Rilke, Elegy 5
Wer aber sind sie, sag mir, die Fahrenden, diese ein wenig
Flüchtigern noch als wir selbst, die dringend von früh an
wringt ein wem, wem zu Liebe
niemals zufriedener Wille? Sondern er wringt sie,
biegt sie, schlingt sie und schwingt sie,
wirft sie und fängt sie zurück; wie aus geölter,
glatterer Luft kommen sie nieder
auf dem verzehrten, von ihrem ewigen
Aufsprung dünneren Teppich, diesem verlorenen
Teppich im Weltall.
Once again, Rilke begins an Elegy with an abrasive question formed around an angular “who”, an addressee that is almost impatiently interpolated into the text by the speaking subject: “Wer aber sind sie, sag mir …?” (“But tell me, who are they …?, L/S and R). As subsequent lines tell us, the “they” is a group of travelling street performers, a subject that Rilke had taken from his viewing of a painting by Pablo Picasso, “Les Saltimbanques”. The name (meaning literally “those who jump from a bench”) are acrobats, jugglers, strong men; but “saltimbanque” has a secondary meaning in French denoting “mountebank” or “charlatan”, and Rilke combines the two meanings in his description of this group, presenting throughout this Elegy these ad hoc circus performers as purveyors of fake art, as fabulators of inauthenticity. The lines in the stanza continue, “die Fahrenden, diese ein wenig / Flüchtigern noch als wir selbst, die dringend von früh an /wringt ein wem, wem zu Liebe / niemals zufriedener Wille?”. The opening words present few problems: the lyrical subject asks itself about these travellers, who are even more transient in their profession than we are in our lives. Translations include: “But tell me, who are they, these travellers, even a little / more fleeting than we ourselves, – so urgently, ever / since childhood/ wrung by an (oh, for the sake of whom?) / never-contented will?’ (L/S), “But tell me, who are they, these wanderers, even more / transient than we ourselves, who from their earliest days / are savagely wrung out/ by a never-satisfied will (for whose sake)? (M), “Tell me, who are they, these travelling, transient people, more so / even than we ourselves, from their earliest youth wrung / in an urgent will (to please whom?), a will / not to be satisfied” (R/S), “ But tell me, who are they, these drifters, / even more transient than we are, wrung out from the start / by some relentless will – and for whose sake?” (MC). The insistence of the question is underscored by alliteration, caesuras and by parallelism, such as the chiasmus of “wem …wem” (which is the interrogative pronoun “wer” used both as a substantive and in its more common pronominal form). Grammatically, it is a dramatic formation, inserted midway into what is (in all other respects) a standard subordinating clause. Its effect is disturbing and disruptive, and introduces a second and even more mysterious “who”.
The same propelling will or force that drives the travellers forward into a life of vagrancy (and the inconstancy of vain activity is one of the major themes of this Elegy) is the same propulsion that energises their acrobatic acts. These are described in the text in a series of brusque movements formed through a single extended polysyndeton consisting of a series of trenchant verbs, such as (in their infinitive forms): “wringen”, “biegen”, “schlingen”, “schwingen”, “werfen” and “fangen” This isocolon of bisyllabic verbs has the effect of turning the metre into assertive trochaic feet. “Wringen” is the pivotal verb and is linked in internal rhyme with “dringen”. It means in German (as it does in English) “to wring out” something, squeezing the water from clothing, for example, and hence involves the twisting and turning of an object. “Wringen”, as with all the other words in this sequence, is unproblematically convertible into English, where a representative translation reads “yet it wrings them, / bends them, twists them, swings them and flings them / and catches them again” (M). These are sentiments that suggest a degree of inexorability, the force of a will that is not within but beyond the performers.
The acrobats execute pirouettes in the air, and then return to earth, landing on a carpet, an action that Rilke describes in a single defining clause: “kommen sie nieder / auf dem verzehrten, von ihrem ewigen /Aufsprung dünneren Teppich, diesem verlorenen / Teppich im Weltall”. The exact nature of this carpet has proved difficult to translate, as has the action performed by the acrobats. Translations include: “they come down on the threadbare / carpet, thinned by their everlasting / upspringing, this carpet forlornly / lost in the cosmos” (L/S), “they land / on the threadbare carpet, worn constantly thinner / by their perpetual leaping, this carpet that is lost / in infinite space” (M), “they land on the shredded / mat they have worn, by their perpetual / leaping, thinner and thinner, on what is now a lost / mat in the universe” (R/S), “stamp the threadbare carpet / worn thin with their feet, their constant leaping up / on a carpet cut loose in the universe –” (MC). The mat, carpet or rug that the acrobats land on has been worn thin through their eternal “Aufsprung”. “Aufsprung” is a noun formed out of the verb “aufspringen”, which means “to jump or leap up” or “to spring to one’s feet”, and is clearly meant to describe here the fact that the acrobats propel themselves into the air (an action that is supported in the text by the frequent use of “auf” as a prefix) and then return to earth, landing on a carpet that has been worn thin through such use. “Leaping” is probably the best translation; “leaping up” seeks to retain the “auf” in the original German but is not idiomatic English. The carpet loses itself in the “Weltall”, “universe”, “cosmos” or “outer space”. The term is cognate with “Weltraum”, which appears in the first, second and fourth Elegies to indicate the existential expanse that surrounds human endeavour and, as such, it parallels on a spatial axis the earlier temporal descriptor, “eternal”, which described the leaping of the acrobats. “Verloren” literally means “lost”, and most translators translate it as such. “Lost”, however, normally denotes something that cannot be found, but it is the metaphorical sense that is being invoked here, as with someone who regrets a “lost” youth, meaning the wasted years of a youth. “Forsaken” or “abandoned” are alternatives.
An alternative translation:
But who exactly are they, these travelling folk,
who are even more impermanent
than we ourselves are? Who from their early days
are pressed on (are wrung by whom? To please whom?)
by an insatiable will? Still it wrings them,
bends them, twists them, swings them,
tosses them up and catches them again. As if
through oiled, slippery air, they land on
the threadbare carpet, which has been worn thin
through their constant leaping, this carpet that
has been abandoned in infinite space.
The stanza proceeds to elaborate upon the place and function of the carpet, and it concludes with a further invocation of that impersonal force that impels all that the performers (and perhaps not just these performers) do:
Aufgelegt wie ein Pflaster, als hätte der Vorstadt-
Himmel der Erde dort wehe getan.
Und kaum dort,
aufrecht, da und gezeigt: des Dastehns
großer Anfangsbuchstab…, schon auch, die stärksten
Männer, rollt sie wieder, zum Scherz, der immer
kommende Griff, wie August der Starke bei Tisch
einen zinnenen Teller.
In the first section of the stanza, the antics of the airborne acrobats had been related in a single flowing line of minimal punctuation. What follows, however, is a description of their ungainly return to earth, and it is accordingly phrased in language that is heavy and prosaic. This section of the stanza begins with the short assertive past participle, “aufgelegt”. “Auflegen” means “to apply” something to something, as in this case a plaster, which (in a surreal image) has been applied by a suburban sky to the earth. The syntax is truncated, ugly even: “Und kaum dort, / aufrecht, da und gezeigt: des Dastehns / großer Anfangsbuchstab…,”. The lines are condensed, cryptic and difficult to translate: “And hardly there, / upright, shown us: the great initial / letter of Thereness, –” (L/S), “And hardly has it appeared / when, standing there, upright, is: the large capital D / that begins Duration …, ” (M), “Scarce have they landed, and there / revealed is the tall, upright, initial D / of their standing’s Duration …” (R/S), “And barely discernible, / yet up-standing and unmistakeably on display, / the capital D of Destiny …” (MC) and “And hardly there, / upright, there and displayed: the great initial letter of Duration …” (R).
There are two problems here: what is the subject of “kaum dort” and “aufrecht”, andwhat does “Dastehen” mean? It is, as is so often in the Elegies, a matter of interpretation. “Kaum dort” can refer back to the acrobats, or forward to the capital letter, the “Anfangsbuchstabe”. The latter has lost its final “e” (perhaps in the service of metrical density), and is followed by a mysterious ellipsis, suggesting perhaps that this capital letter cannot ultimately be named. Since the stanza has up to now been about the movement of the acrobats, the former interpretation is chosen by most translators. The same decision needs to be made regarding “aufrecht”, which means “upright” or “erect”. Does this refer to the upright acrobats or the upright capital letter? The latter is the preferred interpretation, and probably the correct one. “Dastehen” literally means “there-standing” and is normally only found in German as a separable verb meaning “to stand here” or “to stand there”, but in the text its metaphorical extension takes it close to a similar formation used in the first and third Elegies, “Dasein”, denoting “existence” or depth of being. The translation “Thereness” (L/S) is a neologistic way of communicating this sense, whilst “Duration” (M and R) and “Destiny” (MC) involve specific readings of the text. An alternative translation is “Being-there”, which retains both the literal component of the original German word and its existential connotations.
The final lines of the stanza are ungainly (almost a parody of prose), their abrupt syntax foregrounding the new subject, the “Griff” (“grip” or “grasp”): “…, schon auch, die stärksten / Männer, rollt sie wieder, zum Scherz, der immer / kommende Griff, wie August der Starke bei Tisch / einen zinnenen Teller”. There is general agreement on how to translate the concluding lines: this “Griff” “rolls even the toughest / and plays with them the way Augustus the Strong / would crush tin plates at his table” (MC). The central phrase is “der immer / kommende Griff”. MC sees “Griff” as referring back to “Dastehen”, and in his translation grammatically elides the two terms, making it the grip of “Destiny”. But it is equally plausible that “Griff” has no relation to “Dastehen”, but is yet another word for that force, that anonymous “Wille”, which appeared in the opening section of the poem, representing that controlling propulsion that drives the acrobats and compels them to be what they are. The acrobats may pirouette in the air, may think they have found freedom through their “perpetual leaping” (M); ultimately, however, they are the playthings of fate, subject to an impersonal force that crushes (for its amusement) even the strongest of men, as the legendary August the Strong would bend metal dinner plates with his bare hands.
