Rilke, Elegy 3
Eines ist, die Geliebte zu singen. Ein anderes, wehe,
jenen verborgenen schuldigen Fluß-Gott des Bluts.
Den sie von weitem erkennt, ihren Jüngling, was weiß er
selbst von dem Herren der Lust, der aus dem Einsamen oft,
ehe das Mädchen noch linderte, oft auch als wäre sie nicht,
ach, von welchem Unkenntlichen triefend, das Gotthaupt
aufhob, aufrufend die Nacht zu unendlichem Aufruhr.
O des Blutes Neptun, o sein furchtbarer Dreizack.
O der dunkele Wind seiner Brust aus gewundener Muschel.
Horch, wie die Nacht sich muldet und höhlt. Ihr Sterne,
stammt nicht von euch des Liebenden Lust zu dem Antlitz
seiner Geliebten? Hat er die innige Einsicht
in ihr reines Gesicht nicht aus dem reinen Gestirn?
Love, love will tear us apart. Again. In Elegy III, Rilke returns to the pressing theme of Elegy II: love and loving, and focuses upon that form of intimacy that separates the two: sex. The tone of the stanza combines the argumentatively discursive (“oft”, “ehe”) with, in the final lines, the interrogative and the mock-pathetic (“ach”, “O”). The thirteen lines lack end-rhyme or any consistent metre, but frequent alliteration serves to secure their formal coherence, while enjambments establish the broader relation of the lines, which gather their power, above all, from the assertive rhetoric of their imagery. There is general agreement on how to translate the opening words, with “it is one thing to sing of the beloved; another, alas, / to invoke that hidden, guilty river-god of the blood” (M) being representative. The lines are formed from a set of correlative conjunctions, the second of which is interrupted and left hanging by a completely different formation, whose thematic centre is the mysterious river god that is being addressed. Although “invoke” is preferred by more than one translator, there is no reason why “singen”, as in “sing of”, should not be allowed to govern both objects in the sentence: “the beloved” and the “river-god”. Beyond that, there is agreement on how the river-god should be translated: his brooding sexual presence will dominate the act of loving.
The subsequent lines, beginning with “Den sie von weitem erkennt, ihren Jüngling …” and ending “… aufrufend die Nacht zu unendlichem Aufruhr”, pose greater problems. They form a single sentence, made up from an extended set of densely packed coordinating clauses centred around a question. This combination of the descriptive and the interrogative is difficult to translate. Some attempts are: “Him she discerns from afar, her lover, what does / he know / of that Lord of Pleasure, who often, out of his lonely heart / before she’s soothed him, often as though she didn’t exist, / streaming from, oh, what unknowable depths, would uplift / his god-head, uprousing the night to infinite uproar” (L/S), “her young lover, whom she knows from far away – what does he know of / the lord of desire who often, up from the depths of his solitude, / even before she could soothe him, and as though she didn’t exist, / held up his head, ah, dripping with the unknown, / erect, and summoned the night to an endless uproar” (M), “her young lover even, whom she finds in the distance, what does he / know of the lord of desire, who before her assuaging, / often as tough she were not, out of the solitude/ lifted his god-head, ah, streaming with the unknowable, / summoning the night into infinite uproar” (R/S), “Take a young lover – what does one / whom she may know only remotely as yet, / what does he know of that lord of desire/ who often, breaking out of his solitude/ and even before she has the chance to soothe him, / acts as if she were nothing to him – a god, ah, / raising its head, dripping, unfathomable, urgent, / turning the night over to endless uproar ” (MC).
The subject of the opening lines is the young lover. But who is he and where does he come from? “Von weitem” means “from afar”, and this has been interpreted as if he is physically distant from the girl, only known “from afar (R). But it is more likely that this is a personal or an emotional distance, in which case “know only remotely as yet” (MC) is perhaps more appropriate. One possible paraphrase of Rilke’s lines is: “what does the lover of the girl, whom she knows only from afar, understand of the deeper forces of desire, which emerge from a solitary self, desires that the girl has not been able to soften (indeed, it is as if she has not been part of this at all)”. The lord of desire is described as [coming] “aus dem Einsamen”. This is the first of two nouns in this passage that are formed from an adjective (the “Unkenntlichen”, the he, she or it that is “unknown”, being the second). In translation, to turn “Einsamen” into a noun requires interpreting it: is this a solitary person or a state of being? Matters are confounded by the fact that in the text the noun has no verb and is attached to an “oft”, which is left hanging in the text. The angular syntax of Rilke’s Elegies often (as in this case) has the effect of withholding an easy disclosure of meaning, compelling the reader to think through the implications of what is being described. Where this disruptive syntax can be retained in translation without a loss of meaning it should be. But it is often difficult to observe a balance between retaining Rilke’s syntax and making sense of the overall import of the text. In particular, the parataxis of this line, where a main verb is omitted, leads to problematic translations, such as “who often, out of his lonely heart / before she’s soothed him, often as though she didn’t exist” (L/S) and “who before her assuaging, / often as though she were not, out of the solitude” (R/S). It is perhaps desirable to break the lines into two independent clauses, which gives us the alternative translation: “He whom she knows from afar, her young lover: what does he himself understand / of the lord of desire, who would often arise out of solitude / before the girl could mollify him (often also as if she were not there)?
The imagery that follows is explicitly sexual. The dripping godhead (of the implied phallus) rises and provokes the night to “Aufruhr” (and this is the third use in this line of the suggestive prefix “auf” / “up”). “Uproar” is the preferred translation, although the word has connotations of public rather than private disorder. “Turmoil” or “commotion” are alternatives. As if to foreground the pagan origins of this expansion of sexual energy, the poet invokes the Roman god of the sea, Neptune: “O des Blutes Neptun, o sein furchtbarer Dreizack” (“Oh, the Neptune within our blood, oh, his terrible trident!”, L/S). Neptune was not only the god of the sea but also of earthquakes, and it is possible that in his evocation of passion (“Blut”), Rilke wishes to invoke both allusions: to the sea, as the fluid source of instinctual life, and to the tremors of the land, which is in turmoil, unsettling, destroying even. To this the poet adds the further image of the “Dreizack”. Most translators retain its literal meaning, “trident”, but the trident was also a weapon, and may possibly be intended here as a phallic symbol. One translation that retains these connotations is “Oh, this is Neptune who inhabits our blood/ the god who wields such terrifying weapons” (MC). The “dark wind from his breast” (M and R/S) rushes out of Neptune’s “spiralled conch” (M). We are then exhorted to listen: “Horch, wie die Nacht sich muldet und höhlt”. This has been translated as “Hark, how the night grows fluted and hollowed” (L/S), “Listen to the night as it makes itself hollow” (M), “Listen to how the night rounds itself, hollows” (R/S), “Listen as the night empties itself into silence” (R) and “Listen to where the night begins to gape and hollow” (MC). The images are tactile in their configuration and neologistic in their grammar: neither “Mulden”, meaning “troughs”, nor “Höhle”, “a cave” or “hollow”, are verbs in German. We are once again back, as in Elegy II, with bleak space and the emptiness with which it surrounds, and perhaps defines, human endeavour. The translations that stress this emptiness are, therefore, the most appropriate. An alternative translation is “Hear, how the night troughs and hollows”.
The stanza concludes with two questions. There is general agreement on how to translate the first question: “O stars, / isn’t it from you that the lover’s desire for the face/ of his beloved arises?” (M) is representative. The second question, however, poses problems. “Hat er die innige Einsicht / in ihr reines Gesicht nicht aus dem reinen Gestirn?” This has been variously translated as “Does not his intimate insight / into her purest face come from the purest star” (L/S), “Doesn’t his secret insight / into her pure features come from the pure constellations” (M), “And his tender insight / into her pure features, that too from the pure constellations?” (R/S) and “Isn’t his deepest response / to her pure face inspired by the pure bright stars?” (MC). “Innig” means “heartfelt”, “intimate”, “profound” and “devout”, qualities associated with inwardness. But linked with “Einsicht” only certain of these descriptors are possible. “Einsicht” itself means, on an abstract level, “insight” in terms of knowledge, but Rilke may also wish us to hear the literal meaning of the words, “in-sight”, or a “looking into” something or someone. An alternative translation is “Does not the deepest look into her pure face / come from a pure brow?” Rilke noticeably leaves both questions unanswered.
An alternative translation:
It is one thing to sing of the loved one; but, oh, another,
to sing of that secret guilt-laden river god of the blood.
The one whom she knows from afar, her young lover:
what does he understand of that lord of desire who,
out of his solitude and before the girl could mollify him
(often as if she were not there), from an obscure source dripping,
raise its godhead, calling the night into unending commotion?
Oh, the blood of Neptune, his terrifying trident.
Oh, the dark wind from his breast out of that voluted conch.
Hear how the night troughs and hollows. Oh, stars,
does not the desire of the lover move from you onto
the face of the beloved? Does not the deepest look into her pure face
come from a yet purer brow?
It is possible that we are meant to answer the two questions that conclude the first stanza in the negative, for the second stanza speaks of the disjunction between lover and beloved, and parades the inscrutability of the former. The first part of the second stanza reads:
Du nicht hast ihm, wehe, nicht seine Mutter
hat ihm die Bogen der Braun so zur Erwartung gespannt.
Nicht an dir, ihn fühlendes Mädchen, an dir nicht
bog seine Lippe sich zum fruchtbarern Ausdruck.
Meinst du wirklich, ihn hätte dein leichter Auftritt
also erschüttert, du, die wandelt wie Frühwind?
Zwar du erschrakst ihm das Herz; doch ältere Schrecken
stürzten in ihn bei dem berührenden Anstoß.
Ruf ihn… du rufst ihn nicht ganz aus dunkelem Umgang.
Freilich, er will, er entspringt; erleichtert gewöhnt er
sich in dein heimliches Herz und nimmt und beginnt sich.
Aber begann er sich je?
The girl is addressed in tones that are measured if condescending (“Meinst du wirklich …?”). The lines constitute, in fact, an extended argument formed around assertion and interrogation, whose poetic core lies not in its form (indeed, with the repetition of “nicht”, and the use of terms such as “zwar”, the tone of this section of the stanza is almost prosaic), but in its strong central images that are linked to verbs in a neologistic fashion. There is general agreement on how to translate the initial lines: it was neither the beloved nor his mother who shaped the eyebrows of the lover into anticipation, nor was it for you, girl, “despite all your sensitivity to his presence” (MC), that he formed his lips into a fruitful expression. The loved one has clearly overestimated her role in the relationship. The poet asks: “Meinst du wirklich, ihn hätte dein leichter Auftritt / also erschüttert, du, die wandelt wie Frühwind?” This has been translated as “Do you really think that your silent entrance is so / unsettling, you who wander like the morning wind?” (R), “Do you really suppose your gentle approach could have so / convulsed him, you, that wander like wind at dawn?” (L/S), “Do you really think that your gentle steps could have shaken him / with such violence, you who move like the morning breeze?” (M), “Do you believe that your quiet approaching steps / would have shaken him, you who move lightly as morning wind?” (R/S) and “Do you really think you could have startled him so / with your gentle arrival, you who move / as delicately as a breeze at dawn?” (MC).
