is never named, nor does it appear in any recognisably anthropomorphic form, although it has been consistently argued that Rilke is describing his angels here. Instead, the term is substantiated through a series of appositions drawn from nature, such as “Höhenzüge, morgenrötliche Grate/ aller Erschaffung”. There is general agreement about these tropes of elevation. They are “mountain ranges, ridges reddened by dawn” (CFM), although “peaks” (M and MC) emphasises the elevated status of the subject that is being addressed. Translating “aller Erschaffung” is more problematic. “Erschaffung” means “creation” in German, but the latter term is also the standard translation of “Schöpfung” and has already been used by most translators to translate that word (although SW and MC are happy to repeat it). Attempts to find a synonym include the neologistic “of all forthbringing” (L/S), “of genesis” (CFM), “the first sun’s rise” (G), “of all first making” (R/S) and “of all Beginning” (M). “Of all desire” (R) invloves a specific reading of the text. One alternative is to stress the “schaffen” component of the word, as in “of all that has been made”.
What follows in the text is an extension and diversification of this creationist trope through a chain of natural allusions that stresses the fecundity (“the pollen of the flowering godhead”, M) of the still unspecified subject of these lines. The pagan tones of “godhead”, reflecting perhaps the pantheism that emerges at times in the Elegies, swiftly elide into a highly condensed vignette of enigmatic historical signifiers, formed from a series of appositions, “corridors, stairways, thrones” (M), which culminate in a conflagration of visceral energy. There is general agreement about how to translate these lines, although “Wesen” has received different treatment as “essence” (L/S, M, R and R/S), “existence” (CFM), “Being” (G) and “life” (MC).
Problems come, however, with the lead-in to final lines of the stanza, which is a short bridging passage that reads: “und plötzlich, einzeln, / Spiegel: die …”. Rilke’s elliptical syntax (including the italicisation of “Spiegel”) further compounds the cryptic sense of these words. Translations include “and suddenly, separate, / mirrors, drawing up …” (L/S), “and suddenly, singly, / mirrors which …” (CFM), “and suddenly, lone/ mirrors: which …” (R/S), “and, suddenly, isolate, / mirrors, drawing back …” (G), “and suddenly, alone: / mirrors, which …” (M) and “suddenly, solely – mirrors, scooping / …” (MC) and “suddenly, / a solitary mirror that …” (SW). Translation cannot avoid interpretation here. What is being described is a moment of kairos, a sudden (“plötzlich”) recognition of the self in time, which allows an in-sight into personal identity, represented here by the mirror, a trope of self-reflexivity that is consolidated in the lines that follow. It is an eruption of self-understanding, and that eruption is reproduced in Rilke’s typography and punctuation, which is abrupt and angular like the experience that it is describing. These lines constitute a turning point in the stanza, where the impersonal reaches the personal in what seems to be the adulation of narcissism. The colon after “mirrors” needs to be retained in translation (as it is by R, R/S and M do this). Strictly speaking, it is grammatically unnecessary because it is immediately followed by the relative pronoun (“die”), which introduces the subordinating clause that defines the function of the mirrors (they reflect the beauty of the lookers back into themselves). The incongruous use of a colon (and the fact that “mirrors” is italicised), however, prevents the eye from moving directly into that clause, and forces the reader to dwell on the image of the mirrors, preventing them from dissolving into definition. “Spiegel” is the final term in a series of dactylic feet, each of which is separated by a caesura (which further enhances their singularity), at the centre of which is the mysterious “einzeln”. Does this epithet refer to the mirrors or to people (possibly the pampered ones of the first line)? “Einzeln” in German means “solitary”, “oddly”, “individually”, “singly” or “apart”. Some of these descriptors can refer to objects (“singly”, for example); others (“solitary”) can only refer to people. As a translator, it is necessary to choose. If “einzeln” refers to things (the mirrors), then we have a further focus on this key image; if it refers to people, then it is possible that we are meant to see such people as part of a narrative that began with their privileged creation, then took them into the halls of history and the exaltations that this brought, and now culminates in their crowning moment: their recognition of a beauty that once streamed out from their faces and is now gathered back “into themselves, entire” (M).
An alternative translation:
Those early blest, those pampered by Creation,
lofty peaks, ranges in the red dawn
of all that has been made – pollen of a flowering godhead,
junctures of light, passageways, steps, thrones,
essential spaces, shields of bliss, tempests
of feelings brought to stormy rapture, and suddenly, alone,
as mirrors: which draw up anew the beauty that they beamed forth
and now return into their own countenances.