An alternative translation:
Stuck on
like a plaster, as if the suburban sky has done an
injury to the earth.
And hardly have they landed
when, there before them, upright, in full view:
the towering capital letter of Being-there …
even the toughest of men are rolled over by it,
this ever-returning grip, as King August the Strong
could at his dining table crush a pewter plate.
The acrobats perform in public, and the second stanza describes how this public view the performers, as they stand around them watching. They form a rose, whose leaves fall away, just as the interest of the viewing public falls away, the onlookers leaving the performers in a single act of dissipation almost as soon as soon as they have met them:
Ach und um diese
Mitte, die Rose des Zuschauns:
blüht und entblättert.
The stanza begins with a short descriptive statement: “Ach und um diese / Mitte, die Rose des Zuschauns: / blüht und entblättert”. What is being described is the circular structure of the viewing group, and Rilke reproduces this spatial structure in the carefully poised syntax of these lines. Translations include: “Alas, and around this / centre the rose of onlooking / blooms and unblossoms” (L/S), “Ah and around this / center: the rose of Onlooking / blooms and unblossoms” (M), “Ah, and round this / centre the rose of onlookers / petals and falls” (R/S), “Ah, and about this middle point / gathers the rose of those who look on: / they bloom and fall away […]” (MC), “Ah, and around this / center, the rose of watching: blooms / and sheds its leaves” (R). “Ach” is both exclamation and qualification (perhaps here intended in a semi-ironic fashion), but it does not express regret, as in “alas”. “Ah” is the preferred translation, but this exclamation is normally used to express surprise. “Oh” is an alternative. “Zuschaun” has been translated as “onlookers” and “those who look on”, but this is to give a personal dimension to an activity that here is seen in purely impersonal terms, as a form of habitual behaviour that is momentary and without real human engagement.
The viewing of the spectators is likened to a rose. The rose was a potent symbol for Rilke, representing the temporary absolute of beauty. It appeared in a number of his poems, including the famous “Rose, oh reiner Widerspruch” (“Rose, oh pure contradiction’), an epitaph inscribed on his gravestone. Here it may be being used simply as a signifier of the transitory nature of the spectators’ interest in the performance. Alternatively, Rilke may be alluding to the cross of the Rosicrucians, which had at its centre a circular rose. Is the ethos of fellowship and the esoteric community cultivated by the Rosicrucians being alluded to here in negatio? Because what is emphasised is not the rose in full bloom but in decay, a process of desuetude that is reflected in the apathy of the spectators. The decaying rose here is one further metaphor for the loss of integrity and wholeness that is one of the recurring themes of this Elegy.
An alternative translation:
Oh, but all around this centre,
the rose of spectating:
it blossoms and withers.
The stanza continues with a focus upon one particular performer, a strong man or a wrestler (“Stampfer”), who like a pestle grinds the pollen of his strength to produce a performance, but one that convinces no one:
Um diesen /
Stampfer, den Stempel, den von dem eignen
blühenden Staub getroffnen, zur Scheinfrucht
wieder der Unlust befruchteten, ihrer
niemals bewußten, – glänzend mit dünnster
Oberfläche leicht scheinlächelnden Unlust.
The language is functional, ugly even. The alliteration serves to bring together a portrait of a subject who is weighty in presence but light in consciousness (a vacuity reflected perhaps in the absence of any main verb in these lines). Botanical metaphors evoke the primeval proto-human nature of the performer’s actions, but interpreting these metaphors, and integrating them into a coherent syntactic whole, provides problems for all the translators, as in: “Round this / pestle, this pistil, caught by its own / dust-pollen, and fertilised over again / to a sham-fruit of boredom, their own / never-realized, so thin-surfacedly gleaming, / lightly sham-smiling boredom” (L/S), “Around this / pestle pounding the carpet, / this pistil, fertilized by the pollen / of its own dust, and producing in turn / the specious fruit of displeasure: the unconscious / gaping faces, their thin / surfaces glossy with boredom’s specious half-smile” (M), “Round this / stamping piston: a pistil dusted / by its own pollen, brought to the spurious / fruiting of absent inertness once more, / sheened in the thinnest surface-glaze of its / delicately, barely half-smiling listlessness” (R/S), “ … from around this / pounding pestle, this pistil fertilized by the kicked-up dust / of its own pollen, though it can bear/ only a joyless false fruit – the witless, gawping faces, / the glazed veneer and vacant smirk of boredom” (MC).
“Stampfer” means “pestle” in English. It is used here as a metaphor to describe the strong man amongst this group of travelling performers, somebody, for example, who can impress by bending an iron bar with his bare hands. In this portrait, however, his actions (associated with a sickly flowering plant) come across as weak, effete even, and lead to nothing more than “zur Scheinfrucht /wieder der Unlust befruchteten”, to the “sham-fruit of boredom” (L/S) or “the specious fruit of displeasure” (M). The repetitive nature of his actions is established in the text through consonance (and most notably through sibilance), and through the repetition of a small number of key words, such as the positional “um” and the substantives “Unlust”, “Schein” and “Frucht” (the latter both used as prefixes). “Schein” (“semblance”, “sham”) is a crucial term, suggesting that the “Stampfer” represents the triumph of surface over depth, the disingenuous over the genuine, which seems confirmed by the final lines of the stanza, which describe a face, “glänzend mit dünnster /Oberfläche leicht scheinlächelnden Unlust” (“the thinnest surface-glaze of its / delicately, barely half-smiling listlessness”, R/S). These final lines lack a subject, and at least one translator sees them as describing the spectators rather than the strongman, as in “the witless, gawping faces, / the glazed veneer and vacant smirk of boredom” (MC). Does the “Unlust” (“disinclination”, “inappetence”, “unpleasure”) belong to the performers, to the audience or to both? In his translation, MC adds the verb “gawping” to the concluding line, but “to gawp” means “to stare stupidly” (OED) and even to be “open-mouthed”, and this can refer only to the spectators.
An alternative translation:
Around
this pestle, coated with its own blossoming powder,
fertilised once more with the artificial fruit of aversion,
but never conscious of that, – glowing with the thinnest
coating of the light artificial smile of aversion.
The third stanza is a vignette depicting yet another performer: a weightlifter. In contrast to the preceding description of the strong man, the weightlifter is granted a main verb (he drums), but it helps him little. He is perhaps intended as a counter point to the ineffectual strong man, but age has withered his body, which now looks two ways: to a past where it harboured two men of his size: and to a future, where it will harbour no one:
Da: der welke, faltige Stemmer,
der alte, der nur noch trommelt,
eingegangen in seiner gewaltigen Haut, als hätte sie früher
zwei Männer enthalten, und einer
läge nun schon auf dem Kirchhof, und er überlebte den andern,
taub und manchmal ein wenig
wirr, in der verwitweten Haut.
This is a short narrative of the past and present, formed from a single sentence and communicated through temporal adverbs such as “still”, “earlier” and “now”, which facilitate the themes of devouring time and death. The language is discursive, non-poetic, with a hypothetical clause in the subjunctive mood at its centre, and irregular line lengths that take it close to prose. The sentiments of these lines are Baroque-macabre (medieval even): the body is heir to the imperfections of this world and, try as we may, these imperfections cannot be transcended. We are trapped in the body, and all flesh is grass. Here, the body of the weightlifter possesses a trajectory of its own, which is independent of the sentient subject, its owner, the weightlifter. One part of him still belongs to life, albeit a retarded and degraded life; the other part of him is already there, where the body meets its final quietus.
There is general agreement on how to translate this stanza, although there are important differences of nuance between them: “There, the withered wrinkled lifter, / old now and only drumming, / shrivelled up in his massive hide as though it had once / contained / two men, and one was already /lying in the churchyard, and this one here had survived him, / deaf and sometimes a little / lost in his widowed skin” (L/S), “There: the shrivelled-up, wrinkled weight-lifter, / an old man who only drums now, / shrunk in his enormous skin, which looks as if it had once / contained two men, and the other / were already lying in the graveyard, while this one lived on without him, / deaf and sometimes a little / confused, in the widowed skin” (M), “There the weight-lifter, shrunken, wrinkled / and too old to be anything now but a drummer, / shrivelled inside a skin so prodigious it might once have held / two me, one of them lying / by now in the churchyard, and he himself as the survivor, / deaf and sometimes a little / befuddled in that widowed skin” (R/S).
An alternative translation:
Here: the shrivelled, wrinkled weightlifter,
the old boy, who now only beats a drum,
shrunken in his skin that is so baggy that
it looks as if it had once contained two men,
one of whom is now lying in a graveyard,
while the other has survived, deaf and confused in his head,
in his widowed skin.
We are now in the fourth stanza introduced apparently to a counter figure to the weightlifter, a young man, whose unlikely origins are described in equally prosaic language:
Aber der junge, der Mann, als wär er der Sohn eines Nackens
und einer Nonne: prall und strammig erfüllt
mit Muskeln und Einfalt.