The difference between these translations lies in how “Auftritt”, “erschüttert” and “wandelt” are interpreted. “Auftritt” (from “auftreten”, literally “to step up”) figuratively means “to make an appearance” or “entrance”, as actors do on a stage. It connotes, therefore, something artificial or even superficial, and stands thus in opposition to the deeper emotional state of being “erschüttert”, which means to be “shattered”, “shocked” or “distressed”. “Wandeln”, likewise, also suggests something that lacks intensity, meaning not “to move” (as most translations have it) but “to stroll”, “to promenade”, walk in relaxed fashion, its casualness contrasting with the severity of “erschüttert”. One paraphrase of these lines is: “do you really think that your modest role in his existence could have affected him so deeply? You, who drifts through life like an early morning breeze? Certainly, you jolted his heart but older tremors shook him at the pressure of your touch”. The loved one is then exhorted to “ruf ihn”, and the caution is added: “du rufst ihn nicht ganz aus dunkelem Umgang.” Representative translations are “Call him … you can’t quite call him away from sombre / consorting” (L/S), “Call him … / but you can’t quite call him away from those dark companions” (M) and “Call him … but you cannot quite call him from dark conversations” (R/S). It is the wide semantic ambit of “Umgang” that proves difficult here. From the verb “umgehen” (literally “to go around” something, but also “to engage” or “to deal with”), as a noun “Umgang” means “contact” or “association”, but it is a highly impersonal way of invoking such human contact. The lover has a past, whose darkness will resist all attempts by the girl to find access to it. “Involvements” is an alternative translation of “Umgang”, which retains the unsettling anonymity of Rilke’s words.
We are then told: “Freilich, er will, er entspringt; erleichtert gewöhnt er /sich in dein heimliches Herz und nimmt und beginnt sich. / Aber begann er sich je?” This is a sentence of syntactic complexity, involving the fourfold repetition of the lover’s pronoun, “er”. Some translations are: “He certainly wants to, he does escape; disburdenly / settles / into your intimate heart, takes up and begins himself there. Did he ever begin himself, though?” (L/S), “Of course, he wants to escape, and he does; relieved, he nestles / into your sheltering heart, takes hold and begins himself. But did he ever begin himself, really?” (M), “Of course, he desires to – escapes – and settles lightly / close in your heart, takes on himself, his beginning. / Did he ever begin himself? (R/S) and “He wants to escape them, of course, and he does. /
Then, relieved, he nestles into the seclusion / of your loving heart, takes hold to begin himself – / But did he ever really begin himself?” (MC). The difference between the translations lies in the varying handling of “nimmt” and “beginnt”. The lover returns to the heart of the beloved and literally “takes” something. Most translators turn “nimmt” into a phrasal verb and provide it with an at least implied object. It is a matter of interpretation, but the most likely sense is that the lover is taking from the heart of the girl in order to begin again. In which case, “takes hold” (M and MC) and “grasp” (R) are probably more accurate than “takes up” (L/S) and “takes on himself” (R/S), whilst “grasp” (R) loses the sense of taking entirely. In keeping with their approach to the Elegies throughout, L/S do not shy away from the neologistic formations of Rilke’s German, but coining new words such as the ungainly “disburdenly” is problematic. The lover, “relieved”, nestles into the heart of the loved one and, once there, “beginnt sich”. “Beginnen” is a common German verb that has been provided here with a reflexive pronoun, which it does not normally possess. “Beginnt sich” is a neologistic formation which, literally translated, would give us in English “begins itself” or, as here, “begins himself” (R), which is the preferred translation. But is the “himself” really a reflexive pronoun or a substantive object instead? In other words, is the sense “he himself is beginning” or “he is beginning [to be] himself [his true or new self”], as in “his beginning” (R/S)? It is a matter of interpretation. Once again, the translator has the choice of retaining the ambivalence of Rilke’s words or deciding upon which of these readings is more plausible and, if it is the latter interpretation, attempting a paraphrase such as he “begins anew” or “renews himself”, which gives us an alternative translation: “Of course, he wants to escape them, takes the leap, and relieved /finds a comfortable place in your hidden heart, /upon which he draws to renew himself. /But did he ever really begin anew?”
An alternative translation:
It was not you, alas, his mother neither, who
bent his brow into an arch of such expectation.
It was not towards you, sensitive girl, not towards you
did he lower his lips in fruitful expression.
Do you really think that your meagre presence
could have affected him that deeply? You,
who drift through things like an early morning breeze?
Certainly, you jolted his heart, but older tremors
shook him in the presence of your touch.
Call him … you will not entirely call him back out of those dark involvements.
Of course, he wants to escape them, takes the leap and, relieved,
finds a comfortable place in your hidden heart,
from which he will draw to renew himself.
But did he ever really begin anew?
The stanza continues, focusing upon the role of the mother in the early life of the boy. She is the carer whose care, nolens volens, oppresses. Once again, love is Janus-faced. The sixteen lines are sequentially descriptive: a scene is being adumbrated, a situation recorded. Consequently, the individual syntactic units (the sentences) are longer, and the images within them linked through alliteration and through the insistence of the speaking (male) voice addressing the mother:
Mutter, du machtest ihn klein, du warsts, die ihn anfing;
dir war er neu, du beugtest über die neuen
Augen die freundliche Welt und wehrtest der fremden.
Wo, ach, hin sind die Jahre, da du ihm einfach
mit der schlanken Gestalt wallendes Chaos vertratst?
Vieles verbargst du ihm so; das nächtlich-verdächtige Zimmer
machtest du harmlos, aus deinem Herzen voll Zuflucht
mischtest du menschlichern Raum seinem Nacht-Raum hinzu.
Nicht in die Finsternis, nein, in dein näheres Dasein
hast du das Nachtlicht gestellt, und es schien wie aus Freundschaft.
Nirgends ein Knistern, das du nicht lächelnd erklärtest,
so als wüßtest du längst, wann sich die Diele benimmt…
Und er horchte und linderte sich. So vieles vermochte
zärtlich dein Aufstehn; hinter den Schrank trat
hoch im Mantel sein Schicksal, und in die Falten des Vorhangs
paßte, die leicht sich verschob, seine unruhige Zukunft.
This section of the stanza begins: “Mutter, du machtest ihn klein”. “Mother, you made him small” (CFM, R, M and G) is the preferred translation, except for the rather mysterious, “Mother, you made his pattern” (R/S). This is not, however, really idiomatic English, unless we are talking about the literal, i.e. physical (re) production of someone. What “klein machen” means in German is “to deflate”, “to make someone look small” or “to cut down to size”. It is an assertive statement that introduces a series of lines gesturing to the dubious influence of the mother on the lover-son as a boy (and Freud is not far away). The mother’s “care” for the son means a moulding of the son as an object of that “care”. There is general agreement on how to translate the lines that follow. The mother protected the child, warding off the enemy world, putting her slender form between him and the abyss that surrounded him, hiding so much from him: “das nächtlich-verdächtige Zimmer /machtest du harmlos, aus deinem Herzen voll Zuflucht /mischtest du menschlichern Raum seinem Nacht-Raum hinzu”. Most agree on the general sense of these words, with “The room that filled with suspicion / at night: you made it harmless; and out of the refuge of your heart / you mixed a more human space in with his night-space” (M) being representative. The lines that follow possess tones that are quietly sinister and difficult to translate. The presence, “Dasein”, of the mother comforts the boy. She places the night lamp so that “it shone as though out of friendship” (L/S), and explains away the strange noises that the house makes, with its creaking floors. The boy listens to his mother and is soothed. But there is something disturbing about so much domestication: “So vieles vermochte / zärtlich dein Aufstehn; hinter den Schrank trat / hoch im Mantel sein Schicksal, und in die Falten des Vorhangs / paßte, die leicht sich verschob, seine unruhige Zukunft”. This has been variously translated as “So much it/ availed, / gently, your rising: his tall cloaked destiny stepped / behind the wardrobe then, and his restless future/ that got easily out of place, conformed to the folds of the / curtain.” (L/S), “So powerful was your presence/ as you tenderly stood by the bed; his fate, / tall and cloaked, retreated behind the wardrobe, and his restless / future, delayed for a while, adapted to the folds of the curtain” (M), “Your rising and going to his bedside /achieved so much, for his tall, cloaked fate / stepped back behind the wardrobe, and his uneasy future, / subtly / placing itself beyond, slipped into folds of the curtain” (R/S) and “You stood over him / so tenderly till the long-cloaked figure of his fate/ retreated beyond the wardrobe and his future / restlessness took the shape of a folded curtain, / though all this was easy postponement” (MC).
This is a portrait of the mother as she is in situ, in her domestic realm, and Rilke’s lines thrive on the tension between tropes of love and care, on the one hand, and control and domination, on the other, in words that gesture to the exercise of power achieved through the gentlest of means. L/S and R/S put the emphasis on the former trope; M, R and MC on the latter. These diverging translations are made possible by a single verb, “vermochten”, the past tense of “Vermögen”, which means not only “to be able” or “to be capable” of doing something, but also “to induce”, to move someone to doing something. “Unruhig” and “sich verschob” can also be seen in a positive or negative light. “Restless” is the preferred translation of the former, but “unsettled” is a more positive alternative, and to translate “sich verschob” as “got easily out of place” is to assume the mother’s point of view. “Sich verschieben” can mean “to shift” something in space, but also “to postpone” something in time. What is being referred to is the fact that the son keeps changing his mind about what he wants to do in the future, his indecisiveness allowing his mother to control his development and, in a trivial fashion, to treat his fate as if it were a cloak that might be hung behind a wardrobe, and placed into the folds of a curtain.
An alternative translation is:
Mother, you put him in his place; it was you right from the start.
He was so new to you. Over his fresh eyes, you arched
the friendly world and kept the hostile one at bay.
Ah, where have those years gone, when you simply replaced
the seething chaos around him with your slender figure?
You managed to keep much from him.
A room in the night filled with suspicion, you made harmless,
blending, from a heart full of shelter,
a more human space into his space of night.
And you placed the lamp not in darkness, no, but
close to you, in your presence, and it glowed to him
like a friend. There no creak in the house that smiling
you could not explain away, as if you had always known
exactly when the floor boards would do that …
And he listened and grew placid. You stood
over him with such tenderness; behind the wardrobe, his fate,
tall and cloaked, retreated, and his future, unsettled and changing,
fitted nicely into the folds of the curtains.
The previous stanza depicted a son placed “comfortably” in the domestic world by the mother. But it is neither comfort nor placement that he is seeking. The third stanza in the Elegy and, with its twenty-four lines, the longest, depicts the inner world of the son, a chaos of instincts bred from hypertrophic excess and something more sinister, a horror that dare not speak its name:
Und er selbst, wie er lag, der Erleichterte, unter
schläfernden Lidern deiner leichten Gestaltung
Süße lösend in den gekosteten Vorschlaf –:
schien ein Gehüteter… Aber innen: wer wehrte,
hinderte innen in ihm die Fluten der Herkunft?