Against such perfection, we, who are on the wrong side of the angelic, can only enjoy the experience of love through personal contact that is not only temporary but also sustained through romantic fabulation, clichés and lies. The best we can muster on such occasions is a smile that goes nowhere. Once again, as throughout the Elegies, Rilke’s writing is marked in the third stanza by a methodical discursivity, which interrogates both our conceptions of ourselves and our conceptions of others, the accepted image and the reality of that image. It is an attempt to move beyond conventional ways of seeing, and to bring what Rilke alternatively calls “Sein” (“being”) or “Wesen” (“existence”) to the surface through poetic scrutiny. The poet’s tone in this stanza is now analytical, now caustic, at other times quizzical, but the reader can never dismiss the possibility that these positions of speech are themselves predicated on a greater relativising perspective, which is using them largely as ways of seeing, ways of opening up and describing the world, of exploring, as perhaps in a Cubist work of art, perspectives, possibilities of understanding:
Denn wir, wo wir fühlen, verflüchtigen; ach wir
atmen uns aus und dahin; von Holzglut zu Holzglut
geben wir schwächern Geruch. Da sagt uns wohl einer:
ja, du gehst mir ins Blut, dieses Zimmer, der Frühling
füllt sich mit dir … Was hilfts, er kann uns nicht halten,
wir schwinden in ihm und um ihn. Und jene, die schön sind,
o wer hält sie zurück? Unaufhörlich steht Anschein
auf in ihrem Gesicht und geht fort. Wie Tau von dem Frühgras
hebt sich das Unsre von uns, wie die Hitze von einem
heißen Gericht. O Lächeln, wohin? O Aufschaun:
neue, warme, entgehende Welle des Herzens –;
weh mir: wir sinds doch. Schmeckt denn der Weltraum,
in den wir uns lösen, nach uns? Fangen die Engel
wirklich nur Ihriges auf, ihnen Entströmtes,
oder ist manchmal, wie aus Versehen, ein wenig
unseres Wesens dabei? Sind wir in ihre
Züge soviel nur gemischt wie das Vage in die Gesichter
schwangerer Frauen? Sie merken es nicht in dem Wirbel
ihrer Rückkehr zu sich. (Wie sollten sie’s merken.)
The stanza is permeated with tropes of light and warmth, but all are undermined by a mood of quiet despair, which is evident in the frequent moments of questioning and self-questioning that characterise the voice of the lyrical subject. Consequently, where in other stanzas enjambments served to secure the flow, the internal logic of the text, these are now halted mid-line by caesuras, preventing any surety of position for the speaking subject and reader alike. The opening line reads: “denn wir, wo wir fühlen, verflüchtigen”. Most translators agree that “verflüchtigen means “evaporate” or “vaporise”, which the dictionary tells us is “to turn from a solid of liquid into a vapour”. But even as early as the SW version this was perhaps deemed overly technical and instead “dwindle” was chosen which, however, loses the sense of dissolution through air, a trope that the subsequent lines extend. “Become vapour” is an alternative. The major difference between the translators comes in the subsequent lines, which read: “von Holzglut zu Holzglut/ geben wir schwächern Geruch”, “Holzglut” being the glow given off by wood embers in a fire. Translations include “ember after ember, we burn away to nothing. / We give off an ever-diminishing scent” (MC), “from moment to moment / our emotions grow fainter, like a perfume” (M), “from coal to coal/ we cool as perfume fades” (G), “from ember to ember, we give off a fainter smell” (CFM), “from ember to ember / yielding a fainter scent” (L/S), and “ember to cooling ember/ waning in fragrance” (R/S). The general sense of these lines is that, as opposed to those lovers who have reached an absolute state in their loving, we (and the demotic “we” is used again), simply dissipate ourselves in our loving, producing vacuous gestures and empty talk, whilst our love diminishes in presence, like the odour (although “Geruch” is literally “smell”) of a fire going out. We do not, perhaps, quite “burn away to nothing” (MC), but we attempt to sustain the illusion of love through dissimulation and false phrases such as (and at least one translator puts these sentiments into quotation marks, although those marks are not there in the text) “ ‘yes, you’ve entered my blood stream, the room, the whole springtime/ is filled with you …’ ” (M). But in the end this rhetoric is of no consequence: it is fallacious, and the person who uses it cannot reach us. We disappear in and around him.
And those who are beautiful: who can reach them? They do not need others. They do not need to be flattered, for “unaufhörlich steht Anschein/ auf in ihrem Gesicht und geht fort.” “Anschein” means “appearance” or “semblance” in German. The word should be easy to translate but it is not, producing translations such as “appearance of something / keeps getting up in their faces and going away” (L/S) and “unceasingly appearance/ mounts in their faces and goes away (CFM) (translations that give up the ghost both semantically and grammatically). More convincing is “nothing but appearance/ continually arises and departs in their faces” (MC). An alternative translation is “a look continually appears in their faces, and then is gone”. Perhaps it is the look that the “truly beautiful” always have: a narcissism, whose innocence lies in its arrogance. The beautiful belong to the world, accept it, but only on their own terms. We may join their world and perhaps even become like them, or think we become like them, but our stay will be temporary: for us, all that is ours rises and evaporates like dew from early morning grass, “like heat ascending / from uncovered dishes” (MC). Every now and then we muster a smile, but that too is brief and without focus: “O Lächeln, wohin?” It is an enigmatic little interjection, and difficult to translate. Attempts are “o smile, wither?” (L/S), “Where have our smiles gone?” (R/S, “o smile, where are you going?” (M and R) and “oh, that smile there!” (MC). An alternative translation might be “oh, a smile: but for what?”