There is general agreement on how to translate this short stanza, a representative example being: “But the young one, the man who looks for all the world like the son / of a neck and a nun: he’s filled out taut with muscles / and ingenuousness” (R/S). Does the son embody a combination of the physical (“neck”) and the spiritual (“nun”) and, if he is an acrobat, does this represent his bodily grace in the air? This is a possible reading, but it is also possible that Rilke wishes to stress precisely the incongruity of his parentage (an incongruity supported by the abrupt syntax of these lines), the fact that he is born out of disunity rather than similarity. Certainly, the opening conjunction, “Aber” (which should be translated as “But” (R) and not, as most translators do, as “And’), would suggest that we are being presented with an alternative figure to the weightlifter, and that decrepitude and ageing are overcome here through strength and youth, but the concluding descriptor of the young man, “Einfalt”, problematises this positive image. In German it means “naivety”, “simplicity” or “simple-mindedness”. Simplicity and simple-mindedness are, however, not the same. Simplicity can be seen as a virtue, reflecting the capacity of an individual to avoid complicated issues or thoughts; simple-mindedness, however, is an intellectual lack, the mark of a simpleton. Translating “Einfalt” as “innocence” (M and MC) is to offer a specific reading of the text. Other translators choose “simpleness” (L/S), “simplicity” (R) or “ingenuousness” (R/S). An alternative translation is “simple”, which allows “Einfalt” to occupy a space between the positive and the negative.
An alternative translation:
But that fellow there, the young man,
who looks like he is the son of a thick neck
and a nun: replete with muscles, bulging and tight
and simple.
The acrobats are addressed once more in the ensuing stanza, in cryptic terms that focus on an amorphous pain:
Oh ihr,
die ein Leid, das noch klein war,
einst als Spielzeug bekam, in einer seiner
langen Genesungen….
The fifth stanza reads like a fragment, a glimpsed image from a childhood past, and it ends in an ellipsis suggesting that more cannot (or, even, should not) be said. Although the “ihr” is a pronoun addressed to another person (and not the lyrical subject of the poem), as is so often the case in the Elegies “you” here may be a self-address, and may mean “me”. Certainly, the intimacy of these lines suggests an autobiographical origin, a childhood experience perhaps that Rilke wishes to explore no further. Perhaps for that reason it is the pain, or even the toy, and not the “you”, that is the focus of these lines, and going through a long convalescence (and, once again, as so often in the Elegies, an impersonal subject attracts a personal verb). But who is this “you”? The plural form is used in the German, so this “you” cannot be the singular “you” of the preceding stanza. M. adds “children” as a subject, but this is to import something into the text that is not there. Translations include “O you, / a pain that was still quite small / received as a plaything once in one of its / long convalescences …” (L/S), “Oh, you – / all given over to a grief when it was still small, / given like a play-thing / during one of its long convalescences …” (MC), and “You few, / whom a Grief once received / as plaything, during the course of one of its / long convalescences …” (R/S).
An alternative translation;
Oh, you, a pain that was still quite small,
that once came as a toy,
during one of its long convalescences …
A further “you” is now addressed in the following stanza, an acrobat who, after being lifted by his colleagues into the air, returns to earth with an inglorious thump, like a piece of rotting fruit:
Du, der mit dem Aufschlag,
wie nur Früchte ihn kennen, unreif,
täglich hundertmal abfällt vom Baum der gemeinsam
erbauten Bewegung (der, rascher als Wasser, in wenig
Minuten Lenz, Sommer und Herbst hat) –
abfällt und anprallt ans Grab.
Rilke returns to the manoeuvres of the acrobats, but now frames those actions (and their inevitable downward trajectory) in broader existential terms. A “you” comes into focus, to be invoked as a site upon which the habitual degeneration of the acrobat (perhaps a symbol for all vacuous aspiration) takes place. There is general agreement on how to translate the single opening line, which culminates in “Grab” (“grave”). A representative attempt is: “You, boy, falling each day, / with the thud only known to fruit, unripe, / a hundred times out of the tree of mutually / constructed movement (which, faster than water, in a few / minutes goes through its spring, summer, autumn) – / landing with a shock on the grave” (R/S). The aerial arabesques that the boy acrobat executes are transitory and are only made possible by the common effort of his colleagues, the “tree / of your collaborative efforts” (MC), “the tree of a mutually / built movement” (R). The constructed will seeks to ascend, but ultimately the trajectory is downwards, and Rilke frames this decline through a flowing enjambment and a parenthesis that condenses the seasons into a single grammatical moment of time, in a powerful image terms of organic decline. The final destination for this descending energy is an obvious and inevitable one.
An alternative translation:
You, as you fall each day with a thud
that is only known to unripe fruit, and fall daily
from a tree sent up a hundred times
by common endeavour (a tree that, quicker than water,
becomes in a few minutes spring, summer and autumn),
and falling, you grasp the grave.
In the midst of his performance (perhaps even as it is taking place in mid-air), the boy manages a brief smile for his onlooking mother. It is a simple act of affection, but one that remains unreciprocated:
manchmal, in halber Pause, will dir ein liebes
Antlitz entstehn hinüber zu deiner selten
zärtlichen Mutter; doch an deinen Körper verliert sich,
der es flächig verbraucht, das schüchtern
kaum versuchte Gesicht…
The theme of this section of the stanza (and one of the main themes in the Elegies as a whole) is the failure of contact between people, the aporia of bonding, and the waste of energy that is brought about by attempts to establish inconsequential relationships. Consequently, the key tropes here are those of atrophy and exhaustion. Even the linguistic register of these lines, structured as they are around abrasive grammar and prosaic adverbs and conjunctions (“sometimes”, “but”) relate to a world that is decomposing through banality. In attempting to translate Rilke’s cryptic language, the translators are forced into the unidiomatic. The problem lies with the fluid syntax of these lines, which are made up from a single sentence of short subordinating clauses that flow into one another as enjambments. As so often in the Elegies, prosaic adverbs and conjunctions, such as “sometimes” and “but”, provide a recognisable structure for verbs and images that do not correspond to any obvious logical pattern of meaning. Attempts are: “sometimes, in half-pauses, a tenderness tries / to steal out over your face to your seldomly / tender mother, but scatters over your body, / whose surface quickly absorbs the timidly rippling / hardly attempted look …” (L/S), “sometimes, during brief pauses, a loving look / toward your seldom affectionate mother tries to be born / in your expression; but it gets lost along the way, / your body consumes it, that timid / scarcely-attempted face …” (M), “sometimes, in semi-pauses, a loving look / starts in your face, making to reach your rarely / affectionate mother, but loses itself in your body’s / planar, consuming forces, the shyly, / barely attempted glance …” (R/S), and “sometimes, in a momentary pause, a tender look / to your seldom-affectionate mother / tries to establish itself in your face – / but no, your body overpowers it, / that shy face you scarcely attempt …” (MC).
These inflected lines are so compact, becoming, as the stanza progresses, increasingly elliptical, that they require interpretation. Their general sense is that the boy looks towards his mother but that look dies away, both from the lack of response of the uncaring mother and from the exertion of the boy’s body, which takes all emotion up into itself, including the unsuccessful glance. Such a reading, however, resolves the tensions in this complex poetic statement, a complexity evident in the angular syntax of these lines that perhaps mirrors the fractured subjectivity of the acrobat. It is within this angularity that a face and a look appears, the ellipsis suggesting something that has been left unsaid or undone.
An alternative translation:
Sometimes, in a brief pause, an affectionate look appears
on your face, directed to your barely caring mother.
But it is soon lost, consumed by your stretched-out body,
the timid, barely attempted glance …
The stanza (and the subject that is the boy acrobat) is propelled to its end, introduced by yet a further abrupt exclamation. It comes from nowhere, but precisely for that reason possesses the force of a sinister threat:
Und wieder
klatscht der Mann in die Hand zu dem Ansprung, und eh dir
jemals ein Schmerz deutlicher wird in der Nähe des immer
trabenden Herzens, kommt das Brennen der Fußsohln
ihm, seinem Ursprung, zuvor mit ein paar dir
rasch in die Augen gejagten leiblichen Tränen.
Und dennoch, blindlings,
das Lächeln…..
The assertive “und wieder” announces a series of lines of calculated banality. We are given a grimly articulated image of an acrobat, who is compelled into his performance by an anonymous but authoritative voice. The acrobats may think they carve a creative space in the air, but in the end their antics are the result of performance necessity, and this necessity is reflected in the text in the almost prosaic functionalism of the verse. We cannot really call these lines metrical. The underlying current is dactylic, but the extended lines flatten metre into a rhythm that is closer to accentuated prose. There is no alliteration to link the individual words, the narrative being driven by simple temporal coordinators such as “before” and “quickly”.
This is the most humanistically inflected portrait of the travellers in this Elegy, where we are here encouraged to have sympathy for those who are controlled by that which they cannot control. The initial imperious “und wieder” (of the ring master) propels the boy (and us, as if we are the spectators) forward, in lines formed from a single enjambement based sentence, and which culminate in the familiar Rilkean “dennoch” (“however” or “nevertheless”) that leads to the conclusion of the stanza. What precedes this conclusion is yet a further vignette of an acrobat going through his aerial pirouettes. We have earlier in the Elegy seen this venture from without, but now comes a construction of an inner life, in a portrait where the emblematic gives way to the personal, as we are granted access to the feelings of the acrobat. Not gaucheness and fumbling are the focus here, but pain and tears, expressions of a “galloping heart” (L/S), “perpetually racing / heart” (R). In spite of this, the acrobat completes his performance not on a note of despair, but with a positive gesture (made out of pure instinct, “blindings”) of a smile. Translations include: “And again / that man is clapping his hands for the downward spring, / and before / a single pain has got within range of your ever- / galloping heart, comes the tingling / in the soles of your feet, ahead of the spring that it springs / from, /chasing into your eyes a few physical tears. / And still, all instinctive, / that smile …” (L/S), “And again, / the man claps his hands for a leap and before / a pain can grow any sharper / or closer to your galloping heart, you feel / a stinging in the soles of your feet / running ahead of the real cause of pain / and chasing a pair of smarting, quick tears to your eyes. / And yet blindly, / the smile …” (MC).