Ach, da war keine Vorsicht im Schlafenden; schlafend,
aber träumend, aber in Fiebern: wie er sich ein-ließ.
Er, der Neue, Scheuende, wie er verstrickt war,
mit des innern Geschehns weiterschlagenden Ranken
schon zu Mustern verschlungen, zu würgendem Wachstum, zu tierhaft
jagenden Formen. Wie er sich hingab –. Liebte.
Liebte sein Inneres, seines Inneren Wildnis,
diesen Urwald in ihm, auf dessen stummem Gestürztsein
lichtgrün sein Herz stand. Liebte. Verließ es, ging die
eigenen Wurzeln hinaus in gewaltigen Ursprung,
wo seine kleine Geburt schon überlebt war. Liebend
stieg er hinab in das ältere Blut, in die Schluchten,
wo das Furchtbare lag, noch satt von den Vätern. Und jedes
Schreckliche kannte ihn, blinzelte, war wie verständigt.
Ja, das Entsetzliche lächelte … Selten
hast du so zärtlich gelächelt, Mutter. Wie sollte
er es nicht lieben, da es ihm lächelte. Vor dir
hat ers geliebt, denn, da du ihn trugst schon,
war es im Wasser gelöst, das den Keimenden leicht macht.
The imagery is assertive to the point of being brutal. Rilke’s eschews any conventional poetic form. There is no end-rhyme and no consistent metre, the underlying iambic being frequently interrupted by half lines formed around caesuras, which allow the visceral imagery to emerge with even greater intensity. The son is called “der Erleichterte”. This is an adjective-noun, formed from the past tense of “erleichern” (“to relieve”), a grammatical formation that is common in German but rare in English. “Der Erleichterte” literally means “the relieved one”, but most translators choose to use it as an adverb, as if it were “erleichert” (“relieved”). This gives us translations such as “And he himself, as he lay there, unburdened” (R), “And he himself as he lay there in such relief” (L/S), “And he himself – as he lay assuaged” (G), “And he himself, as he lay there, relieved” (M), “Lying there, freed” (R/S), “As he lay there, himself, relieved” (MC). Being relieved is normally construed as a positive mental state, an experience that is welcomed. But this is not the meaning that these opening lines, depicting a son mollified into soporific passivity, are aiming for. Formations such as “der Erleicherte” were common in medieval Mystery plays, and used later in the drama of the Expressionists to bestow a universal quality upon the subject depicted (as in Hanns Johst’s “Der Einsame”, literally, “The Lonely One”). It is possible that Rilke is using the term in an ironic fashion, projecting the son as a figure of mock-heroic proportions. There is general agreement on how to translate the line that follows, “Aber innen: wer wehrte, / hinderte innen in ihm die Fluten der Herkunft?” The poet is referring to the persistence of instinctual life in the son, of an inherited life energy that is resisting the attempts to contain it within the (maternal) domestic ethos. “But inside: who could ward off, / who could divert, the floods of origin inside him?” (M), is a representative translation. Finally, the conditional tense (“would” or “could”) is chosen by all translators is, indeed. more appropriate than the simple past tense, because it suggests the potential activity (interference) of another person.
We are then told: “Ach, da war keine Vorsicht im Schlafenden; schlafend,/ aber träumend, aber in Fiebern: wie er sich ein-ließ”. There is general agreement about how the initial words should be translated: the son is sleeping without caution, lying in a fever, dreaming, opening himself fully to the dissolution of selfhood that somnolence brings. But how does he partake of this experience? The text says “wie er sich ein-ließ”. “Ein-ließ” from “einlassen” (literally, “to let in”) should be easy to translate, but it is not. The verb appears here in an unusual reflexive form. Normally “sich einlassen” means “to get oneself” into something, “to be involved” in something or, with a different meaning, “to embark” on something, a journey, for example. Rilke, however, treats “einlassen” as if it were a separable verb and hyphenates it, possibly to combine its literal and metaphoric uses (a “letting in” that is, at the same time, a “setting out”). Translations include: “how fitfully he abandoned himself” (R), “what he embarked on!” (L/S), “how he yielded himself” (CFM), “what he let himself in for” (G), “how he threw himself in” (M), “how wholly immersed” (R/S) and “how he let himself go” (MC). What Rilke is describing is the son’s willing surrender to somatic dissolution, in a mental state that combines both volition and passivity.
The son gives himself over to an inner world of visceral plenitude, which is described in terms that are both vegetative and animalistic. The poem reads: “Er, der Neue, Scheuende, wie er verstrickt war, /mit des innern Geschehns weiterschlagenden Ranken / schon zu Mustern verschlungen, zu würgendem Wachstum, zu tierhaft / jagenden Formen”. Once again, Rilke grammatically chooses to describe the son in yet further adjective-nouns. The literal translation, “the new one, “the shy/timid one” is largely avoided in preference to treating these words as predicative adjectives, as in “so new, so timorous” (L/S), or as adverbs “new, trembling” (M), the exception being “the new one, shy” (MC). The son is completely caught up in the turmoil of his inner life, a network of bestial forms, and he surrenders himself to the “Geschehns”, “inner events” (MC), that are taking place within. It is difficult to reproduce the decadent luxuriance of these lines in English, with their long drawn-out dark syllables and the sensual labial-fricative alliteration, as in “verschlungen, zu würgendem Wachstum”, but “twisted in patterns, in stranglehold growth” (R/S) does much to capture their brooding texture.
The son loves this darkly exotic world, this primal forest of the self, “where his heart shone like a beacon” (MC). He loves it, but leaves it, undertaking an even deeper journey within: “Verließ es, ging die / eigenen Wurzeln hinaus in gewaltigen Ursprung, / wo seine kleine Geburt schon überlebt war”. This has been translated as “Left it, continued / out through his own roots into violent beginning/ where his tiny birth was already outlived” (L+S), “Left it, went through / his own roots and out, into the powerful source/ where his little birth had already been outlived” (M), “And left it, went through / his own roots / out towards powerful genesis, where already / his little birth was outlived” (R/S) and “And left it. Went down through / his own roots and out to the point of origin /where his little birth seemed an anachronism” (MC). The German text poses a number of problems for translators, foremost of which is, perhaps surprisingly, what looks like the simple phrasal verb, “hinausgehen”. The lines that contain the verb are elliptical, without a subject; indeed, it is possible that “Wurzeln”, “roots” is intended as the subject, and that “ging” is a shortened version of the subjunctive, which would give us “his roots went …”. If we do associate “ging” with the son, we need to ask what the “hinaus” means. Where is the son going? Is it “through” (R/S and R), “out” (M) or “down through” (MC)? What is clear is that he is going deeper and deeper into himself, through fundamental layers of selfhood, his “roots”, attempting to reach that inchoate centre, that original and powerful but also violent (“gewaltig”), source of being that preceded his birth. This is the “ältere Blut” (“ancient blood”, MC and R) of his “Vätern”, his ancestors, whose terror beckons to him. The son not only knows of this terror; he is also complicit in it. It knowingly “winks” at him: “Und jedes / Schreckliche kannte ihn, blinzelte, war wie verständigt”. “Sich verständigen” means, depending on the preposition used (“mit” or “auf”) “to come to an understanding”, “to agree” with someone, “to make oneself” understood. It is a form of reciprocated behaviour, representing a bond between one person and another. Translations of these lines include: “And every / terror knew him, winked, was though it were waiting” (L/S), “And every terror was his pal and winked with complicity” (G), “And every/ Terror knew him, winked at him like an accomplice” (M), “And every horror knew him, / winked and knew what he was doing” (CFM), “And the Indescribable / knew him and winked at him, as in a shared conspiracy” (R/S), “And everything / terrible knew him, winked at him as an accomplice” (R), and “and every horror knew him, winked in complicity” (MC).
This is a world, amoral and excessive, and it is inhabited not only by the fathers; the mother too, in an ambivalent and disturbing way, belongs here, as the final lines of the stanza testify: “Ja, das Entsetzliche lächelte … Selten / hast du so zärtlich gelächelt, Mutter. Wie sollte /er es nicht lieben, da es ihm lächelte. Vor dir / hat ers geliebt, denn, da du ihn trugst schon, / war es im Wasser gelöst, das den Keimenden leicht macht”. The tension of these lines hangs on the association of the mother (and her smile) with the dark depths being evoked. One translation is: “Yes, Horror smiled at him … Seldom / did you, Mother, smile so tenderly” (L/S), which compares rather than identifies the two smiles. Other translations that retain the essential ambiguity of the lines (the implication of terror that belongs to the mother’s smile) include: “Yes, Atrocity smiled … Seldom / had you smiled so tenderly, Mother” (M) and even more explicit “Yes, Ghastliness smiled at him … Seldom, / Mother, have you smiled so tenderly” (R/S), which by using the present perfect tense foregrounds the actuality of the horror of the mother’s smile. It is a smile that the son has known, even as an embryo afloat in the liquidity of maternity: Wie sollte / er es nicht lieben, da es ihm lächelte. Vor dir / hat ers geliebt, denn, da du ihn trugst schon, / war es im Wasser gelöst, das den Keimenden leicht macht”. “Yet, he loved it even / before he knew you, since it was already dissolved / in the water that buoyed him in your belly” (MC) is a representative translation.
An alternative translation:
And he himself, lying there, comforted,
under the sleepy eyelids of your soft figure,
dissolving into sweetness in that delicious moment
before sleep – he seemed protected. But within:
who could divert, dam the flood, coming from the origins
within him? Alas, the sleeper showed no caution;
sleepy, but dreaming, and in a fever,
to which he gave himself over. He, the new one, shy soul,
how he was entangled, caught up with the spreading tendrils
of what was happening inside, and already
twined into patterns, into choking undergrowth, into
predatory animal forms. Oh, how he surrendered himself –
loved it, loved his inner life, his inner wilderness,
this primeval forest within him, upon whose silent
rubble his heart lay, bright-green. He loved it.
Then abandoned it, went out through his own roots
into that primal force, where his tiny birth
was already outlived. Loving,
he descended into more ancient blood, into ravines where
dread lay, still gorged with the fathers. And every terror
knew him, winked at him, as if they were accomplices.
Yes, horror smiled … Rarely have you smiled so tenderly, mother.
How could he not love her, she who smiled so? Even before
he knew you, he had loved it, for even as you bore him
it was dissolved in the weightless waters of the womb.
The act of loving transcends individual expression. It embodies the atavistic within us, a biological universalism, as the fourth stanza testifies:
Siehe, wir lieben nicht, wie die Blumen, aus einem
einzigen Jahr; uns steigt, wo wir lieben,
unvordenklicher Saft in die Arme. O Mädchen,
dies: daß wir liebten in uns, nicht Eines, ein Künftiges, sondern
das zahllos Brauende; nicht ein einzelnes Kind,
sondern die Väter, die wie Trümmer Gebirgs
uns im Grunde beruhn; sondern das trockene Flußbett
einstiger Mütter –; sondern die ganze
lautlose Landschaft unter dem wolkigen oder
reinen Verhängnis –: dies kam dir, Mädchen, zuvor.