Love for non-angelic mortals is a “warm receding wave on the heart” (M). It does not last, and the “infinite space” into which we think we have dissolved will retain no lasting trace of our presence. Angels, however, luxuriate in this absolute space. Can we ever partake of their greater reality, even for a moment? Or “fangen die Engel/ wirklich nur Ihriges auf?” (“Do the Angels really catch only their own?” (R/S). The angels in Rilke’s Elegies are beginning to acquire shape, contours are emerging around their identity and the range of their power. For that reason, it is important to be clear about what “auffangen” means here. The dictionary definition is “to collect” or “to catch”, which gives us: “do angels really / only catch up what is theirs?” (L/S), “do the Angels/ really catch only their own?” (R/S), “do angels take back into themselves only / what is theirs?” (MC) and “do the angels really only reabsorb …?” (M). All translations attempt to communicate the self-directing nature of the angels’ action, but this is a difficult aspect to convey with a verb that is in the transitive and hence requires an object. One solution is to make the verb reflexive, which generates the alternative translation, “do angels / really collect to themselves only their own?” Some do join this world of the angels, such as women when pregnant, whose faces seem transfixed by a look that the text describes as “das Vage”. This is translated by all as “vague” or “vagueness” (R), but this is to denigrate a vital experience. “Vage” is not the standard word in German for “vague, which is “unklar”. “Vague” comes from the Latin vagare, meaning “to roam”, and this is probably what Rilke is thinking of here: a certain openness or receptivity, an expansiveness of countenance that has within it an unselfconscious looking-out towards the world. The text continues: “sie merken es nicht in dem Wirbel/ ihrer Rückkehr zu sich”. There is general agreement on how to translate this statement, although the two central terms, “Wirbel” and “Rückkehr”, cause problems. Some attempts are: “they’re not aware of it in the whirl of returning/ into themselves” (CFM,) “unmarked by them in the whirl of their / coming back to themselves” (L/S), and “they do not notice, occupied in the whirling / reinvigoration of themselves” (MC), although “reinvigoration” posits a particular interpretation of what this “Rückkehr” involves. An alternative translation is: “they do not notice it in the whirl / of this return to themselves”.
An alternative translation:
But we, when deeply feeling, dissolve into air; oh, we
breathe ourselves away, giving off, between one ember and another,
an ever-fainter odour. Then someone comes and says: “yes,
you reach into my blood, this room, Spring is filled with you …”.
But this means nothing: it cannot contain us: we vanish in him
and around him. But those who are beautiful: oh, who holds
them back? A look continually appears on their faces,
and then is gone. But for us, all that is ours rises, like dew
from early morning grass, like heat from a hot dish.
Oh, this smile: where is it going?
Oh, upward glance: new, warm, ebbing wave of the heart –:
Oh, for our pains, that is what we are. Does that greater space beyond,
in which we dissolve ourselves, really taste of us? Do angels
really collect to themselves only their own, that which has flowed from them,
or is there sometimes, as if by mistake, a little of our being in this?
Is there something of us blended into their features, like the open look
seen in the faces of women with child? They do not notice this look
in the whirl of their return to themselves.
(Why should they notice it?)
In the stanza that follows, Rilke returns to the lovers. They seem to enjoy a depth of intimacy that is withheld from us. Should they choose to do so, they might speak wonders in (or into) the night air. They have little need of the world. We need it, but we simply blow past it as if we are dissolving shadows. Everything conspires to conceal us. The terms of our predicament are stated in the stanza with an economy of expression, an almost prosaic starkness that acts as a medium for assertively tactile tropes, which carry the intellectual challenge of Rilke’s verse:
Liebende könnten, verstünden sie’s, in der Nachtluft
wunderlich reden. Denn es scheint, daß uns alles
verheimlicht. Siehe, die Bäume sind; die Häuser,
die wir bewohnen, bestehn noch. Wir nur
ziehen allem vorbei wie ein luftiger Austausch.
Und alles ist einig, uns zu verschweigen, halb als
Schande vielleicht und halb als unsägliche Hoffnung.