An alternative translation:
And again! The man claps his hands for a leap,
and before your pain can become any sharper
or closer to your galloping heart,
you feel the burning sensation in the soles of your feet,
ahead of the other pain that chases a pair of bodily tears
into your eyes. But nevertheless: simply from instinct, the smile.
The travelling acrobats are the failed artists of the air, and their attempts at transcendence come across as either ludicrous or pathetic, or both. Supremely vainglorious but trapped in their ineffectual and (for some) degenerating bodies, they are driven by a force they do not understand, and when they return to earth they do so in gestures that speak of desuetude and even of mortality. In their attempts to escape the earth-bound, they are risible and absurd but so perhaps (and the parallel is gestured at throughout the Elegy) are we.
The next stanza begins by invoking a figure that alone seems capable of achieving the true flight of the spirit, the angel, who take up and preserve what is all around us: the healing plant of redemption:
Engel! o nimms, pflücks, das kleinblütige Heilkraut.
Schaff eine Vase, verwahrs! Stells unter jene, uns noch nicht
offenen Freuden; in lieblicher Urne
rühms mit blumiger schwungiger Aufschrift:
“Subrisio Saltat”.
This short stanza conjures up an alternative image to the stage-managed antics of the acrobats. As in the earlier stanzas, motifs of energy appear here too, but they are employed in the service of structured, almost ceremonial form, which has its source in the true artistry of an aesthetically transfigured nature, in which the humble medicinal herb is elevated to an object of veneration through its placement in an inscribed urn. Translations include “Angel! oh, take it, pluck it, that small-flowered herb of / healing! / Get a vase to preserve it. Set it among those joys / not yet open to us: in a graceful urn / praise it, with florally soaring inscription: / ‘Subrisio Saltat.’ ”. (L/S), “Angel, oh take it, that small-flowered heal-wort. / Find some vase to preserve it! Store it among those pleasures / not yet open to us; on its lovely urn / celebrate it in words, with a flourish: Subrisio Saltat.” (R/S), “Angel – oh, pluck it, gather its small-flowering, healing herb. / Conjure a vase and preserve it. Set it there with the other /pleasures not yet open to us and give it / a precious jar and praise it / with a bold and flowing inscription: / ‘Acrobat, smile of’ ” (MC). “Vase” means a vase in German as it does in English, but such a simple receptacle is not formal enough for the ritualistic overtones of this passage, and in order to retain these overtones, we should “conjure up” (MC) or “make” (R) rather than “get” a vase, and we should preserve the plant in an “urn” and not in a “jar”.
Rilke concludes this section of the stanza by rewriting the failed smile of the boy acrobat in the preceding stanza into a formal adjuration “Subrisio Saltat”, a shortened version of the Latin “Subrisio Saltatoris”. This does, indeed, mean “Acrobat, smile of”, but translating it into English means that we lose the nobility and aura that the phrase possesses in Latin, and which allows it to occupy a space (and quite literally in terms of its typography) that is both challenging and defining in the text.
An alternative translation:
Angel! Oh, take it, pick it, the small-flowering healing herb.
Procure an urn to preserve it.
Place it amongst the other pleasures that are not
as yet open to us. On that dear urn,
laud it with the following inscription:
“Subrisio Saltat”.
The angel plucking the herb of redemption is followed in the eighth stanza by the lyrical subject plucking the body of erotic transport:
Du dann, Liebliche,
du, von den reizendsten Freuden
stumm Übersprungne. Vielleicht sind
deine Fransen glücklich für dich –,
oder über den jungen
prallen Brüsten die grüne metallene Seide
fühlt sich unendlich verwöhnt und entbehrt nichts.
Du,
immerfort anders auf alle des Gleichgewichts schwankende Waagen
hingelegte Marktfrucht des Gleichmuts,
öffentlich unter den Schultern.
This is a portrait of a female performer. Is she intended as a counterpoint to the gauche acrobats that have preceded her in the Elegy? The short lines of the stanza draw upon the earlier motifs of movement (“Übersprungne” and “schwankende”), and of balance (“Gleichgewichts”). Even the theme of boredom returns with “Gleichmuts”. And yet, the “Lieblinge” possesses a degree of equanimity absent in her male colleagues, an equipoise that seems to come from her eroticised body, the silk stretched across her pert young breasts. She is a figure, spoilt and in need of nothing, and can therefore handle the vacillating scales of judgement that the popular mind brings to her performance.
Translations include: “And you then, my lovely darling / you whom the most tempting joys / have mutely leapt over. Perhaps / your fringes are happy for you –, / or perhaps the green / metallic silk stretched over your firm young breasts / feels itself endlessly indulged and in need of nothing. / You / display-fruit of equanimity, / set out in front of the public, in continual variations / on all the swaying scales of equipoise, / lifted among the shoulders” (M), “And then you, my lovely one, / past whom the sweetest of pleasures have swept / in silence – perhaps the fringes of your costume / are happy for you / or does its green silk, its metallic sheen / stretched on your firm young breasts, / feel itself so infinitely spoiled / it wants nothing? / You – / being constantly, yet differently weighed in the swaying / scales, performing with the blank indifference / of fruit put on display for the public, / before the push and shove of shoulders” (MC).
There is general agreement on how to translate these lines, although there are minor differences. “Fransen”, like its equivalent “fringe” in English, can refer either to the fringes of a hairdo or to the fringes of a garment. Since the focus in the text is upon her body and presentation of self, either is possible as a translation. The phrase “öffentlich unter den Schultern” has generated greater difficulties. The female acrobat seems to possess a degree of self-assurance that is lacking in her male counterparts, and although she too is treated like an object set out for the public gaze, there is no sign of the cringing subservience that typifies the mindset of her colleagues. In a translation, it is important to convey her degree of independence and her show-womanship (a word for which we notably do not have as an alternative to “showmanship” in English) in the final line describing her shoulders. Translations include the neutral “publicly shown among shoulders” (L/S) and (as cited above) “lifted among the shoulders” (M) and “before the push and shove of shoulders (MC). “Shown off among the shoulders” (R/S) perhaps best captures the degree of self-empowerment that the successfully exhibited body can achieve.
An alternative translation:
You then, my darling one, you whom
the most appealing joys have silently skipped over.
Perhaps your fringes are happy for you –,
Or over your young firm breasts the green metallic silk
feels intensely spoilt and will forgo nothing.
You,
constantly but variously weighed in the swaying scales,
laid out like the market fruit of indifference,
publicly shown amongst shoulders.
The portrait of the alluring “Liebliche” leads in the next stanza, with the only appearance of the first personal singular “I” in this Elegy, into an introspective meditation on an unidentified place where all efforts are brought to naught:
Wo, o wo ist der Ort – ich trag ihn im Herzen –,
wo sie noch lange nicht konnten, noch von einander
abfieln, wie sich bespringende, nicht recht
paarige Tiere; –
wo die Gewichte noch schwer sind;
wo noch von ihren vergeblich
wirbelnden Stäben die Teller
torkeln …
The opening line of the stanza, consisting of a single sentence, begins with an interrogative “where”, although that interrogation is not formed in terms of a question (perhaps because it can have no answer). The query is repeated four times, its insistence farming the non-achievement of the performers, whose efforts are qualified by phrases of restriction such as “still heavy” and “in vain”. Even the sole positive image in the poem (that of the mating of animals) is undermined by a negative qualifier. This is a world of pure negativity and one which the lyrical subject (we should note) also bears within himself. Translations include: “Where, oh, where in the world is that place in my heart / where they still were far from being able, still fell away / from each other like mounting animals, not yet / ready for pairing; – / where weights are still heavy, / and hoops still stagger / away from their vainly / twirling sticks? …” (L/S), “Where, oh, where is the place – I have it in my heart – / where they were not able, where they fell off / each other like rutting animals, / poorly paired – where the weights were still heavy, / where the plates wobbled off the poles / still being twirled in vain …” (MC).
An alternative translation:
Where, oh, where is the place – I bear it in my heart –,
where they for so long were not able, where they
fell away from each other,
like mating animals who cannot mount each other; –
where weights are still too heavy,
where on their impossibly twirling sticks
the plates wobble …
The preceding stanza had sketched an indefinite world of non-accomplishment, and in the next equally short stanza that follows Rilke gives it a name: “mühsamen Nirgends” (“wearisome nowhere”, L/S, “laborious nowhere”, M, R and MC, “strained void”, R/S). It is a place of nothingness, where the purity of “too-little” merges with the emptiness of “too-much”:
Und plötzlich in diesem mühsamen Nirgends, plötzlich
die unsägliche Stelle, wo sich das reine Zuwenig
unbegreiflich verwandelt –, umspringt
in jenes leere Zuviel.
Wo die vielstellige Rechnung
zahlenlos aufgeht.
The terms of the non-achievement of the travelling performers now become metaphysical, their absolute status challenging our powers of description and even our understanding: they are “unbegreiflich” (“incomprehensible”). Translating the intangible neologistic terms of this stanza (and the angular syntax that frames them) has proved difficult. Attempts are: “And then, in this wearisome nowhere, all of a sudden, / the ineffable spot where the pure too-little / incomprehensibly changes, veering / into that empty too-much? / Where the many-digited sum / solves into zero?” (L/S), “And suddenly in this laborious nowhere, suddenly / the unsayable spot where the pure Too-little is transformed / incomprehensibly –, leaps around and changes / into that empty Too-much; / where the difficult calculation / becomes numberless and resolved.” (M), “And suddenly in this strained void, suddenly / that untellable point, where the pure too-little transforms / inexplicably – and leaps veering / into that empty too-much. / Where the dense calculation / resolves, numberless” (R/S), “And suddenly, in this laborious nowhere – / suddenly in this inexpressible place where the pure Too-little / is inexplicably translated – it switches / to the slick Too-much. / The mass of intractable numbers / resolves at last and there is nothing” (MC).