This stanza, written in ten lines of flowing enjambment, constitutes an almost impatient debate with the anonymous “girl”. Its argument is formed anaphorically around the single correlative conjunction, “nicht nur … sondern”, whose second term, precisely in its insistence, provides translating problems. There is general agreement on how to translate the initial lines: flowers know only the transitory love of diurnal time; but human love draws on vital energies (“Saft”) that are timeless. This is what the girl must understand, and she is directly addressed in the text: “O Mädchen, / dies: daß wir liebten in uns, nicht Eines, ein Künftiges, sondern / das zahllos Brauende”. Because of the adjective-nouns, “Eines”, “Künftiges”, “Brauende”, these lines are not easy to translate. Attempts are “Oh, maid, / this: That we’ve loved, within us, not one, still to come, but / all / the innumerable fermentation” (L/S), “Dear girl, / this: that we loved, inside us, not One who would someday appear, but / seething multitudes” (M), “Dear girl, just this: / that we have loved, in our inmost core, not one, from the future, / but the numberless seething many” (R/S) and “Oh, my girl – it is this we love / inside ourselves – not the one, the beloved / who will one day, perhaps, appear – but these / seething multitudes” (MC). The major translating problems centre on the identity of the “Eines” and the “Brauende”. It is possible to read the former as a reference to the beloved or to an anonymous future loved-one, the “One”, but, as the subsequent lines indicate, it is also possible that Rilke is thinking of an unborn child. If this latter reading is correct then we can see the “Braunende” not as some amorphous “seething multitudes” (and even less “innumerable fermentation” sic!), but as a future generation waiting to be born, which gives us an alternative translation of “Oh, girl, just this: that we love / in us no single being, the one to come, but / future generations innumerable”. The lines that follow make this implication explicit: it is not the single child that the poet evokes but the fathers; not the “dried-up river beds /of those who were mothers” (R/S), but also the entire silent landscape existing beneath a cloudy or clear sky of destiny. All of this belongs to love, to the biological history of love, which long preceded the girl and her investment of feeling in the present.
An alternative translation:
Look: we do not love as flowers do,
in their single cycle of the year;
when we love, timeless sap rises
into our arms. Oh, girl, just this: that we love
in us no single being, the one to come, but
future generations innumerable; not the sole
child but the fathers also who, like the rubble of mountains,
rest in the ground of ourselves; and the dry river bed
of erstwhile mothers –: and the silent landscape under
cloudy or pure fate –: all this, girl, was here before you.
In the fifth and final stanza, Rilke evokes the female subject again, to explore in further detail her relationship with the son. Once again, the tone is discursive: the position of speech is argumentative, interrogative. The girl is being instructed, and the form of the poem reflects this, with its frequent rhetorical questions (“welche”, “welche”, “was”), and the imperious sentiments of the concluding lines:
Und du selber, was weißt du –, du locktest
Vorzeit empor in dem Liebenden. Welche Gefühle
wühlten herauf aus entwandelten Wesen. Welche
Frauen haßten dich da. Was für finstere Männer
regtest du auf im Geäder des Jünglings? Tote
Kinder wollten zu dir… O leise, leise,
tu ein liebes vor ihm, ein verläßliches Tagwerk, – führ ihn
nah an den Garten heran, gieb ihm der Nächte
Übergewicht ……
Verhalt ihn……
The girl provokes, consciously or not, feelings deep and primitive from within the loved one: “Und du selber, was weißt du –, du locktest / Vorzeit empor in dem Liebenden. Welche Gefühle / wühlten herauf aus entwandelten Wesen”. There is general agreement on the initial line, with “As for yourself, what do you know? That you stirred prehistory in your lover” (MC) being representative (although these are statements not questions in the original German). “Welche Gefühle / wühlten herauf aus entwandelten Wesen” has proved more difficult to translate. The son is subject to turbulent feelings that well up “aus entwandelten Wesen”. “Wesen” is typically difficult to translate into English, meaning, in its standard dictionary definition, either “being” or “existence”. The word has no plural in German, but sometimes casting it in a plural form in English as “beings” is necessary, and this is the preferred translation. It is quite possible, however, that “Wesen” should be read in the singular as “state of being”, which would bring it into alignment with its other meaning, “existence”. “Entwandeln” is a neologistic formation from the verb “wandeln”, meaning both “to stroll”, “to promenade”, but also “to transform”, “to metamorphose” (its meaning here), when it normally receives the prefix “um” or “ver”. “Wandeln” is provided with an “ent” prefix, which suggests “away from” or a negation of something. The preferred translation of “entwandelten” is “departed”, as in “What passions / welled up in you from departed beings” (M), but “long-dead” (MC) and “beings now gone” (R) are also possible, supporting a reading that stresses what has been lost, made defunct within the son. This allows us to see that “Wesen” does not refer to other beings “gone by” (L/S), but the being, “Wesen”, within the son himself. An alternative translation is “What feelings welled up out of that distant being?”
Further questions regarding the role of the female in the life of the son follow: “Welche / Frauen haßten dich da. Was für finstere Männer / regtest du auf im Geäder des Jünglings?”. These lines have been variously translated as “What women / hated you in him! What sinister men / you roused in his youthful veins!” (L/S), “What passions / welled up inside him from departed beings. What / women hated you there. How many dark / sinister men you aroused in his young veins” (M), “What passions/ sought their way out in him from departed beings. / How many women hated you there. What dark-hearted men / you have roused up in his young man’s veins” (R/S), “What passion was it welled from the long-dead/ in him? What women were there who hated you? / What men of darkness reached their arms to you” (MC).
“Sinister” is the preferred translation of “finster”, because it secures the association of the son’s instinctual life with the morally problematic. “Sinister”, however, loses the element of darkness and the saturnine, which also belongs to that association, prompting one translator to translate the word twice, as “dark/ sinister” (M).
The final lines of the poem invoke the female loved-one, but now it is no longer clear whether this is the wife or the mother: “Tote / Kinder wollten zu dir… O leise, leise,/ tu ein liebes vor ihm, ein verläßliches Tagwerk, – führ ihn / nah an den Garten heran, gieb ihm der Nächte
Übergewicht ……
Verhalt ihn……”
Two representative translations are: “Dead children / wanted to come to you … gently. Oh gently, carry out / this task in his sight, reliably, out of affection for him – / lead him near to the garden, give him what will / outweigh the nights … / Contain him …” (R/S) and “What dead children reached their arms to you? / O gently, gently, then! Let him watch you / at some steady, everyday task – lovingly, lead him / close up to the garden, give him whatever might / outweigh the nights … / Hold him back …” (MC). As so often in Rilke’s Elegies, the final words are crucial, and crucially ambiguous. “Verhalten” as a verb has a broad range of meanings, which include not only “to restrain” and “to contain”, but also “hold back” and “to control” and even, in certain German-speaking areas, “to admonish”. This range of meanings is reflected in the various translations, such as “Withhold him … ” (L/S), “Hold him in … ” (G), “Restrain him … ” (CFM, R and M), “Contain him … ” (R/S) and “Hold him back … ” (MC). The nuances that separate the translations are subtle, but all converge on the notion of restraint, of the curbing of the energies of the son, who must, for the moment, seek his self-realisation (the final lines imply) in that only space where he can be free: within himself.
An alternative translation:
And you yourself: what did you know? –:
You lured primal time up into the loved one.
What feelings welled up out of that distant being!
What women hated you for this!
What sinister men did you arouse in the blood of the youth?
Dead children wanted to come to you … oh, softly, softly,
do something kind for him, a dependable chore –
lead him right up to the garden, give him over
to what will outweigh the nights …
Hold him back …
Rilke, Elegy 4
We are pressing the heart to reveal the past (but it is possible that the heart does not want this). The fourth Elegy moves into the elegiac mode proper, both formally and thematically. Written in a blank verse of largely iambic pentameter lines, it gives voice to a mosaically formed retrospective recovery of time that is both self-conscious and (possibly ironically) plaintive, where the introduction of the father figure, now alive, now dead, and sometimes occupying a shadowy realm between the two, leads to an extended meditation upon childhood. The puppet now makes an appearance, suggesting that irrespective of the pain of existence, which is real for some and imagined for others, all can enjoy its theatricality.
The stanza begins with lines that are syntactically angular and fatalistic in tone:
O Bäume Lebens, o wann winterlich?
Wir sind nicht einig. Sind nicht wie die Zug-
vögel verständigt. Überholt und spät,
so drängen wir uns plötzlich Winden auf
und fallen ein auf teilnahmslosen Teich.
Blühn und verdorrn ist uns zugleich bewußt.
Und irgendwo gehn Löwen noch und wissen,
solang sie herrlich sind, von keiner Ohnmacht.
The stanza opens with two sparse interjections, which are followed by two factual copulative sentences, both of which are separated by caesuras. The first interjection is easy to translate; the second more difficult: “O Trees of life, what are your signs of winter? / We’re not at one. We’ve no instinctive knowledge, / like migratory birds” (L/S), “O trees of life, when does your winter come? / We are not attuned, not at one, we lack the instinct / of migrant birds” (MC), “O Trees of life, when is your winter? Ours / is not agreed. Unlike migratory birds / we have no warning” (R/S), “O trees of life, when does your winter come? / We are not in harmony, our blood does not forewarn us / like migratory birds’ ” (M), “O Trees of life, oh, when winterly? / We’re not in accord. Are not of one mind / like birds of passage” (CFM) and “O trees of life, when are you wintering? / We aren’t at one, are not like the birds migrating / knowingly” (R).
The stark juxtaposition of the trees of life and winter (the latter a symbol of decline, of moribundity, even) signals the plaintive tones of the elegiac mode. “Winterlich” is the first of a series of conventional words in this stanza that is being used in an unconventional way. The dictionary defines it as “wintery” or “winterly”, but because Rilke does not link it to a verb the word possesses here a starkness that that these standard definitions lack, which allows it to emerge as an existential condition (and perhaps one that reflects a death wish). Then we are told: “wir sind nicht einig”, the abrupt arrival of a “wir” signalling the presence of that mysteriously ambiguous collective subject that pervades the Elegies. “Einig” is normally found in the phrase “einig sein mit” meaning “to be in agreement with”, but Rilke is drawing upon its earlier usage where it meant “single” or “sole”. Indeed, it is possible that he wishes us to hear both meanings here. “Wir sind nicht einig” is a highly compact phrase connoting a division within consciousness, and the failure of the self to reach a surety of goals. “We are not attuned” (MC) and “we are not in accord” (CFM) are possible translations, but both presuppose an object that the text does not provide. The translations that retain the stem of the word, “ein”, as in “not of one mind”, are perhaps more appropriate.
A disunity within (the modern) self is being addressed, a disunity that contrasts to the unity achieved by the birds of migration, who know where they are going, and go there in formation (“Zug”). We, on the other hand, have no idea about our ultimate destination (and certainly lack formation), because we are not “verständigt”. The core of that word is extracted from a common verbal construction, “sich verständigen”, meaning “to come to an understanding”, and its past participle is applied here as a descriptor. As so often in Rilke’s writing, the familiar is jolted out of place to become the unfamiliar, and the reader is compelled to find a space of intelligibility between the two. There can be no literal translation, so we are compelled to paraphrase, as in “we’ve no instinctive knowledge” (L/S) or “we lack instinct” (MC). An alternative translation might be “we have no shared understanding”.