“Liebende könnten, verstünden sie’s, in der Nachtluft / wunderlich reden” has proved difficult to translate. “verstünden sie’s” is in the subjunctive mood which, when combined with the unspecified object, the compacted “es”, leaves it unclear about exactly what it is that the lovers might be in a position to understand, if they are in any position at all. Some attempts at translation are “lovers, indeed, if only they could, might utter/ strange things in the midnight air” (L/S), “lovers, if they knew it, could speak strangely / in the night air” (CFM), “lovers, if they knew how, might utter, strange, marvellous / words in the night air” (M), “lovers, if they knew what Angels know, might write / strange words on the night air” (G), “lovers, if they knew how, would speak marvellous words / into the night air’ (R/S) and “yet lovers, if they knew how, might articulate/ wonders in the night air” (MC). “Wunderlich” here means something positive, so “strange” and “strangely” are perhaps not appropriate. For once, this is a German word whose equivalent in English is not a faux ami: “wunderlich” converts quite successfully into the English “wondrous”. The overall sense seems to be that, as humans, we stand on the wrong side of actuality. We are the arrow merely remaining in the bow.
There is general agreement on how to translate the lines that follow: everything in the material world conspires to obscure us, to hide us from that world and perhaps from ourselves. That world, however, possesses solidity and permanence, unlike us: “wir nur/ ziehen allem vorbei wie ein luftiger Austausch”. This line has proved difficult to translate. Attempts are “we only / pass everything by like a transposition of air” (L/S), “we alone/ fly freely by things like loose exchanges of air” (G), “we alone /fly past all things, as fugitive as the wind” (M), “only we drift past all things, / like some change in the air” (R/S), “we alone fly past all things, like an airy exchange” (R) and “only we / pass away like air traded for air” (MC). “Austausch” means “exchange”, “interchange” or “transposition”. The sense of the line is that, while objects have a fixed and stable place in time and space, we humans are condemned to a transitory existence, passing by or through the material world with only the most fleeting of contact, like air breezing past something. We lack substance, real being, and everything conspires to keep silent about this, half from shame and half because, in spite of all, we are still the objects of “unsayable” (R), “unutterable” (M), “unspeakable” (CFM and MC) or ineffable hope.
An alternative translation:
Lovers, if only they knew, might speak wondrous words
into the night air. Everything, it seems, obscures us.
Look: the trees are; the houses
that we live in still stand. It is only we
who pass by everything like fugitives in the wind.
And everything conspires to keep quiet about us,
partly from shame perhaps, and partly from ineffable hope.
In the next stanza, the poet returns to the theme of the lovers (although, significantly, the word “Liebe” is never used) and what they can and cannot tell us about the holiness of the heart’s affections. But what can they tell us about us? The writing in this part of the poem is discursive and provocative: the lovers, or “those who love”, are brought to book through a series of critical interrogations, and the tone of the text is angular, vituperative even, reflecting perhaps the deeper personal psychology of this Elegy. At times, the “you” and the “us” seem curiously elided:
Liebende, euch, ihr in einander Genügten,
frag ich nach uns. Ihr greift euch. Habt ihr Beweise?
Seht, mir geschiehts, daß meine Hände einander
inne werden oder daß mein gebrauchtes
Gesicht in ihnen sich schont. Das giebt mir ein wenig
Empfindung. Doch wer wagte darum schon zu sein?
Ihr aber, die ihr im Entzücken des anderen
zunehmt, bis er euch überwältigt
anfleht: nicht mehr –; die ihr unter den Händen
euch reichlicher werdet wie Traubenjahre;
die ihr manchmal vergeht, nur weil der andre
ganz überhand nimmt: euch frag ich nach uns. Ich weiß,
ihr berührt euch so selig, weil die Liebkosung verhält,
weil die Stelle nicht schwindet, die ihr, Zärtliche,
zudeckt; weil ihr darunter das reine
Dauern verspürt. So versprecht ihr euch Ewigkeit fast
von der Umarmung. Und doch, wenn ihr der ersten
Blicke Schrecken besteht und die Sehnsucht am Fenster,
und den ersten gemeinsamen Gang, ein Mal durch den Garten:
Liebende, seid ihrs dann noch? Wenn ihr einer dem andern
euch an den Mund hebt und ansetzt –: Getränk an Getränk:
o wie entgeht dann der Trinkende seltsam der Handlung.