An alternative translation:
And, all at once, in this painfully constructed nowhere,
suddenly, the unspeakable place, where the pure too little
incomprehensibly transforms itself,
dancing around into that empty too much,
where the many-sided digited sum
dissolves into zero.
In the next stanza, the place (“Ort”) of emptiness gives way to the place (“Platz”) of artificial achievement. There comes to view here another showplace (“Schauplatz”). This one, however, is not occupied by the bungling street performers but by the consummate Parisian milliner, Madame Lamort (literally, “Madam The Death”). The terms of the equation remain, however, the same. False artistry is founded on untruth, and its final goal is not life but death (“Schicksal”):
Plätze, o Platz in Paris, unendlicher Schauplatz,
wo die Modistin, Madame Lamort,
die ruhlosen Wege der Erde, endlose Bänder,
schlingt und windet und neue aus ihnen
Schleifen erfindet, Rüschen, Blumen, Kokarden, künstliche Früchte –, alle
unwahr gefärbt, – für die billigen
Winterhüte des Schicksals.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Madame Lamort is a performer in her own right, fabricating her artificial pirouettes not out of circus tricks but out of the equally spurious fashion materials of her trade. The parallels between the performers and the milliner are established both thematically by descriptors such as “unwahr” (“false”) and through the repetition of terminological clusters such as “schlingt und windet”, where Madame Lamort “twists and winds” (MC) her way through her elaborate manufacture of head-apparel, just as the street performers had, in their equally self-fabricated constructions, twisted themselves through the air. There is general agreement on how to translate these lines. Representative are: “Squares, O square in Paris, infinite show-place, / where the modiste Madame Lamort / winds and binds the restless ways of the world, / those endless ribbons, to ever-new / creations of bow, frill, flower, cockade and fruit, / all falsely coloured, to deck / the cheap winter-hats of Fate” (L/S), “Squares, oh, the squares of that infinite showplace – / Paris – where Madam Lamort, the milliner / twists and winds the unquiet ways of the world, / those endless ribbons from which she makes / these loops and ruches, rosettes and flowers and artificial fruits / all dyed with no eye for truth, / but to daub the cheap winter hats of fate” (MC).
An alternative translation:
Those Squares, oh, that Square in Paris, an eternal showplace,
where the milliner, Madame Lamort,
twists and turns endless ribbons
through the restless ways of the earth,
and out of them makes new loops and ruches,
rosettes and flowers and synthetic fruits, – all
artificially coloured for the cheap
winter bonnets of fate.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The final stanza of the Elegy invokes the angel so that it might lead us to a place where sham artistry and the fake mastery of our aspiring selves might be overcome. The carpet is brought out, once again, but this time it does not represent the landing to earth of inauthenticity, but now forms a place of productivity (even reproductivity):
Engel!: Es wäre ein Platz, den wir nicht wissen, und dorten,
auf unsäglichem Teppich, zeigten die Liebenden, die’s hier
bis zum Können nie bringen, ihre kühnen
hohen Figuren des Herzschwungs,
ihre Türme aus Lust, ihre
längst, wo Boden nie war, nur an einander
lehnenden Leitern, bebend, – und könntens,
vor den Zuschauern rings, unzähligen lautlosen Toten:
Würfen die dann ihre letzten, immer ersparten,
immer verborgenen, die wir nicht kennen, ewig
gültigen Münzen des Glücks vor das endlich
wahrhaft lächelnde Paar auf gestilltem
Teppich?
The angel is invoked as the ultimate ringmaster, to allow the lovers to appear. As we know from the earlier Elegies, they too have failed in the past through self-aggrandising and inauthentic performances, which in terms of sincerity were no better than the souped-up antics of the travelling artistes. The energies of their passions and their hearts lacked both firm ground (“Boden”), perhaps the foundation of sincerity, and the facility of self-realisation (“können nie bringen”), in absence of which their ladders to mutual affection stayed upright, but only by resting on one another, as they shook. These self-same lovers might now be able (“könntens”) to find themselves on the basis of true affection and to send that affection out into the world, celebrating what we can achieve rather than taking to flight in the hope of reaching what we cannot achieve. The lovers are surrounded by the spectators, those dead in feeling and soul (“lautlosen Toten”), but is it possible that these, who have been shown throughout the Elegy to be fickle and superficial, might now find a new life through such a greeting, throwing their coinage of happiness, so long kept hidden, towards the lovers and to their union on a carpet that is not the passive threadbare mat of the acrobats but a place of love?
Translations of these lines include: “Angel!: If there were a place that we didn’t know of, and there, / on some unsayable carpet, lovers displayed / what they never could bring to mastery here – the bold / exploits of their high-flying hearts, / their towers of pleasure, their ladders / that have long since been standing where there was no ground, leaning / just on each other, trembling – and could master all this, / before the surrounding spectators, the innumerable soundless dead: / Would these, then, throw down their final, forever saved-up, / forever hidden, unknown to us, eternally valid / coins of happiness before the at last/ genuinely smiling pair on the gratified / carpet?” (M), “Angel! If there were some place we didn’t know of / and there, on a carpet impossible to describe, / lovers could show off what they cannot here, / the bold and high figure of their heart’s swinging, / the towering of their pleasure – / ladders for a long time standing on no solid ground / but tremblingly leant only into the other’s leaning – / and there they could perform all this / before spectators crowded round them, / the silent and innumerable dead: / Would these then throw down their last, forever-hoarded, / forever-hidden, unknown to us, eternally valid / coins of happiness before the, at last, / truly smiling pair, there, on the quenched / carpet?” (MC).
Much hinges on what “können” and “könntens” means. The latter has been translated as “able to manage it” (L/S), “could master” (M), “found mastery” (R/S), “seen to accomplish” (R) and “could perform” (MC). The undercurrent of the word (as reflected in some translations) connotes a sexual consummation, but what is probably being indicated here is a broader bond between the lovers, a fuller commitment to life (which is perhaps reflected in the flowing enjambment of the longer metrical lines and the firm dactylic metre), which comes from an openness and surety in the possession of self that the itinerant street performers do not have. Important motifs from the earlier stanzas, which were stated in a negative fashion, are now redeployed in a positive guise: the images of structure and movement (“heart’s swinging, / the towering of their pleasure”), the carpet that is no longer forsaken but a place for the union of love; a smile that is not a stage-managed gesture for others but a sincere expression of self; and spectators who, far from being indifferent onlookers, give to the lovers tokens of a happiness that they have been hiding deep within themselves.
It is tempting, therefore, to view this final stanza of the Elegy as providing a taking-back of what the performers could not achieve, a positive closure to the series of preceding negative vignettes that depicted the inconstancy of vain and spurious activity, the self-delusion of self-aggrandisement, the procuring of sham authenticity through artifice and dissimulation, and the dissolution of self through indifference to the world and others. But Rilke, here as elsewhere in the Elegies, takes us to the borders of resolution but not beyond. Because once again, an Elegy ends with a vision of the what might be that is compounded not by one but by two concluding question marks, and by a gesture of salvation that is couched unencouragingly in the conditional tense.
An alternative translation:
Angels! Oh, if only there were a place unbeknownst
to us, and there, on a wondrous carpet, lovers showed
all that they could not manage, their bold noble figures
compelled by the heart, their towers of desire, their ladders,
where no firm ground was, just leaning on one another, shaking, –
and here they could achieve it,
in front of the spectators, all around the innumerable silent dead:
would these now throw down their last eternally valid coins of happiness,
forever hoarded, forever hidden, which we could not discern, at last,
to the couple, with their smiles of sincerity, there on the carpet of consummation?
Rilke, Elegy 6
Feigenbaum, seit wie lange schon ists mir bedeutend,
wie du die Blüte beinah ganz überschlägst
und hinein in die zeitig entschlossene Frucht,
ungerühmt, drängst dein reines Geheimnis.
In the sixth Elegy (the shortest in the cycle), we move away from the human imperfections that formed the focus of the preceding Elegy to the perfections of the natural world, to a nature that is resplendent in its reproductive vitality. An assertive dactyl announces the presence of the fig tree, ficus carica, which is known for the speedy transformation of its flowers into an opulent fruit. The inclusion of a first-person subject suggests that Rilke may wish us to see this as a symbol for the creative, indeed, poetic act, an act of self-realisation whose organic trajectory is reflected in the text in its consequential syntax and the enjambement of its single sentence. The self-standing symbol of the fig tree (its innate potency highlighted in some editions of the poem, and in some translations, by the word being put in to the upper case) is followed by lines that are grammatically conventional, but which provide a framework for a series of redolent images of a vigorous and assertive fecundity.
Translations include: “Fig tree, how long it’s been full meaning for me, / the way you almost entirely omit to flower / and into the early-resolute fruit / uncelebratedly thrust your purest secret” (L/S), “Fig tree, for such a long time I have found meaning / in the way you almost completely omit your blossoms/ and urge your pure mystery, unproclaimed, / into the early ripening fruit” (M), “FIG-TREE, how long you have held this meaning for me, / in that you almost completely neglect to flower, / pouring and pressing, uncelebrated, your pure / mystery into the early-determined fruit” (R/S), “Fig tree, how long has it been important to me / the way you almost wholly skip blossoming / and press pure mystery – quite unheralded – / into early-setting fruit” (MC) and “Fig tree, how long it’s been meaningful to me, / how you almost pass over the blossom / entirely and into the ripe, determined fruit, / unpraised, press your pure mystery” (R).