Rilke makes the temporal context of this existential crisis clear in the line that follows: “Überholt und spät, / so drängen wir uns plötzlich Winden auf / und fallen ein auf teilnahmslosen Teich”. Translating its initial words has presented difficulties. Some attempts are “outstript and late” (L/S), “overtaken, late” (R/S), “late, we get left standing” (MC), and “outmoded, late” (G) and “belated” (R). “Überholen” does indeed mean “to overtake” (as one motor car might overtake another), but here it means to be superseded, superannuated, in the sense of being made redundant by the march of history. It is not a course of action that is being described but a state of cultural desuetude, and this is confirmed by the ensuing descriptor, “spät”. The latter looks like it can be simply converted into “late”, but what is being described is not a point in time (where “late” might follow “early”), but a terminal state of being. The possible allusion is to Oswald Spengler, whose fatalistic study of the morphology of Western civilisation, The Decline of the West (1923), influenced an entire generation. Read within this context, the highly evocative “spät” refers to the final stage in Western culture, a culture that is not “late” but exhausted or (in an alternative translation) “at an end”.
We attempt to flee this predicament, but in vain. We soar into the skies but our Icarus-like flight ends in the bathos of an inhospitable pond, as the poet tells us, in flowing lines and long vowels that reproduce the doomed flight. These lines begin with the rhetorically assertive “so” (the most favoured adverb in the Elegies): “so drängen wir uns plötzlich Winden auf / und fallen ein auf teilnahmslosen Teich”, “we force ourselves on winds and find no welcome / from ponds where we alight” (L/S), “we force ourselves abruptly onto the wind / and fall to earth at some iced-over lake” (M), “we launch ourselves abruptly on the wind / and plummet over an indifferent pond” (R/S), “abruptly we launch ourselves into the wind / only to go plummeting down into water / that does not care for us” (MC). “Aufdrängen” means to force oneself, or one’s unwelcome opinions or presence, onto someone, so already the subsequent theme of indifference (“teilnahmslos”) is being sounded. We attempt to impose ourselves on nature but end up flat on our face, so the anticlimax represented in the common-or-garden “pond” should be retained (rather than “water”): our actions are not just futile: they are ludicrous.
We have reached a point in our decline where “blühn und verdorrn ist uns zugleich bewußt”. The line is deceptively complex. Rilke is bringing the two normally antithetical terms of “blühn” and “verdorrn” into an alignment, where they have come, in some way, to be seen as the same. But in which way? “We comprehend / flowering and fading simultaneously” (L/S), “we’re aware of flowering and fading at once” (R) and “at once, we feel ourselves / both wither and flower” (MC), remove the focus from the flowering and withering onto an experiencing subject. “Flowering and fading share our consciousness” (R/S) leaves it as a matter of a common occupancy, whilst “flowering and fading come to us both at once” (M) describes an action of simple simultaneity. What is important to register is that, in this period of terminal decline, flowering and fading share a common identity. An alternative translation is “Flowering and decaying are to our minds the same”.
The stanza ends as it had begun: with a comparison between the abject state of human consciousness and the majestic self-possession and innate sense of purpose that animals enjoy: “Und irgendwo gehn Löwen noch und wissen, / solang sie herrlich sind, von keiner Ohnmacht”, “and somewhere lions still roam, all unaware, / while yet their splendour lasts, of any weakness” (L/S), “and somewhere lions still roam and never know, / in their majestic power, of any weakness” (M), “And somewhere lions roam, unaware, in their magnificence, of frailty” (R/S), “Somewhere else, lions / roam unaware of any weakness in their majesty” (MC). Translators differ on how to translate “Ohnmacht”. It literally means a fainting-fit, but figuratively can refer, by extension, to powerlessness. Neither “weakness” nor “frailty” are strong enough to convey this latter meaning. Both words also lose the sense of “consciousness”, unified or non-unified, which is a theme that runs throughout this Elegy, and has already been anticipated in the preceding line with “bewusst”. The sense is that lions, as long as they remain majestic (and this conditional clause needs to be retained in translation), are not subject to the impotence that afflicts us in the human realm. But should they lose that majesty, and their inner equilibrium and equipoise (as we have lost ours), even lions must fall victim to the debilitation of a divided will. Lions roars into inconsequentiality when afflicted by self-consciousness.
An alternative translation:
Oh, trees of life, when winter?
We are not at one. Unlike the birds of
migration, we have no shared understanding.
Redundant and at an end,
we force ourselves abruptly up into the wind
and fall to earth into some indifferent pond.
Flowering and decaying are to our minds the same.
Yet there are places where lions still roam,
and, as long as they remain their masters,
know nothing of this impotence.
But as the second stanza reminds us: we can only marvel at such unity; we cannot share it:
Uns aber, wo wir Eines meinen, ganz,
ist schon des andern Aufwand fühlbar. Feindschaft
ist uns das Nächste. Treten Liebende
nicht immerfort an Ränder, eins im andern,
die sich versprachen Weite, Jagd und Heimat.
Da wird für eines Augenblickes Zeichnung
ein Grund von Gegenteil bereitet, mühsam,
daß wir sie sähen; denn man ist sehr deutlich
mit uns. Wir kennen den Kontur
des Fühlens nicht: nur, was ihn formt von außen.
Humans have lost the natural integrity of animals, putting duplicity and role playing in their place. The second stanza begins by commenting on the depths of inauthenticity to which we have descended: “Uns aber, wo / wir Eines meinen, ganz, / ist schon des andern Aufwand fühlbar. Feindschaft / ist uns das Nächste”. Translations include, “we, though, when most intent upon one thing, / can feel the other’s dazzinglingness. Hostility’s / our readiest response.” (L/S), “But we, while we’re intent upon one object, / already feel the pull of another. Conflict / is second nature to us” (M), “But we, wholly intent on one thing, sense / the next already intervening. Conflict / is close relation to us” (R/S), “But for us, as we focus on one thing, already / we feel the pull of another. Conflict is always / our companion” (MC),“but we, fully intending one thing, / already feel the expense of another” (R).
The opening lines are a mini study of interpersonal dissimulation: when we propose one thing, we often mean something quite different. Much turns on the reading of “meinen”. In standard German, “meinen” is to express or hold an opinion: it is a communicative act. “Intent”, however, simply means giving all our attention to something, and is thus a mental rather than a locative process, and does not involve deception, but that is what is being implied here. “Aufwand” can be “effort”, an “expenditure” (of energy) or an “extravagance”, which is the meaning that L/S attempt to convey through their neologistic “dazzinglingness”. The latter, however, loses the sense of the text, which is when we say one thing, we mean another, being already attracted (“fühlbar”) by the opposite meaning of what we are saying. Is this just another example of our disunity, or is it a strategy of evasion, a way of dealing with the world through dissimulation? The line that immediately follows suggests it is the latter: “Feindschaft / ist uns das Nächste”, “hostility’s / our readiest response” (L/S), “conflict / is second nature to us” (M), “conflict is close relation to us” (R/S), “conflict is always / our companion” (MC). “Feindschaft” means “animosity”, “hostility” (R) and “ill will”. It is a confrontational attitude that is other-directed, a quality that is not captured in “conflict”, which describes a state (not a disposition) of disagreement or being at odds with someone. “Hostility is second nature to us” is an alternative translation.
What follows in the Elegy is a return to the world of the lovers. Do these lines offer us an example of what has preceded them, or do they introduce a new theme? Once again, Rilke exploits the technique of aporia, and leaves the logical connection between the lines unspecified, generating a space of meaning that the reader must fill. They read: “Treten Liebende / nicht immerfort an Ränder, eins im andern, / die sich versprachen Weite, Jagd und Heimat”, sentiments that are difficult to translate both because of the mysterious “Ränder”, and because there seems to be a disjunction in logic between the main sentence and the subordinating clause (which begins with “die’). Attempts are: “Aren’t lovers always / coming to precipices in each other, – / lovers, that looked for spaces, hunting, home?” (L/S), “Aren’t lovers / always arriving at each other’s boundaries? / although they promised vastness, hunting, home” (R/S), “Are not lovers / always reaching boundaries in each other / despite their promised free space, hunting, home? (M), “Even those in love, are they not / always confronting each other’s limits / though promised space, good hunting, a home?” (MC).
Once again, translation involves interpretation: all of these versions mean something different. The sense of the initial line centres on “Ränder”. It literally means “borders”, “edges” or “boundaries”, but are these boundaries that surround something or are the boundaries themselves here the subject of the text, as in “precipices” (L/S)? And do we “approach them” (R), “arrive at them” (M) or “confront them” (MC)? “Treten” simply means “to step”, so perhaps the sense of these lines is that we reach the outer limits of the other person, the loved one, but get no further, failing to reach the greater expanse of selfhood that is represented by the wide open spaces, where animals are hunted and where we inhabit the broader community of the homeland (which is far greater than a “home”), a world that the lovers “promised themselves” (“sich versprachen”).
We are then told: “Da wird für eines Augenblickes Zeichnung /ein Grund von Gegenteil bereitet, mühsam, / daß wir sie sähen; denn man ist sehr deutlich / mit uns”, “Then, for the sudden sketchwork of a moment, / a ground of contrast’s painfully prepared, / to make us see it. For they’re very clear / with us, …” (L/S), “As when for some quick sketch, a wide background / of contrast is laboriously prepared / so that we can see more clearly” (M), “A lightning sketch has its contrasting background / carefully prepared, so that we see / what they desire to be quite open to us” (R/S), “It’s as if – in a quick sketch – all the effort / has gone to prepare a background that allows us / to see precisely” (MC).
The initial lines are difficult to translate; just for a moment, an alternative image is being painstakingly produced for the lovers, so that they might possibly see what real love is in its expansive mode. Problems come with translating the enigmatic and rather sinister short phrase that follows: “denn man ist sehr deutlich / mit uns”. Who or what is this “man”? It seems, once again, as in the other Elegies, an example of an anonymous subject existing beyond us but controlling what we do and think. One translator ignores it entirely, and another collapses it into the preceding line, thereby losing its stark and threatening overtones. But it needs to be retained, and it is more effective if it is retained within a self-standing sentence (as it is in the original German). An alternative translation is: “they make it quite plain to us”.
This section of the stanza concludes with yet a further generalisation on our lack of self-understanding: “Wir kennen den Kontur /des Fühlens nicht: nur, was ihn formt von außen”. There is general agreement on how to translate these lines: we do not know or cannot grasp the contour of our feelings, only what forms them from beyond or from outside, the “außen” drawing attention, once again, to the plight of a subjectivity dwarfed by the absence of self-perception and self-determination, which is the central theme of this section. A representative translation is “and yet still we cannot grasp / the real contour of our feelings and we know / only the pressures that shape us from outside” (MC).
An alternative translation:
We, however, whenever we speak of one thing,
already feel fully inclined towards its opposite.