Rilke’s persona now steps forth to confront the lovers with an impatient question: “Liebende, euch, ihr in einander Genügten,/ frag ich nach uns. Ihr greift euch. Habt ihr Beweise?”. This has been translated as “lovers, to you, each satisfied in the other, / I turn with my questions about us. You grasp yourselves. / Have you proofs?” (L/S), “lovers, gratified in each other, I am asking you/ about us. You hold each other. Where is your proof?” (M), “lovers – you who find satisfaction in each other – / I am asking you about us. You hold one another, / but where is the proof?” (MC). The verb “greifen” is the critical word. Its dictionary definition is “to grasp” or “to grab”, although “to hold” is the preferred translation. But these are simple tactile actions, which do not possess the assumption of intimacy that is being queried in the text. “Clasp” might be a more appropriate translation, because it contains the sense of “embrace” (and this is how G translates it), and as such implies a bond of affection. Without this implication of intimacy, which is not present in the more literal translations of “grasp” or “touch”, the demand for “proof” comes across as otiose, pointless.
Sometimes the poet’s hands become aware of each other, and his “time-worn face / shelters itself inside them” (M). As he tells us, “das giebt mir ein wenig /Empfindung”. The preferred translation of “Empfindung” is sensation”, but “Empfindung” possesses broader connotations than this (although probably not as broad as “consciousness”, SW). Dictionary definitions include “sentiment”, “feeling” and “perception”, all of which were key tropes in the pre-Romantic aesthetic of the eighteenth century and its cult of sensibility (“Empfindsamkeit”), and this cultural allusion is surely intentional. If it is, then the alternative translation “that bestows / a certain sensitivity” is perhaps appropriate. There now follows a line that all translators find difficult: “doch wer wagte darum schon zu sein?” The sentence (a question, in fact) is straightforward in German, but difficult to translate into English, both because of the way that it articulates a certain position of speech (with “wagen” and because of that vital word, “sein”. Attempts are “yet who would dare, by that, to say: I am?” (SW), “but who, just for that, could presume to exist?” (L/S), “yet who, for that, would dare exist” CFM), “but who would dare to exist, just for that?” (M), “yet who, for this, would dare to be?” (R/S), “you who would dare step into existence for that?” (MC) and “but who would dare to be just for this?” (R). “Sein” here refers to an intensification of life, of what it is to be. As such, it contrasts with the “Empfindung” of the pervious line, which suggests a somewhat precious response to life: the enjoyment of transitory feeling or sensation. The poet is asking: is this sensitivity sufficient to sustain a notion of personal authenticity? It is a further moment in his continuing process of distantiation from his past. An alternative translation is “but who would dare to say that they were?”
The poet now returns to the lovers, and repeats his initial question as a demand, that they should speak about us. The lines that follow constitute a highly subtle investigation into (perhaps even a critique of) the machinations of romantic involvement. The “Entzücken” that allow the lovers to grow in the presence of one another has been interpreted as “passion” (M, R/S and MC), although some translators prefer the more romanticised “rapture” (L/S and CFM) or “ecstasy” (SW). This delight (R), passion or rapture grows to the point where the male lover (and the text is quite unambiguous about the gender) can bear it no longer, and implores it to cease: “nicht mehr”. “Delights”, with its connotations of sensual gratification, might be an alternative translation for “Entzücken”, because the text now proceeds to describe the physical component of the coming-together of the lovers, a description that is still part of an extended interrogation: “die ihr unter den Händen / euch reichlicher werdet wie Traubenjahre;/ … euch frag ich nach uns”. The imagery suggests a sensual luxuriance, whose medium is the hand or hands. Some translators extend the sensuality into explicit sexual contact, as in “you, who beneath one another’s groping swell / with juice …” (G). As if to counter this, other versions stress that it is the wholeness of personality that is becoming “reichlicher” here, and not just the body. This gives us “each of you, by the / other’s hands, in the other’s eyes / becoming rich as the vine …” (R/S). “Eyes”, however, is an addition to the text.
To whom do these hands belong? The above question is addressed to an “ihr”, the informal plural of “Sie”. It is gender non-specific, so translations that talk about “his hands” (M) posit a specific reading of the text. The lovers’ experience, whatever the intensity of their bodily contact, is overwhelming, and the poet persists with his interrogation, for those: “die ihr manchmal vergeht, nur weil der andre /ganz überhand nimmt: euch frag ich nach uns”. Finding words for erotic transport is not easy. “Vergehen” should not give any problems, meaning in German “to expire” or “to cease to be”, and Rilke had already used the word in Elegy I (in the subjunctive form, “verginge”) to describe how the poet would expire from his contact with the angel. Here “vergehen” possesses the same import: of an emotion or physical experience that leads to the expiration of the self. Translating “der andre /ganz überhand nimmt” is more difficult. What, in fact, is being described here? Is “the other” simply emerging as a fuller person, or does “ganz überhand nimmt” refer to something else: the exercise of power. The use of this slightly archaic expression in this context can mean both, and we can assume that Rilke uses it precisely for that reason: its inherent ambiguity. Plenitude of selfhood and the exercise of that plenitude may, in the private sphere, look (and, in fact, be) the same. The implications are both erotic and personal-political, gesturing at the physical mastery of one lover over another. Some translations are “swooning at times, just because the other/ has so expanded” (L/S), “you who often droop,/ merely / because the other completely takes over” (CFM), “you who may disappear because the other has wholly / emerged” (M), “you, who may go like a bud into another’s blossoming” (G), “[ you] sometimes fading simply because the other flourishes wildly” (R/S), and “you, who sometimes vanish, / though only in moments the other is so present” (MC). It is not always easy to see that these are translations of the same text. One alternative translation is “you, who may perhaps expire in the overwhelming presence of the other”.