There is general agreement amongst the translators, but also important differences of nuance and emphasis. “Überschlagen” means “to skip” or “to pass over”. It is not necessarily a negative term, so “neglect” and “miss” are unnecessarily deprecatory. Indeed, it is clear from the overall meaning of these lines that Rilke wishes us to see this act as entirely positive. The fig tree has no need for superficial blossoming: it produces its fruit directly, “zeitig”. This word can indeed mean “early”, but the sense here is closer to “in good time” or “at the right time”. “Ungerühmt” is not standard German, but a coinage from Rilke out of “rühmen”, “to praise” or “to celebrate”, so “uncelebrated” is preferable to “herald” or “proclaim”. L/S seek to retain the novelty of its construction in their ungainly “uncelebratedly”.
An alternative translation:
Fig tree. For so long this has meant much to me:
the way you almost pass over full blossoming,
pushing your pure secret, unceremoniously,
into the fully ripened fruit.
The terminology is at least quasi-sexual, and Rilke extends its sensuality in the lines that follow, which draw upon the simile of a pipe or conduit in a fountain. Like this conduit, the fig tree too employs its precious fluid in the cause of fertilisation:
Wie der Fontäne Rohr treibt dein gebognes Gezweig
abwärts den Saft und hinan: und er springt aus dem Schlaf,
fast nicht erwachend, ins Glück seiner süßesten Leistung.
Sieh: wie der Gott in den Schwan.
An extended simile introduces the main subject of these lines, the “Saft” (which botanically means “sap” but also, retaining the visceral imagery of this section of the Elegy, “juice”). Once again, the main verbs are all in the active voice, and occupy a clear place as grammatical subjects. In the absence of conventional metre, Rilke structures the poem through alliteration, most notably through the recurring “s” phoneme, its liquid qualities serving to underscore the erotic (or, at least, sexually reproductive) undertones of the actions that are associated with the phallic “Rohr” (“pipe” or “tube”) and with, as the plant releases its sap, the ejaculatory “süßesten Leistung” (literally, “sweetest achievement”). This section of the stanza ends with a characteristic Rilkean strophic conclusion, where the mood changes from the descriptive to the gnomically imperative (in a line that is without a main verb, although this is added by most translators) to produce an image that reverses traditional narratives of animals acquiring god-like properties. Here it is the divine that chooses transformation into an animal, in this case into a swan, a symbol of purity and nobility, and it is possible that there is an allusion to the swan that Zeus chose to turn into before his rape of Leda, which would take up and further substantiates the sexual import of the preceding lines.
Translations include: “Like the tube of a fountain, your bent bough drives the sap / downwards and up; and it leaps from its sleep, scarce / waking / into the joy of its sweetest achievement. Look, / like Jupiter into the swan” (L/S), “Like the run of pipe in the fountain, your curved boughs / drive the sap downwards and on, to spring from sleep, / barely woken, into the bliss of its sweetest achievement. See, like the god become swan” (R/S), “Like the curved pipe of a fountain, your arching boughs drive the sap / downward and up again; and almost without awakening / it bursts out of sleep, into its sweetest achievement. / Like the god stepping into the swan.” (M), “Like the pipe in a fountain, / your curved branches drive sap down, then up again, / to spring – almost without waking from sleep – / to the bliss of the sweetest performance. / See – it is as the God enters the swan” (MC).
There are few disagreements amongst the translators until we reach the final line: “Sieh: wie der Gott in den Schwan”. The main clause does not possess a verb, which would not normally be a problem in a clause that follows an imperative. But Rilke prefaces the clause with “wie” (which can function as a conjunction, preposition or an adverb). A literal translation would be “See: how [like or as] the god into swan” (R), but most translators interject a verb, either the transformative “become” (R/S) or the simply one of motion, such as “stepping into” (M) or “enters” (MC). Once again, translation depends upon interpretation, but the inclusion of a verb loses the dramatic intervention of the god, who partakes of a metamorphosis that is not an action but the statement of an essence, demonstrating the trope of transformation that as a theme reappears throughout the Elegies.
An alternative translation:
Like the flow from a fountain, from your bent branches
you press the sap upwards and then down; and it springs
out of its sleep, almost without wakening,
into the joy of the sweetest fulfilment.
Look: the god into the swan.
The motifs of fertility, of reproductive sexuality, of the flowing of juices, of visceral drives, which energise the initial sentiments of the stanza, are undermined in the lines that immediately follow by a return to the sterile counter world that “we” inhabit:
…… Wir aber verweilen,
ach, uns rühmt es zu blühn, und ins verspätete Innre
unserer endlichen Frucht gehn wir verraten hinein.
Wenigen steigt so stark der Andrang des Handelns,
daß sie schon anstehn und glühn in der Fülle des Herzens,
wenn die Verführung zum Blühn wie gelinderte Nachtluft
ihnen die Jugend des Munds, ihnen die Lider berührt:
The pressing verbs of movement of the opening stanza, which had sustained the image of time impassioned and driven by reproductive urges, are here abandoned in favour of a demoralising verb of stasis, “verweilen”. The dictionary defines it as “to linger” but the word also possesses the connotations of “to tarry”, not to move forward. Unlike the fig tree, a symbol of reproductive potency, “we” (that collective subject that appears elsewhere in the Elegies, representing the human race, to which the lyrical subject, the speaking “I”, at times seems to belong, at other times does not) can get no further than a self-congratulatory blooming, which is signified through the impersonal formation, “rühmt”, a term of vain indulgence that pointedly contrasts with the earlier “ungerühmt” of the fig tree, who requires no such self-indulgence. These “blossoms flatter us” (SW); when we produce our fruit out of a superannuated centre, we can see that we have been betrayed, deceived. It is a grim disclosure, which is communicated in the heavy metre, plodding syntax and the verbs of dissolution (with their telling “ver-” prefix) that support this picture of sterile stasis. Only in the few does that elemental force that propels the fig tree surface in human endeavour, those who “glowing in their heart’s abundance” (M), “glowing in fullness of heart” (R) can give themselves over to the propulsions of nature.
Translations include: “….. We, though, we linger, / alas, we glory in flowering; already revealed / we reach the retarded core of our ultimate fruit. / In few the pressure of action rises so strongly / that already they’re stationed and glowing in fulness of / heart, / when, seductive as evening air, the temptation to flower, / touching their eyelids, / appears” (L/S), “….. But we still linger, alas, / we, whose pride is in blossoming; we enter the overdue / interior of our final fruit and are already betrayed. / In only a few does the urge to action rise up / so powerfully that they stop, glowing in their heart’s abundance, / while, like the soft night air, the temptation to blossom / touches their tender mouths, touches their eyelids, softly” (M), “….. But we, alas, linger, / glorying in our flowering, and pass into the late-formed /inner core of our eventual fruit – betrayed. / In few does the impulse to action grow so urgent / that they must stand tensed, glowing in fullness of heart, / as the temptation to bloom, like the gentle night air, / touches the youth of their mouth and brushes their eyelids” (R/S), “… But we linger too long, / believe glory lies in flowering and are already / betrayed by the time we arrive at the long-awaited heart / of our final fruit. In only a few does the urge / to action rise so powerfully they stand ready, / at once, hearts brimmed and aglow before / the temptation to bloom – like a tender night-air – / brushes their young mouths, touches their eye-lids” (MC).
Differences in translation centre on the second and third lines: “ach, uns rühmt es zu blühn, und ins verspätete Innre / unserer endlichen Frucht gehn wir verraten hinein”. “Rühmen”, meaning “to praise”, is a transitive verb that normally takes an object, but here it is a verbal phrase, which has the mysterious subject “es”, while the “uns-zu” construction turns “rühmt” into a compulsion, something that must be done. Most translations make “wir” the subject of this line, but in doing so lose its impersonal quality, the fact that it is the anonymous “rühmt” that is driving us. With “verspätete Innre”, we return to one of the key motifs of the Elegies. The stem word of “verspätete”, “spät”, simply means “late”, but used in a broader context “verspätete” has connotations of something that is past its prime, defunct even. “Retarded” (L/S), with its dual meaning, is an appropriate translation. The standard meaning of “verraten” is “betrayed”, and this is chosen by most translators. But one needs to be betrayed by someone, and the absence of an active agent in this line leaves its meaning entirely unclear. One of the secondary meanings of “verraten” is “disclosed”, in the idiomatic sense of someone being “let into the know” about something. “Already revealed” (L/S) suggests this sense, but an alternative translation (which is admittedly a paraphrase) is “revealed for what we are” or “betrayed by ourselves”.
An alternative translation:
….. Oh we, however, tarry,
glorying in our blossoming and, betrayed by ourselves,
we draw upon the retarded core of our overdue fruit.
Only in the few does there arise an urge to action,
and that is so strong that they stand there glowing
in the fullness of their hearts,
the temptation to blossom caressing their eyelids and
their young lips, like the gentle night air.
In the concluding lines of the stanza, we return to the heroes and to the youthful dead of the earlier Elegies. They too are heroes, smiling, as they accept their fate, just as the war horses that led the conquering king at Karnak into battle smiled:
Helden vielleicht und den frühe Hinüberbestimmten,
denen der gärtnernde Tod anders die Adern verbiegt.
Diese stürzen dahin: dem eigenen Lächeln
sind sie voran, wie das Rossegespann in den milden
muldigen Bildern von Karnak dem siegenden König.