Hostility is second nature to us. Lovers get no further
than their boundaries, although they had promised
one another the open plains, the hunt and homeland.
Then for one moment a sketch of something quite different
is laboriously conjured up for us to view. For they
make it quite plain to us. We do not know
the contours of feeling only that
which forms them from beyond.
The stanza continues by showing us what we might find should we ever be successful (although this may not be the right word for such a vain aspiration) in probing beneath the contours of our feelings:
Wer saß nicht bang vor seines Herzens Vorhang?
Der schlug sich auf: die Szenerie war Abschied.
Leicht zu verstehen. Der bekannte Garten,
und schwankte leise: dann erst kam der Tänzer.
Nicht der. Genug! Und wenn er auch so leicht tut,
er ist verkleidet und er wird ein Bürger
und geht durch seine Küche in die Wohnung.
Unlike the largely dactylic lines of the other Elegies, the underlying metre of the fourth Elegy is iambic, with modifications through amphibrachs and trochaic feet, particularly at the end of lines. It is metrical technique that allows Rilke to place his stress exactly where it is needed, as in this section, where a scenario is being carefully adumbrated around a hypothetical “who” that is confronting the theatricality of selfhood. The section begins with a simple question, and one that is addressed to us all: “Wer saß nicht bang vor seines Herzens Vorhang?”, “Who’s not sat tense before his own heart’s curtain?” (L/S), “Who has not sat, afraid, before his heart’s / curtain?” (M), “Who has not sat, nervous, before his heart’s / curtain?” (R/S), “Who has not sat before his own heart’s curtain / anxiously?” (MC), “who hasn’t sat anxiously before his heart’s / curtain?” (R). The difference between the translations largely centres on the word “bang”. It normally appears in standard German with the preposition “um” or “vor”, where it means “frightened” or “scared”, but used as an adjective it means “uneasy”, in the sense of having a foreboding about something. It is this latter sense that it is being communicated here in “banges Gefühl”: the anonymous “who” is waiting for the curtain to rise in trepidation about what he or she might see revealed about its inner self.
Once the curtain rises, what does it reveal? “the scenery was Parting. / Easy to understand. The well-known garden, / swaying a little” (L/S), “the scenery of farewell. / Easy to recognise. The well-known garden, / which swayed a little” (M), “[It rises.] On a scene of parting / Easy to understand. That garden, familiar, / a little shaky” (R/S), “The stage set for a scene / of parting that is simple enough to understand, / with the garden, so familiar, wavering a little” (MC), “It rose: the scenery was farewell. Easy to understand” (R). The German “Szenerie” translates literally into the English “scenery”, but what is being described in the text is a scene, a scene depicting someone leaving someone else, a “parting” or alternatively a “leave-taking”. We do not know what or where the garden is, but it is difficult to imagine it “swinging” or “swaying”. It is possible that “garden” here refers to the archetypal garden in Classical mythology, representing innocence and bountiful nature, or the paradise of the Garden of Eden. The status of this garden is no longer stable in the cultural memory of the present age, so perhaps “wavering” is the more appropriate translation.
The garden serves as a backdrop for the arrival of a dancer, who appears from nowhere. Although the lines are simple, they are deceptively difficult to translate: “Not him. Enough! However light he foots it, / he’s just disguised, and turns into a bourgeois, / and passes through the kitchen to his dwelling” (L/S), “Not him. Enough! However lightly he moves / he’s costumed, made up – an ordinary man / who hurries home and walks in through the kitchen” (M), “Him? No, that’s too much! Graceful he may be, / but out of costume really just the bourgeois / type who enters his house by the kitchen door” (R/S), “Oh, no, not him! – enough! / No matter how gracefully he moves, nothing / disguises the fact he is some bourgeois who gains / access to his apartment through a kitchen” (MC).
We are still looking into our hearts, but all we can find there is a garden that we can no longer use, and a dancer who is an imposter. But we have seen it all before, and the tone of the poem moves between indignation and caustic contempt. The sense of the lines is that the dancer, although he moves as nimbly or as gracefully as a real dancer is, in reality, just a little bourgeois (but not an “ordinary man” (M) – that is to lose the tone of contempt), pretending he is a dancer. He doesn’t “turn into a bourgeois” (L/S); he already is one. The theme, once again, is the theatricality of self, the games people play, deception and self-deception. It is a sordid little scenario, and is made even more sordid when the dancer has to enter his apartment via the kitchen.
An alternative translation:
Who has never sat anxiously before the stage-curtain of the heart?
It rises: on a scene of leave-taking.
Easy to understand. The familiar garden,
wavering a little: then first up the dancer.
Oh, not him again! Enough! And even if he does move gracefully,
he’s simply in disguise and you can see he’s just a little bourgeois,
who enters his apartment via the kitchen.
The stanza continues by adumbrating a counter scenario, one where the poetic voice will find satisfaction (although this will only be temporary), not in inauthentic lived life, but in the machinations of a puppet or doll.
Ich will nicht diese halbgefüllten Masken,
lieber die Puppe. Die ist voll. Ich will
den Balg aushalten und den Draht und ihr
Gesicht aus Aussehn. Hier. Ich bin davor.
Wenn auch die Lampen ausgehn, wenn mir auch
gesagt wird: Nichts mehr –, wenn auch von der Bühne
das Leere herkommt mit dem grauen Luftzug,
wenn auch von meinen stillen Vorfahrn keiner
mehr mit mir dasitzt, keine Frau, sogar
der Knabe nicht mehr mit dem braunen Schielaug:
Ich bleibe dennoch. Es giebt immer Zuschaun.
The opening lines pose few problems: “I will not have these half-filled masks! No, no, / rather the doll. That’s full. I’ll force myself / to bear the husk, the wire, and even that face / of sheer appearance” (L/S), “I won’t endure these half-filled human masks; / better, the puppet. It at least is full. / I’ll put up with the stuffed skin, the wire, the face / that is nothing but appearance.” (M), “I cannot bear these half-filled masks: give me / the puppet. It’s well stuffed out. Its casing / I can put up with, and its wire, its face /made out of show” (R/S), “I cannot bear these half-filled human masks. / Better have a puppet. At least it is full. I can put up with a puppet’s stuffed limbs, wire, / the appearance of a face” (MC).
Is this a doll or puppet? L/S do not seem to realise that we are in a theatre, which means that “die Puppe” must be a puppet. Nor do they pick up on the possible allusion to Kleist’s famous essay, “On the Marionette Theatre”, where the puppet is invoked as a symbol of the unity of consciousness that humans have lost through excessive self-analysis. Indeed, the words “und wenn er auch so leicht tut” (“and even if he does move gracefully”) may well echo the notion of “Grazie”, “grace” that Kleist extols in that essay. The puppet may not appear in the Elegies as often as those other key figures in Rilke’s portfolio of dramatis personae, actors, animals and lovers, but when it does its import is telling. The poetic voice celebrates the puppet because it is “full” (R) (surely preferable to “stuffed out”), tolerating its mechanical constitution and its “Gesicht aus Aussehen”. “Aussehen” literally means “appearance”, and this is how it is mainly translated. But this produces highly unidiomatic expressions of dubious sense in English, and R/S are surely correct in looking for an alternative translation, although “face / made of show” is equally unidiomatic. “Aussehen” means literally “to look out”, and it is possible that Rilke is drawing our attention to the facially expressive qualities of the puppet, in which case “a showy face” is an alternative translation.
The poetic voice now tells us that it is here, in its place, “waiting” or “sitting waiting” (R/S), and it will remain so, even if circumstances change. The text outlines, in a succession of conditional clauses, what those circumstances might be: even if the lights go out, and he is told “there’s nothing more”, he will remain in his seat: “even if greyish draughts / of emptiness come drifting from the stage, – / even if of all my silent forbears none / sits by me any longer, not a woman, / not even the boy with the brown squinting eyes” (L/S), “ even if emptiness / floats toward me in a gray draft from the stage; / even if not one of my silent ancestors / stays seated with me, not one woman, not / the boy with the immovable brown eye.” (M), “even if emptiness / drifts down from the stage in grey draughts, / and not a single silent forbear still / sits here in company with me, whether a woman, / or even the boy with brown eyes and the squint. /” (R/S), “even if emptiness drifts / like a grisly draught towards me off the stage, / even if none of my tight-lipped ancestors / will sit beside me – no, not one of the women, / even the boy with his squinting brown eye” (MC).
Although there is general agreement amongst the translators, there are minor points of difference. “Herkommen” suggests a direction towards the speaking subject, so it is perhaps best to reinstate that subject in English as “towards me” (M and MC) or “comes to me” (R). “Stillen Vorfahren” simply means “quiet” or “silent” ancestors or forbears’, but not “tight-lipped”, because that means we are asking them to speak and they are refusing to do so. “Schielauge” is not an “immovable” eye but one with a squint. Accommodating the reference to a woman has proved difficult. Here, as elsewhere in the Elegies, the translator must decide on whether to retain Rilke’s abrupt syntax or smooth it out in the service of readability. Retaining it in this case produces formations such as “not one woman, not / the boy …”, “whether a woman, / or even the boy …”, “not one of the women, / even the boy …”. The incongruous appearance of the woman is mysterious, but putting her into the plural form with a definite article makes her even more mysterious. An alternative translation that retains the idiomatic sense of the words might be “not even a woman, nor even the boy …”.
The stanza ends with words that seem unproblematic: “Ich bleibe dennoch. Es giebt immer Zuschaun”. Their general sense is straightforward, but their tone and inclination are more difficult to translate. Some attempts are: “I’ll still remain. For one can always watch” (L/S), “I’ll sit here anyway. One can always watch” (M), “In spite of that, I’ll stay. Plenty to see” (R/S), “I’ll stay anyway. I can always watch this” (MC), or “I’ll stay put. One can always watch” (R). The differing translations inscribe a difference between the activity of the subject and the act of seeing or watching. Tone and register are all important here, because they reflect the comportment of the perceiving self. As so often with Rilke’s ambiguous lines, it is a matter of interpretation, but “es giebt immer Zuschaun” suggests a casual, almost self-effacing resignation, an attitude that is communicated through the banal “immer”. Alternative translations are: “one can always just watch” or “at least, I can look on”.
An alternative translation:
I have had enough of these half-filled masks.
A puppet would be better. It has substance.
I don’t mind its stuffed skin, the bits of wire,
and its showy face. I am here: sitting, waiting.
Even if the lights go out, even if someone shouts
“it’s all over”, even if emptiness should waft towards me
from the stage, like a grey puff of air, even if none of my silent ancestors
remains sitting beside me, neither a woman nor even
the boy with squinting brown eye: I’ll stay here anyway.
One can always just watch.