The poet continues with his interrogation of the lovers, an interrogation whose insistence is sustained by the repeated use of the subordinating conjunction “weil”. The locus of romantic involvement is the body, and often precise places on the body, and Rilke’s persona attempts, in a few words, to fix the pleasing pressure of the erotic: “Ich weiß, ihr berührt euch so selig, weil die Liebkosung verhält, /weil die Stelle nicht schwindet, die ihr, Zärtliche, /zudeckt; weil ihr darunter das reine/ Dauern verspürt”. The initial line poses few problems. Its general sense is “I know, / you touch so blissfully because the caress preserves” (M), or in an alternative translation is “I know, your touches are so blissful, / because the caress lingers”. The second line, however, is more difficult to translate. Attempts are “because it does not vanish, the place that you / so tenderly cover; because you perceive thereunder / pure duration” (L/S), “because the place you tender ones cover does not / disappear” (CFM), “because the place you so tenderly cover/ does not vanish” (M), “because that spot you cover, most gentle ones,/ does not vanish” (R/S), “since every caress conserves the place/ on a lovely body you cover so tenderly” (MC). The point of contact between the lovers (perhaps their internal embrace) seems to speak of a potential eternity of feeling, which the poet describes in words that are neutral, but dismissive in tone. An alternative translation is “because, oh delicate ones, that part of you that covers you does not fade, and beneath it you feel / pure permanence”.
The lovers have embraced eternity (or think they have), but that too is a momentary encounter, which soon dissolves in the confronting light of day, with “the terror of first glances, the longing at the window” (M), and the walk through the garden, which only takes place once. Far from consolidating their relationship, these are experiences that seem to unsettle, discomfort, create insecurity, and the poet asks: “seid ihrs dann noch?”. The question is so compact as to be almost elliptical, and it comes across almost as brutal following the preceding lines of sibilant alliteration that seem to suggest at least the possibility of a coming together of the two lovers. This sudden interrogation quickly undermines that possibility. Translations include “are you the same?” (L/S and R), “are you any longer what you were?” (G), “are you still that? (CFM), “are you the same?” (M), “are you the people you were” (R/S), “do you remain the same forever?” (MC).
Rilke is describing the transformative experience of disillusionment in love: its power to refashion our sense of purpose to the other, and our self-understanding in that purpose. An alternative translation is “are you still this?” Rilke emphasises “seid” (the being of “you are”), because this is in accordance with the probing into selfhood that constitutes the ethos of the Elegies. But it could be argued that the critical word in this line is “noch” because, whatever the imposition of “being” may amount to, it takes place through time or, at least, as part of a sequence in a personal encounter. Perhaps the poet answers his own question in the lines that immediately follow: “Wenn ihr einer dem andern / euch an den Mund hebt und ansetzt –: Getränk an Getränk: /o wie entgeht dann der Trinkende seltsam der Handlung”. Translators agree on the (presumed) lips that are joined when the lovers make contact with one another, but the allusion to the drinker (which constitutes the moral conceit of this gesture) has proved more difficult to translate. Attempts are “how strangely does the act elude the drinker!” (SW), “how strangely the drinker eludes his part!” (L/S), “how strangely the drinker evades his part of the act” (CFM), “how strangely each drinker seeps away from his action” (M), “how strangely the drinker escapes from his actions” (R/S) and “strange/ the way each drinker grows distant from the act” (MC). All of these translations mean something different, and all involve an interpretation of the text. “Entgehen” means “to avoid”, “to escape” or “to evade”, and grammatically in German what is being evaded takes the dative form, as in “der Handlung”, “the action”, of the lines above. The drinker is the subject of these lines and not, pace (SW), the act of drinking. The act itself is a deliberate one, so that “seeping way” (M) and “growing distant” (MC) are also perhaps not quite right. The sense of the text is that the lovers’ kissing, far from being an act of intimacy, is a way of avoiding intimacy: they hide their insincerity from one another, the way that the drinker hides (the consequences of) his or her drinking. An alternative translation might be “It is curious how the drinker avoids his actions”.
An alternative translation:
Lovers, you, immersed in your mutual satisfaction:
I am asking you about us. You clasp each other.
But do you have proof? Look, sometimes my hands
become aware of themselves, or my worn face
shelters itself within them. That imparts a
certain sensitivity. But who would dare to say that I am?”