In the place of rhyme and metre, Rilke structures his text around standard grammatical forms, conjunctions and adverbs, such as “vielleicht” (“perhaps”), “dahin” (“there”, as a direction) and “voran” (“up front”), all of which serve as an (apparently) logical framework to house highly condensed images and historical allusions. These lines invoke two subjects who are part of “the few” referred to earlier in the stanza: the hero and those who have died young. Both have disengaged themselves from the inert “we” and “plunge ahead” (R), their determined activism mirroring, perhaps, the fecund propensities of the fig tree. Translations include: “only in heroes, perhaps, and those marked for early / removal, / those in whom gardening Death’s differently twisted the / veins. / These go plunging ahead: preceding their own / victorious smile, as the team of horse in the mildly-/ moulded reliefs of Karnak the conquering King” (L/S), “heroes perhaps and those chosen to disappear early, / whose veins Death the gardener twists into a different pattern. / These plunge on ahead; in advance of their own smile / like the team of galloping horses before the triumphant / pharaoh in the mildly hollowed reliefs at Karnak” (M), “heroes perhaps, and those due for early transition, / whose veins the gardener Death has trained to a different design. / Precipitately they plunge on, running ahead / of their own smile, like the horses pulling the king-/ conqueror’s chariot in the bas-reliefs at Karnak” (R/S), “perhaps these are heroes, alongside those chosen / for an early demise, those whose veins / are twisted differently by the gardener, death. / These plunge on, they run ahead of their own smiles / like horses in the bas-relief carvings at Karnak / galloping before the triumphant King. (MC).
There are minor differences between the translators (such as whether to translate “milden / muldigen Bildern von Karnak” literally and retain the “mild” or describe them for what they are in technical terms, “bas-reliefs”). But the major difference centres on the neologistic “frühe Hinüberbestimmten”. The word is a circumlocution for those who are destined for death, and something of that grim fate should be retained in the translation of the term. The rather sinister “those marked for early removal” and “those chosen to disappear early” suggests that they are to be liquidated rather than just die, whilst “those due for early transition” implies that these young diseased are simply moving from one state to another. “Those chosen for an early demise” is more functional but perhaps more appropriate.
An alternative translation:
Heroes, perhaps, and those who have left the world early,
those whose veins have been contorted by death the reaper:
they hurry on, preceded by their own smiles, like that team of horses
of the conquering king in the delicately moulded carvings at Karnak.
The hero, as an archetype of selfhood, is close in what he is in essence to the youthful dead, and he takes that proximity as his inspiration to launch himself into “Dasein” (“Being” or “existence”). He is a hero because he greets his fate as an opportunity to enter a higher world that exists between light and darkness:
Wunderlich nah ist der Held doch den jugendlich Toten. Dauern
ficht ihn nicht an. Sein Aufgang ist Dasein; beständig
nimmt er sich fort und tritt ins veränderte Sternbild
seiner steten Gefahr. Dort fänden ihn wenige. Aber,
das uns finster verschweigt, das plötzlich begeisterte Schicksal
singt ihn hinein in den Sturm seiner aufrauschenden Welt.
Hör ich doch keinen wie ihn. Auf einmal durchgeht mich
mit der strömenden Luft sein verdunkelter Ton.
The language and grammar of the second stanza are entirely discursive. There is no recognisably consistent metre (although once again alliteration plays a major role), the longer lines setting out a portrait of the hero that seeks to uncover his existential core (where his “Aufgang Dasein [ist]”, an “ascent into being”). That this core should have an affinity with death should not surprise us. Death as an existential possibility for the living, a possibility for the recognition of the limits of selfhood but also for the potential of that selfhood in the here and now, is a theme that runs throughout the Elegies, and has already appeared in the first and fourth Elegies. Consequently, in this stanza tropes that define the parameters of the hero’s selfhood move back and forth between negative and positive poles, between the continual threat of an unspecified danger and an inspiration that launches the hero into the storm of a “ rushing, roaring” (R) world (although the stem of “aufrauschenden”, “Rausch”, suggests elation, even intoxication). The stanza ends with the appearance of the lyrical subject, who is initially a spectator and then (it seems) an empathetic partner, and who finds himself transfixed (and, once again, the terms move between the polarities of the positive and the negative) by the streaming air of the hero’s dark message.
There is general agreement on how to translate these lines. Translations include: “Yes, the Hero’s strangely akin to the youthfully dead. / Duration / doesn’t concern him. His rising’s existence. Time and again / he takes himself off and enters the changed constellation / his changeless peril’s assumed. There few could find him. / But Fate, / grim concealer of us, enraptured all of a sudden, / sings him into the storm of her surging world. / None do I hear like him. There suddenly rushes through / me, / borne by the streaming air, his dark-echoing tone” (L/S), “The hero is strangely close to those who died young. Permanence / does not concern him. He lives in continual ascent, / moving on into the ever-changed constellation / of perpetual danger. Few could find him there. But / Fate, which is silent about us, suddenly grows inspired / and sings him into the storm of his onrushing world. / I hear no one like him. All at once I am pierced/ by his darkened voice, carried on the streaming air” (M), “How strangely alike are those who die young and the hero. / Permanence does not concern him. His way of life / is one of ascent, continually setting out towards / the ever-shifting constellation of constant danger. / Few could go there with him. But Fate – / which to us retains its dark obscurity – with him / grows inspired and sings him forwards into the storm / of his on-rushing world. I hear of none like him. / All at once, I am run through by his darkened sound / as it is carried to me on the streaming air” (MC).
The differences in translation centre on a small number of key words and word clusters. “Aufgang” means “ascent” (although behind the noun some readers will hear the verb, “aufgehen”, which means “to dissolve” or “to merge” into something). “Dasein” is a philosophical concept, which has already appeared in Elegies 1 and 3. It translates literally as “There being”, and as such points to the formation of selfhood in a certain place. “Existence” is one possible translation, but “way of life” and “lives in” are not strong enough and do not convey the transformative energy implied in “Aufgang” (which literally means “that which has gone up”). “Being” (CFM and R) may be the most appropriate. “Durchgehen”, in the phrase, “durchgeht mich /mit der strömenden Luft sein verdunkelter Ton”, is normally a separable verb, but here it is used inseparably, which changes the simply “durch” (“through”) into something else, a penetration of the individual by the streaming air that comes from the dark voice of the other.
An alternative translation:
Wonderfully close though is the hero to the youthful dead.
He is not concerned with permanence. He seeks to ascend into Being,
moving on into the ever-changing constellation of perpetual danger. Few
would find him there. But that which keeps its dark secret from us, fate
that has become suddenly inspired, sings him into the storm of a roaring
world. And I hear no one quite like him. All at once,
his dark voice goes through me like streaming air.
We then move from one hero to another (although it is possible that they are the same): the son. The third stanza begins with a plaintive lyrical subject wishing (and all the verbs in this section are in the subjunctive) that he might become a boy once again:
Dann, wie verbärg ich mich gern vor der Sehnsucht: O wär ich,
wär ich ein Knabe und dürft es noch werden und säße
in die künftigen Arme gestützt und läse von Simson,
wie seine Mutter erst nichts und dann alles gebar.
The longer lines of the stanza support the lyrical subject’s thoughtful (and formally compact) meditation on his childhood, to which he wishes to return. This, however, is a hopeless wish, and its hopelessness is reflected in the tenses of these lines, which are cast throughout in the subjunctive-conditional voice. But should he succeed in his wish, he would be propped up in the arms of the future, and would read of how the mother of Samson likewise went, like the hero, from nothingness to all in her fertility. There is general agreement on how to translate these lines. Translations include: “And then how gladly I’d hide from the longing: Oh would, / would that I were a boy, and might come to it yet, and be / sitting,/ propped upon arms still to be, and reading of Samson, / how his mother at first bore nothing, and, afterwards, all” (L/S), “Then, how I would like to hide from that longing: / oh, to be, to be a boy again with my life yet to come, / to sit in the future’s embrace and read of Samson – / how his mother bore at first nothing, then everything” (MC), “Then how gladly I would hide from the longing to enter my / boyhood: once more, boyhood, with its hopes of becoming, and sit / propped on my future elbows reading of Samson/ and of his mother, who was first barren, then bore all” (R/S), and “Then how gladly I would hide from the longing to be once again / oh a boy once again, with my life before me, to sit / leaning on future arms and reading of Samson, / how from his mother first nothing, then everything was born” (M) and “How I’d then prefer to hide from this longing: Oh to be a boy once / again, a boy, that I might still become it and sit quietly / leaning on the arms of the future and read of Samson, / how his mother at first bore nothing, then everything” (R).
There is general agreement on how to translate the first line: the (male) lyrical subject is resisting the longing to return to boyhood, where he would become a something (“es”) again. But what does this “es” refer to? A literal translation would be “it”; all else involves interpretation, as in “would that I were a boy, and might come to it yet” and “once more, boyhood, with its hopes of becoming”. But it is also possible that the “es” simply refers to him being a boy again, and is purely an extension of the preceding line, which would give us the alternative translation: “if only I were a boy again, might become one again”. Should he return to his boyhood, he would sit, reading about Samson “in die künftigen Arme gestützt”. It is an enigmatic phrase. Are these literal arms? The arms of the boy or a parent? Or is it a metaphor for being embraced by the future? What is being conveyed is a feeling of security and, as the concluding line suggests, a sense for the future plenitude of life.
An alternative translation
Then, how gladly I would hide from the longing: O, that if only
I were, if only I were a boy again, might become one again, might sit
propped up in those arms of the future, and read about Samson,
and how his mother at first bore nothing and then bore everything.