The next stanza takes up the theme of the role of the father in the memory of Rilke’s persona. The stanza is formed around a narrative of self-interrogation: “am I not right?”, whose assertiveness coalesces with vulnerability and even of (suppressed) guilt:
Hab ich nicht recht? Du, der um mich so bitter
das Leben schmeckte, meines kostend, Vater,
den ersten trüben Aufguß meines Müssens,
da ich heranwuchs, immer wieder kostend
und, mit dem Nachgeschmack so fremder Zukunft
beschäftigt, prüftest mein beschlagnes Aufschaun, –
der du, mein Vater, seit du tot bist, oft
in meiner Hoffnung, innen in mir, Angst hast,
und Gleichmut, wie ihn Tote haben, Reiche
von Gleichmut, aufgiebst für mein bißchen Schicksal,
hab ich nicht recht?
Und ihr, hab ich nicht recht,
die ihr mich liebtet für den kleinen Anfang
Liebe zu euch, von dem ich immer abkam,
weil mir der Raum in eurem Angesicht,
da ich ihn liebte, überging in Weltraum,
in dem ihr nicht mehr wart….: wenn mir zumut ist,
zu warten vor der Puppenbühne, nein,
so völlig hinzuschaun, daß, um mein Schauen
am Ende aufzuwiegen, dort als Spieler
ein Engel hinmuß, der die Bälge hochreißt.
Engel und Puppe: dann ist endlich Schauspiel.
The text inscribes a process of recall, in lines that are amongst the most complex and most difficult to translate in this Elegy. Attempts include: “Am I not right? You, to whom life would taste / so bitter, Father, when you tasted mine, / that turbid first infusion of my Must, / you kept on tasting as I kept on growing, / and, still arrested by the after-taste / of such queer future, tried my clouded gaze, – ” (L/S), “Am I not right? You, to whom life tasted / so bitter after you took a sip of mine, / the first, gritty infusion of my will, / Father – who, as I grew up, kept on tasting / and, troubled by the after-taste of so / strange a future, searched my unfocussed gaze –” (M), “Am I not right? Father, you whose life / was bitter-tasting after sips of mine: / the first cloudy infusion of my will, / as I grew older, always on your tongue; / who searched my misty gaze, pained at the after- / taste of such an alien future” (R/S), “Am I not right ? Father – you knew it well, / how life tasted bitter after you had taken a sip / of me, first turbid dose of what had to be done. / As I grew up, you kept on drinking, became / troubled at the after-taste of so strange a future /and searched out answers in my clouded gaze.” (MC).
The stanza opens with a complex vignette formed from a series of images, in which past, present and future, presentiment and memory, merge in the mind of the recollecting subject. There is general agreement on how to translate these lines, and the translators find similar terminology for the visceral Vampire-like motifs that characterise the father’s predatory relationship with his son. Translating the neologism, “mein Müssens” is, however, more difficult. “Müssen” is a common modal verb in German meaning “must”, “to have to”. Rilke uses it here as a noun, to describe the inner compulsion of the boy to realise his potential and liberate himself from the father, a common theme in Expressionist literature. If we translate the word literally, as (R and L/S) do (who continue with their preference for retaining Rilke’s neologisms in English), we have “my Must”. Alternatively, we can paraphrase the word to produce “what had to be done”, as (MC) does (which is likewise a feature of his translating style). The most economical translation, however, is “my will”, and this is chosen by the other translators.
The father, real or imagined, engages with the inner life of his son. The word used for this engagement is “beschäftigt”, a key word in the text but difficult to translate. “Beschäftigen” describes an activity rather than a disposition, meaning to be engaged, busy or occupied with something. It is an impersonal term and the translators seek to give it a dispositional inflection through “arrested by” (L/S), “pained at” (R/L), “troubled by” (M), and “troubled at” (MC). The emotional distance and the unwelcome interventionist pragmatism of the father might be better suggested by the alternative translation, “busied yourself with”. The father’s response is further deepened by the ensuing “prüftest”. And here the impersonality of his intervention emerges even more clearly, “prüfen” meaning to check, examine, inspect. Translations include “tried” (L/S and R), “searched” (M and R/S), and “searched out” (MC). None of these, however, quite capture the scrutinising penetration of the father’s interest in the development of the son, nor the connotations of a pupil being “tested” by a school teacher. “Probed” is an alternative translation.
The stanza continues by complicating this study of a controlling father through the son’s recall of his deceased presence, a recall in which critique and sentiment form a complex alliance. These lines have been translated as “you, who so often, since you died, my Father, / have been afraid within my inmost hope, / surrendering realms of that serenity / that dead are lords of for my bit of fate, – / am I not right?” (L/S), “you who, so often since you died, have trembled / for my well-being, within my deepest hope, / relinquishing that calmness which the dead / feel as their very essence, countless realms / of equanimity, for my scrap of life – / tell me, am I not right?” (M), “ – you, / Father, here in my hope still anxious for me / after your death, renouncing for my little / destiny that calm the dead possess, / entire realms of equanimity – am I not right to watch?” (R/S), “You, who so often since you died, have grown / more anxious for my well-being – or so I feel, / in the depths of hope – giving up the serenity / of the dead, that serene realm they each take possession of, given up for this scrap of my life. / Am I not right?” (MC).
A dead father is still harbouring feelings (this time, possibly, caring ones) for his son. Those feelings include “Angst”, which has been translated as being “afraid” (L/S), as “trembled”, and being “anxious” (M, MC and R). The alternative “feared for …” is possible. Through his anxiety, the father has lost that equanimity that rightfully belongs to the dead. He has sacrificed this, as the lyrical subject notes, “für mein bißchen Schicksal”, “for my bit of fate” (L/S), “for my scrap of life” (M), “for my little / destiny” (R/S), “for this scrap of my life” (MC). But as the son queries once more: “hab ich nicht recht? This is largely translated literally as “am I not right?”. “Am I not right to watch?” (R/S)”, however, raises the question of what this repeated phrase actually means. Indeed, “am I not right?” refers less to a correctness of judgment than to an act, the decision to remain sitting, and to continue watching the puppet show on the stage. The alternative translation “am I not right to continue watching?” is also appropriate.
The stanza continues with its focus on the father-son relationship, although the former is now addressed as “euch”, the plural of “du”. Is this a new collective subject? If it is, it is ignored by all translators except (M), who construes it as “dear women”. It is more likely, however, that this is simply the father once again, whose domineering presence is seen by the young son in grandiose plural form. His father loved the son because he saw the stirrings of the boy’s love for him, a love that was transitory because it dissolved into the “Weltraum”, “cosmic space”, of the father’s face, where the father ceased to be, dissolved possibly into an abstraction of paternity.
This section of the stanza ends with the lyrical subject returning to the stage and its puppets, who are now gazed at so intensely that they join with that symbol of transcendant potency: the angel. The German reads: “so völlig hinzuschaun, daß, um mein Schauen / am Ende aufzuwiegen, dort als Spieler / ein Engel hinmuß, der die Bälge hochreißt.”. Although there is general agreement on how to translate these lines, some of the key words and phrases, such as “mein Schauen / am Ende aufzuwiegen”, “Spieler” and “Bälge”, have proved difficult, as in “gaze so intensely on it that at last / a counterpoising angel has to come / and play a part there, snatching up the husks?” (L/S), “gaze at it so intensely that at last, / to balance my gaze, an angel has to come and / make the stuffed skins startle into life” (M), “to stare at it / so that as counter-weight to my long gaze an Angel-player must come / and jerk the stuffed skins upward in a leap?” (R/S), “to stare / at it so intently, in the end, that in answer / to my gaze an angel comes, a player, to shake / life into these stuffed dolls” (MC). It is only this union of angel and animated puppet, a union perhaps of transcendent consciousness and the physical grace of the human, that provides the spectator with a “Schauspiel”, “a play” (L/S and R/S), “a real play”, “real drama” (MC), “compelling play” (R) or alternatively, simply “theatre”, worth watching.
An alternative translation:
Am I not right? You, father, around me, to whom life
tasted so bitter after you took a sip of mine,
that early tarnished infusion of my will.
As I grew, you kept on tasting and busied
yourself with my strange future and its after-taste,
probing into my indistinct gaze –
you, my father, since you died,
you often within my hopes, deep within me, have been afraid,
and serenity, that the dead possess,
surrendered those realms of serenity,
for my paltry future. Am I not right?
And you, am I not right?
You who loved me for my slight beginnings of
a love for you that I always turned away from
because the space in your countenance
that I loved went over into a world space,
in which you no longer were …: am I not right
to want to sit before the puppet stage, indeed, to fully
engross myself in looking at it, so that in answer
to my gaze an angel has to come to play a part there,
pulling the stuffed creatures into life.
Angel and puppet: now that is real theatre.
The relationship between unity and disunity, within consciousness, within personal relationships, within our self-understanding, within our feeling of being at home or not at home in the world, forms a network of themes in the Elegies. Rilke continues in this stanza with a succinct statement of these themes, using it as a basis for yet a further comment on the distance between us and the angels:
Dann kommt zusammen, was wir immerfort
entzwein, indem wir da sind. Dann entsteht
aus unsern Jahreszeiten erst der Umkreis
des ganzen Wandelns. Über uns hinüber
spielt dann der Engel. Sieh, die Sterbenden,
sollten sie nicht vermuten, wie voll Vorwand
das alles ist, was wir hier leisten. Alles
ist nicht es selbst.
There is general agreement on how to translate the initial words: “Then there unites what we continually / part by our mere existence” (L/S), “Then what we separate by our very presence / can come together” (M), “Then what we separate by being here / comes together” (R/S), “Then all that we divide simply by being here /can come together” (MC). There is also agreement on how to translate the description of the consummation of this re-found unity in the “cycle of change” (MC and R) that now seems possible. The ensuing words of this section seem, however, to take back this positive message in a strophic turn that is typical of Rilke’s writing in the Elegies. These lines have been translated as “Look, the dying, – / surely they must suspect how full of pretext / is all that we accomplish here, where nothing / is what it really is” (L/S), “If no one else, the dying / must notice how unreal, how full of pretence, / is all that we accomplish here, where nothing / is allowed to be itself” (M), “Look at the dying: / they must suspect how fabricated, here, / all our achievement is. Everything / is absent from itself” (R/S), “If no one else, should not the dying perceive / the unreality, how full of pretence / is everything we do here, how nothing / is really itself” (MC).
There are two translating problems here. The first concerns “Vorwand”. The word has been used before, in the first Elegy, where it clearly translated as “pretext” (the pretext of death used by the hero to secure his immortality). But in the lines of this stanza, “Vorwand” is linked to a certain defect within selfhood, pointing to inauthenticity. If this is the case, then “pretence” is the best translation. The second problem lies with the undemonstrative lines: “Alles /ist nicht es selbst”. Once again, the gesture is to inauthenticity, and this comes from within, so “nothing is allowed to be itself”, which puts the responsibility onto others, is perhaps not appropriate. “Nothing is what it really is” expresses the predicament succinctly.
An alternative translation:
Then there comes together something that we have always
held asunder, simply by being here. It is only then that
a cycle of total change emerges
out of our seasons. Over and above us the angel plays on.
Look, the dying: surely, they can discern how much pretence
is in everything we do. Nothing
is really itself.
The final section of this stanza sketches in three flowing sentences, formed through enjambments, a period in childhood, where the machinations of adulthood, with its manipulations and deceptions, its pretence masquerading as honest endeavour, its failed puppetry, in short, are, for a moment, held in abeyance:
O Stunden in der Kindheit,
da hinter den Figuren mehr als nur
Vergangnes war und vor uns nicht die Zukunft.