You, however, who in your shared passion
grow even greater, until it overwhelms you
and you cry out “no more”! You, who in your
embraces become ever more luxuriant, like the ripe grape
on the vine; you, who may perhaps expire through
the overwhelming presence of the other:
I am asking you about us. I know, you touch one another
with such rapture, because the caress endures,
because the place you cover, oh delicate ones,
does not vanish, and under it, you think,
lies pure permanence. So eternity is provided for you
out of your embraces. But yet, when you have survived
the initial terror of your first glances, the longing looks
from the window, and the first shared walk,
just once through a garden. You lovers:
Is this still you? When you raise
yourselves
up to each other’s mouths, and your lips meet –:
drink after drink:
Oh, it is curious how the drinker avoids his actions.
Lovers, it seems, are condemned to inauthenticity, enmeshed as they are in an elaborate charade of playacting. It is only the dead, and notably the classically beautiful dead, who demonstrate real love: the love of the dignified suffering of body and soul, which we find depicted on Attic burial steles. The poet now in the next stanza addresses the lovers once more, exhorting them, as if to shame them, to consider what true love might look like:
Erstaunte euch nicht auf attischen Stelen die Vorsicht
menschlicher Geste? war nicht Liebe und Abschied
so leicht auf die Schultern gelegt, als wär es aus anderm
Stoffe gemacht als bei uns? Gedenkt euch der Hände,
wie sie drucklos beruhen, obwohl in den Torsen die Kraft steht.
Diese Beherrschten wußten damit: so weit sind wirs,
dieses ist unser, uns so zu berühren; stärker
stemmen die Götter uns an. Doch dies ist Sache der Götter.
The stanza is written in a measured iambic metre, and held together by frequent alliteration. A new but simple scenario is being set out, a picture from Attic Greece that draws all the tensions around love into a resolution. The stanza begins with a question addressed, once again, to an unspecified subject, who is, once again, invoked in the familiar form, “euch”: “Erstaunte euch nicht auf attischen Stelen die Vorsicht/ menschlicher Geste?” There is general agreement on how to translate this line, as in “Weren’t you astonished by the caution of human gestures / on Attic gravestones” (M). The “Vorsicht” of “die Vorsicht/ menschlicher Geste” is, however, difficult to translate. “Vorsicht” means “attention” or “caution” in German and, uttered by itself, it translates into “take care!” or “be careful!”. But the meaning of the word also broadens out into “prudence” or “care”, which allows us to link the subject of these lines to values of “restraint” (MC) and composure. The question now comes: “war nicht Liebe und Abschied /so leicht auf die Schultern gelegt, als wär es aus anderm / Stoffe gemacht als bei uns?” The translators agree that love and “departure” (M), “farewell” (L/S, R/S and R) or “parting” (CFM, G and MC), lay so gently on the shoulders of these heroes “that they appeared / to be made of material other than this world” (MC) or were “as though fashioned in /substance that is not our own” (R/S). The translations seem straightforward, obvious even, but to some readers it may not be evident that “Abschied” here may mean death. If this is the case, to what extent in a translation should this be made explicit? Should we allow the trope to stand as the metonym that it is or attempt to convert the trope into a paraphrase? Answering this involves not only the interpretation of the text but also being clear about the function of translation. We are then invited to consider the physical configuration of these dead persons but, significantly, only their hands and their torsos but not their faces, although in most Attic stele the latter are carefully delineated, as if registering their expressions might detract from the universal values of pose and containment that these figures emanate. These departed souls embody a stoical wisdom regarding life, and what it is possible to achieve in life: “diese Beherrschten wußten damit: so weit sind wirs, / dieses ist unser, uns so zu berühren; stärker /stemmen die Götter uns an”. These lines have been translated as “the wisdom of those self-masters was this: hitherto it’s us; / ours is to touch one another like this” (L/S), “these self-mastered figures know: We can go this far / this is ours, to touch one another this lightly” (M), “the disciplined people know: here are our limits / this ours, this touching each other so lightly” (R/S) and “these people knew/ such self-control. We go only / so far – this touching each other – that is ours” (MC). The stumbling block is “Beherrschten”. It is, once again, a verb turned into a noun, in this case made up through the past tense of “beherrschen”, meaning “to master” or “to dominate”. The preference is to translate the word as if it is reflexive, reflecting a quality of self-control, as in “self-contained” (R). But it is possible that Rilke is thinking of fallen warriors, who were often depicted on stele, in which case he is referring to those who have lost their lives in battle, “the vanquished”. They knew their limitations: they may have touched one another as they lay in peace, forming perhaps a bond of suffering with the community of the mourners, friends and family members, but that was all. “stärker /stemmen die Götter uns an”. “The gods / can press down harder upon us” (M), “as for the gods, they impose / on us more fiercely” (MC). The sense is that the gods seek to nudge these departed figures into immortality: to deify them even. But that is the prerogative of gods.