It the next stanza it becomes clear that the hero and the son are one and the same, and that their heroism began in the womb of the mother, which is seen as a visceral showplace for the assertive male:
War er nicht Held schon in dir, o Mutter, begann nicht
dort schon, in dir, seine herrische Auswahl?
Tausende brauten im Schooß und wollten er sein,
aber sieh: er ergriff und ließ aus –, wählte und konnte.
Und wenn er Säulen zerstieß, so wars, da er ausbrach
aus der Welt deines Leibs in die engere Welt, wo er weiter
wählte und konnte.
The male began in the womb, from which he has triumphantly emerged, and his masculine decisionism is reflected in the caesuras that define and structure the flowing alliteration of these lines. The womb is depicted as a passive place of reproductivity: all the active verbs are granted to the son. Rilke’s German is cryptic at times. The line “Tausende brauten im Schooß und wollten er sein” includes the non-grammatical “er” instead of “ihn”, as if to foreground the active nature of the imperious male subject. The main verbs that follow this line are condensed and pose problems for all the translators. Translations include: “Was he not hero already in you, O mother, and had not / even in you his lordly choosing begun? / Thousands were brewing in the womb and trying to be him, / but, look! he seized and discarded, chose and was able / to do. / And if ever he shattered columns, that was the time, when / he burst /out of the world of your body into the narrower world, / where he went on choosing and doing” (L/S), “Wasn’t he a hero inside you, mother? didn’t / his imperious choosing already begin there, in you? / Thousands seethed in your womb, wanting to be him, / but look: he grasped and excluded –, chose and prevailed. / And if he demolished pillars, it was when he burst / from the world of your body into the narrower world, where again / he chose and prevailed” (M), “Mother, as you carried him was he not even then hero, / making, already, imperious choice? / Thousands seethed in your womb and wanted to be him, / but watch how he seized and discarded, chose and achieved. / And if he overthrew pillars – it was when breaking/ out of your body’s world to the narrower world, were again / he chose and achieved” (R/S), “Was he not already a hero inside you, mother? / Did his own imperious choosing not begin inside? / Thousands brewed in the womb, wanting to be him. / But see: he grasped, pushed aside. He chose and won out. / And when he shattered pillars, it was in that moment / he burst from the world of your body into this / more straitened one, where again he chose and won out.” (MC).
The boy emerges out of the womb to impose himself on the world. It is a supremely assertive act and Rilke employs assertive verbs cast in the classically assertive preterit tense. The verbs (in their infinitive form) are “können”, “wählen”, “ergreifen” and “auslassen”. They are common verbs but in their very simplicity difficult to translate. “Ergreifen” and “wählen” normally take a direct object (we seize or choose something), and “können” is a model verb that is normally followed by a defining clause (we can do or make something). This is the formation preferred in all translations, where “konnte” is transposed into an equivalent of successful doing, as in “achieved”, “prevailed” and “was able to do”. And yet, the sole standing “konnte” is as strange in German as it is in English, and for that reason it is appropriate to add as little as possible to “could”, which gives us the translation “chose and could do it” (DM). “Ergreifen” and “auslassen” present fewer problems, although even here their condensed use is difficult to translate. Both verbs require a direct object, but here they are formed into self-standing actions, which generates interpretative difficulties, particularly for the unusual formation “[er] ließ aus”. “Auslassen” means to “leave out” something, so “discarded” and “excluded” are therefore possible as translations, but they lack the force of the original German (and raise queries as to what has been discarded or excluded). “Pushed aside” is not amongst the standard dictionary definitions of “auslassen”, but within this context is in keeping with the other actions described, in conveying the assertive self-confidence of the son.
An alternative translation:
Was he not already a hero when he was inside you, oh mother?
Had not his imperious choices already been made, there, in you?
Thousands brewed in your womb and wanted to be him.
But look: he grasped and pushed aside –
He chose and could do it. And when he tore down pillars,
it were as if he were breaking out of the world of your body,
into a narrower world, where he chose again,
and could do it.
The Elegy concludes with an exuberant apostrophising of the mothers of heroes, in lines that bring together in a dramatically ritualistic (and perhaps disturbing way) tropes of death, birth and self-transformation:
O Mütter der Helden, o Ursprung
reißender Ströme! Ihr Schluchten, in die sich
hoch von dem Herzrand, klagend,
schon die Mädchen gestürzt, künftig die Opfer dem Sohn.
Denn hinstürmte der Held durch Aufenthalte der Liebe,
jeder hob ihn hinaus, jeder ihn meinende Herzschlag,
abgewendet schon, stand er am Ende der Lächeln, – anders.
In perhaps a reversal of her archetype, the mother is seen here as the source of raging streams, whose empty ravines lure the female seeking (in perhaps a caricature of the return to the womb theme) the son. Alliteration and a pair of enjambments support the flowing movement of these lines and sustain their sense of downward movement. The reproductive energy with which the Elegy began is restated in dramatically climatic form, its ritualistic combination of female self-sacrifice and male rebirth taking place in a characteristically Rilkean topography of extremes. We have returned to the theme of transformation, with which the poem opened, but now that theme concludes in a mode in which the reproductive simplicity of nature gives way to something else: a place of elemental ferocity in which nature simply provides the energy for the heroic self-assertion of the male subject as he reaches the final point (the climax) in his process of self-realisation.
Translations include: “O mothers of heroes! / Sources of ravaging rivers! Gorges wherein, / from high on the heart’s edge, weeping, / maids have already plunged, victims to-be for the son. // For whenever the Hero stormed through the halts of love, / each heart beating for him could only lift him beyond it: / turning away, he’d stand at the end of smiles, another” (L/S), “O mothers of heroes, O sources / of ravaging floods! You ravines into which / virgins have plunged, lamenting / from the highest rim of the heart, sacrifices to the son. // For whenever the hero stormed through the stations of love, / each heartbeat intended for him lifted him up, beyond it; / and, turning away, he stood there, at the end of all smiles, – transfigured” (M), “O mothers of heroes, / O sources of river-torrents. You clefts into which, / crying high on the heart’s edge, / virgins have plunged to their future, sacrificed to the son. // For seeing the hero storm through the habitations of love, / hearts that beat for him lifted him up and beyond them; / then, turned from them, he stood at the far end of smiling – other” (R/S), “Oh, mothers of heroes, springs of those torrential rivers! / You rifts into which, from the heart’s high rim, / plunge grief-stricken girls, your son’s future sacrifices. // For the hero, when he goes storming / through love’s stations, each heart beating for his sake / only serves to push him higher, pushes him beyond / and, turning away, he stands at the end of all those smiles – / something quite other” (MC).
There is general agreement on how to translate these lines, but there are also important nuances of difference. On a minor note, the fact that “Ströme” may be seen as “rivers”, “floods”, “rivers torments” and “torrential rivers’ may not matter. Likewise, “Mädchen” are girls or young women but not necessarily “virgins” (R) (although that reading is in keeping with the ceremonial-sacrificial connotations of these lines). More central to the overall meaning of the text are “klagen’ and “künftig”. The preferred translation of “klagen” is “crying”. But Rilke had at his disposal “weinen” and “schreien” and chose not to use them. “Klagen”, in fact, means something more than crying. “Klagen” is a deeper disposition, which has behind it an existential self-understanding of its pain. The latter disposition is best communicated by “lamenting” (R), which in the case of this poem may suggest a reluctance of the girls to serve as sacrificial victims (indeed, “klagen” gives us the noun “Klage” in German, a “complaint”). The archaic “wailing” in English is a possible compromise.
The girls are crying or lamenting because they have been destined as: “gestürzt, künftig die Opfer dem Sohn”. The translations cited here diverge from one another, bringing to light differing interpretations of the text. Describing the girls as “victims to-be” registers their plight on a descriptively neutral level, whilst “your son’s future sacrifices” highlights his controlling role. “Virgins have plunged to their future, sacrificed to the son”, however, suggests that the girls reach their consummation of selfhood in this act (and, perhaps to avoid this connotation, one translator omits any reference to the future, simply describing the girls as “sacrifices to the son”). The son views these sacrifices as just one further “station of love”, to be greeted with smiling indifference. We are then told in the final line of the Elegy that this experience has left him “anders”. Once again, there are important differences between the translators. “Anders” is a predicative adverb or adjective simply meaning “different from”, but its use without an object suggests a transformation of something. In the context of these lines, it has been translated as “transfigured”, “another”, “something quite other”, “other”, and “transformed”, translations which hover between the neutrally affective and the positive.
We should be wary of adopting a post-structuralist approach and seeing these varying translations as reflecting an essential ambivalence in the poem. It is possible that such variations simply reflect the difficulty in finding the right words for Rilke’s German. Nevertheless, if we move beyond the immediate issue of translating difficulties to a broader interpretation of what these lines (and the final lines of the Elegy as a whole) are saying, then we need to countenance the possibility that the imperious triumphalism of the son, as he “stormed through the stations of love”, is intended to be read ironically (as, indeed, is his heroic progress in the earlier stanzas). Or, if not ironically, then simply to be read as one particular delineation of selfhood (predicated onto a Nietzschean worldview) that takes its place beside the doomed lovers, the pathetically immortal young dead, the mocking puppets, and the imperious angels, all of which can best be seen as possibilities within an existentially inflected rhetoric of selfhood that Rilke explores throughout the Elegies.
An alternative translation:
Oh, mother of heroes, Oh, the source of raging torrents!
Your ravines, into which from the highest rim of the heart,
wailing, maidens threw themselves, future sacrifices to the son.
For the hero, when he storms through the stations of love,
each one, each heartbeat meant for him alone,
turning away, he stood at the end of his smiles – transformed.
Rilke, Duino Elegies Comparing Translations Martin Travers 