Wir wuchsen freilich und wir drängten manchmal,
bald groß zu werden, denen halb zulieb,
die andres nicht mehr hatten, als das Großsein.
Und waren doch, in unserem Alleingehn,
mit Dauerndem vergnügt und standen da
im Zwischenraume zwischen Welt und Spielzeug,
an einer Stelle, die seit Anbeginn
gegründet war für einen reinen Vorgang.
It is an invocation of childhood, and it is one that is formed from within the experience of the child. Unlike the earlier stanzas in this Elegy, when childhood was retrieved, but only retrieved under the gaze of the father, his pressure, real or imaginary (a pressure reflected in the broken syntax of the poetry), here, in these lines, the speaking subject finds voice that is poised with a past that belongs to it, and it alone, its security of retrospective tenure being sustained by a reassuring iambic metre. There is general agreement on how to translate these lines, as in the following representative translation: “Oh hours of childhood / when behind each shape more than the past appeared / and what streamed out before us was not the future. / We felt our bodies growing and were at times / impatient to be grown up, half for the sake / of those with nothing left but their grownupness” (M).
The final lines of the stanza move from the personal to the philosophical, and because of that translations diverge, following individual differences in interpretation. They include: “yet, when alone, we entertained ourselves / with everlastingness: there we would stand, / within the gap left between world and toy, / upon a spot which, from the first beginning, / had been established for a pure event” (L/S), “Yet were, when playing by ourselves / enchanted / with what alone endures; and we would stand there / in the infinite, blissful space between world and toy, / at a point which, from the earliest beginning, / had been established for a pure event” (M), “Yet once alone, we found ourselves sustained / by things that lasted, and were in place / interjacent between world and toy, / an interval established from the first / as home to the affairs of innocence” (R/S), “Yet – left to ourselves – we found happiness / in what did not change and we lived then / in the interval between the world and our toys, / in a place that from the beginning had been / prepared for this pure event” (MC).
Rilke produces here a vignette that combines the particular and the universal, the moment of time with timelessness, the magical and the prosaic, the experience of this individual child with a vision of childhood in general. It is difficult to get the balance right in translating “und waren doch, in unserem Alleingehn, / mit Dauerndem vergnügt”. The “doch” (“but still”) indicates that these lines follow the preceding portrait of a boy pressing to gain the grown-up status of the adults around him. He now qualifies these sentiments, and, in many respects negates them, by pointing to the deeper forces that lay beneath the surface. “Alleingehn” (literally “alone going”) looks like it should be a common word in German, but it is not. It is a neologistic formation that is all the more striking because it looks so ordinary. “Alleingehn” is a state of being. Neither “playing by ourselves” or “left to ourselves” communicate the existential fact of a pure self-sufficiency suggested by the word. The simple “when alone” is probably the best. “Dauerndem” is a noun formed out of the verb “dauern”, “to last” or “to endure”. “Everlastingness” communicates this sense but is unidiomatic. The simple paraphrase “with what alone endures” might be more appropriate. “Vergnügt” (the past tense of “vergnügen”) is, however, a common word, simply meaning “happy” or “pleased”. “Entertained”, “sustained” and “enchanted” is to transpose the general meaning of these lines (which do, indeed, point to the magic latent within the childhood mind) into words that have no need to contain them. It is precisely the oscillation between ordinary diction and Rilke’s creative word-play that needs to be retained here, because it does not just characterise these lines: it characterises the poet’s style in the Elegies in general. We should not confuse the ordinary with banality. The former can speak of depth; the latter cannot.
Childhood is not only a stage in life; it is a quality of being that is allied to a particular way of absorbing the world. It is a form of freedom, and Rilke concludes this portrait of the son by describing his position in a “Zwischenraume” and in or at a “Stelle”. The latter word presents few problems: it means “place” or “point”. “Zwischenraum”, however, is more difficult to translate. If we read it as an “interval”, we are construing it as a temporal phenomenon, which is a possible translation. But it is equally possible that Rilke wishes us to consider the word metaphorically, and that the “Raum” here is a space that is open to the child for (as the subsequent lines suggest) a certain engagement with the world, an engagement that moves between naked facticity (“Welt”) and game (“Spielzeug’). In which case, “transitional space” might be more appropriate.
It is a space that the boy occupies, as the final lines of this stanza tell us (and the translators are largely in agreement), standing “in a place that from the beginning had been / prepared for this pure event” (MC) being representative. “Vorgang”, however, comes from the verb “vorgehen”, which means “to advance”, “proceed” or “to act”, and R/S are right in wanting something more here than “event”, although “affairs of innocence” is to read a extra component into the text. “Pure endeavour” might be an alternative here. It is one of the rare moments in the Elegies when action, any action, has been described as “rein”, “pure”.
An alternative translation:
Oh, hours of childhood,
behind whose figures lay something always more than the past
and before us was not the future. Certainly, we were growing,
and sometimes we hastened to grow faster, partly
to please those who had nothing else other than being grown up.
But we were on our solitary path, happy with what alone endures
and stood there in a transitional space between world and play thing,
at a place that from the very beginning had been established
for pure endeavour.
As long as it remains within itself, the child enjoys the purity of its own actions. But the child is not allowed to stay there, as the final stanza of the Elegy makes clear. Ultimately, it exists in a broader environment that is dominated by an anonymous “who”:
Wer zeigt ein Kind, so wie es steht? Wer stellt
es ins Gestirn und giebt das Maß des Abstands
ihm in die Hand? Wer macht den Kindertod
aus grauem Brot, das hart wird, – oder läßt
ihn drin im runden Mund, so wie den Gröps
von einem schönen Apfel? ……Mörder sind
leicht einzusehen. Aber dies: den Tod,
den ganzen Tod, noch vor dem Leben so
sanft zu enthalten und nicht bös zu sein,
ist unbeschreiblich.
Not all translators see the grim sequential logic of these lines. What is being described is a series of negative parameters, which move from the railing-in of identity, to the demarcation of estrangement, to finally not only death, but (depending upon interpretation) the indifference to the death of the son shown by the (adult) other. The first line sounds that signal, and it has been translated as “who’ll show a child just as it is? Who’ll place it / within its constellation, with the measure / of distance in its hand? Who’ll make its death / from grey bread, that grows hard, – or leave it there, / within the round mouth, like the seeded core / of a nice apple? ……” (L/S), “Who shows a child as he really is? Who sets him / in his constellation and puts the measuring-rod / of distance in his hand? Who makes his death / out of gray bread, which hardens – or leaves it there / inside his round mouth, jagged as the core / of a sweet apple? ……” (M), “Who shows a child in his own light? Sets him / among the stars, puts the measuring-rod / of difference in his hand? Serves him a death / of grey-bread, hardening – or leaves it there / in the round mouth, like the luscious apple’s / hard-edged core? ……” (R/S), “Who shows a child for what he really is? / Who sets him in the stars and thrusts a rule / in his hand to measure the distance of separation? Who creates death for a child from grey bread /which hardens – or who leaves it / in his round mouth like the core of a sweet apple? / …” (MC), and “Who shows a child as he truly is? Who places / him in his constellation and gives the measure / of distance in his hand? Who makes his death / out of gray bread hardening, – or leaves it there / inside his round mouth, so like the hard core / of a lovely apple? …..” (R).
In the first line, the crucial term is “so wie es steht”. Like so many of Rilke’s everyday expressions, the line is provocatively simple, but in its simplicity highly ambiguous. It permits a positive reading such as “Who shows a child in his own light?”, and “who’ll show a child just as it is?”. The key word in the German is “so”, and translating it is a matter of interpretation. It can simply be a neutral adverb, meaning “thus” or “like that”, but in some contexts (arguably in this stanza) it possesses connotations of “this is the way it is and has to be” (as in the proverbial statement “so ist das Leben”, “such is life”). It is clear from the lines that follow that what is being depicted in this stanza are a set of negative circumstances that culminate in death. In the first line, the child is being shown what the limits on his self-determination are: you may dream that you are between the world and toy, but this is the reality, your reality, an uncompromising attitude that is captured in the alternative translation “Who shows a child the way things really are?”. The somewhat archaic “Gestirn” likewise permits of different readings. It can mean “star” (and has been translated as such) or “constellation”. Translating it as the latter has the benefit of avoiding the idealist connotations of the former, because what is being intimated here is that the child is being removed to a far-off sphere so that it can register its distance (“Abstand”) from the world, its “Alleinsein”, but this time it is a condition that does not empower but secures its alienation, its “difference” (R/S), as one translator rightly puts it. There are no ambiguities in the lines that follow, and hence general agreement amongst the translators. The lines are brutally frank. One representative translation is: “Who creates death for a child from grey bread /which hardens – or who leaves it / in his round mouth like the core of a sweet apple? / …” (MC).
The final lines of the stanza and of the Elegy walk an edge between horror and compassion, and thus are difficult to translate. Some attempts are “Minds of murderers / can easily be fathomed. This, though: death, / the whole of death, before life’s start, to hold it / so gently and so free from all resentment, / transcends description” (L/S), “Murderers are easy / to understand. But this: that one can contain / death, the whole of death, even before /life has begun, can hold it to one’s heart / gently, and not refuse to go on living, / in expressible” (M), “Murderers are easy / to understand. But death, entire death: to take it in so meekly, gently, even / before the start of life, and feel no anger, / that is unspeakable” (R/S), “Murderers are easy to understand. But this – / to be so possessed by death, the whole of death, / even before life has really begun – to take in / the fact, but gently, so as not to refuse in anger – is unspeakable (MC).
All these translations mean something different. The problem lies in the grammatical absence of a discernible subject. Who is “enthalten” and “bös” referring to? The boy or the mysterious “who”? The lead-in lines, “murderers are easy to understand, but this …” suggests the latter, and that we are witnessing the callous extinction of the child by this world beyond the son, which is committing a murder that is “unbeschreiblich”, beyond words. Most translators, however, opt for the boy as subject, who is capable of witnessing his extinction, “even before life has really begun”, without anger in an attitude of gentle acceptance, achieving thus a degree of grace that is “inexpressible”. To secure this latter reading, some translate the “bös” of “nicht bös zu sein” (which simply means “angry” in German) as “so free from all resentment” (L/S) and “not refuse to go on living” (M), to make it quite clear that the boy is the subject of these lines, but this is effectively to rewrite the text. Whichever reading we choose, once again we end an Elegy on the theme of death, which seems to cross all spheres of existence, and in such a way that it relativises the essential relationship between the living and dead.
An alternative translation:
Who shows a child the way things really are? Who
places it in the constellation and gives it the
measuring rod of distance? Who makes
a child’s death out of grey bread that has become hard, –
or leaves it there in its round mouth like the core of a sweet apple? …
Murderers are easy to understand. But this: death, death
in its entirety, still before life’s start, to hold it so gently
and feel no anger: that cannot be described.
Rilke, Duino Elegies Comparing Translations Martin Travers 