An alternative translation:
Were you not astounded by the human composure of the gestures
on those Attic steles? Had not love and dying
been laid on their shoulders so gently, as if they were made
of other stuff than us? Consider their hands, and how they lay
there without emotion, although in their torsos there still
was strength. Those who had been vanquished knew this:
we have come so far: this is ours, just to be
touched. The gods press down even harder on us.
But that is their prerogative.
Is it possible for us to find the peace and tranquillity achieved by these departed heroes? Is it possible that what they found as spirit we might find as a place on earth in which to live? Or have the dreams of human kind always exceeded reality?:
Fänden auch wir ein reines, verhaltenes, schmales
Menschliches, einen unseren Streifen Fruchtlands
zwischen Strom und Gestein. Denn das eigene Herz übersteigt uns
noch immer wie jene. Und wir können ihm nicht mehr
nachschaun in Bilder, die es besänftigen, noch in
göttliche Körper, in denen es größer sich mäßigt.
The short final stanza expresses an investment of hope in a glimpsed paradise (although it is ultimately, as we learn in the final lines, a misconceived one), and correspondingly its tone and its largely dactylic metre is measured, and supported by enjambments and a comforting sibilant alliteration found in almost every line. There is general agreement on how to translate the initial lines. The poet transfers the values embodied by the figures on the Attic steles into a vision of a homeland for the modern soul. If only we could find a pure, modest strip of fertile narrow land, lying between a river and rock, we would attain the same serenity. But this is pure wish fulfillment, “denn das eigene Herz übersteigt uns / noch immer wie jene”. There is general agreement about the meaning of these lines, but “übersteigt uns” has posed problems, being variously translated as “outstrips us” (SW), “overreaches us” (G), “surmounts us” (CFM), “exceeds” (M and MC) and “outpaces” (R/S). The general sense is that, like those self-mastered or vanquished souls of the past, we too harbour ambitions or dreams that exceed our ability to realise them. Finding a solution to this failure of aspiration is no longer possible: “und wir können ihm nicht mehr /nachschaun in Bilder, die es besänftigen”: “but we are now no longer capable / of rendering it in mitigating image” (SW), “and we can no longer gaze / after it now into pacifying image” (L/S), “and we can no longer follow it into chastening carvings” (G), “and we can no longer/ gaze after it into images / that soothe it down” (CFM), “and we can no longer follow it, gazing / into images that soothe it” (M), “and our gaze can no longer follow it / into chastening pictures” (R/S) and “and we can no longer / pursue it by contemplating images inclined / to soothe” (MC). “Bilder” here is a metonym for art, which has traditionally provided an alternative realm of aesthetic harmony, where the conflicts of the world are seemingly resolved. We cannot return to that solution, and Rilke’s leave-taking in this elegy is abrupt and final, and possibly meant to be read as a distantiation from his early work. An alternative translation is “and we can no longer find it again / through images that are meant to soothe”.
We cannot find this realm of completion in art, “noch in / göttliche Körper, in denen es größer sich mäßigt”. Some translations are: “nor yet in godlike bodies, / wherein it finds a nobler moderation” (SW), “or into godlike bodies/ where, measured more greatly, it achieves a greater repose” (M), “nor into figures, / godlike, where it achieves a greater control” (R/S) and “nor is it any use gazing at god-like forms / more magnificently capable of restraint” MC). We need to be clear that with “größer sich mäßigt” we are talking about comportment and the aesthetic elevation or completion of the self, so “repose” is perhaps more appropriate than “control”. The invocation of “göttliche Körper” suggests that we are in the realm of religious sentiment. And so we are, but it is a “religion” that is aligned with the body, so that “göttlich” here might be read metaphorically as “divine” or “beguiling”. Indeed, Rilke may be deliberately cultivating the slippage between the two meanings. Elegy II concludes with a taking back of the hard-won fruits of Elegy I. In that Elegy, the young demigod Linus had brought both the divine afflatus, in shape of his music, and a promise of earthy renewal, in the shape of his own godlike form, to the Greek world. This was a promise that Rilke had sought to retrieve for the future. Elegy II renounces this retrieval, in a short syntagm of negativity that condemns us to looking for a future beyond religion and art. We must seek our salvation elsewhere; or, perhaps, not at all.
An alternative translation:
If only we could find some modest place, secluded
and more pure, our own fruit-bearing land
between river and stone.
But own hearts always exceed us, just as theirs did.
And we can no longer pursue them in images
that soothe, nor in godlike bodies,
where they have reached a greater repose.
Rilke, Duino Elegies Comparing Translations Martin Travers 