ELEGY 7
Werbung nicht mehr, nicht Werbung, entwachsene Stimme,
sei deines Schreies Natur; zwar schrieest du rein wie der Vogel,
wenn ihn die Jahreszeit aufhebt, die steigende, beinah vergessend,
daß er ein kümmerndes Tier und nicht nur ein einzelnes Herz sei,
das sie ins Heitere wirft, in die innigen Himmel.
The first Elegy began with a cry of (muted) anguish, but the cry of this Elegy has its origins not in despair but in the will to transcendence. The text, accordingly, is formed through upward-reaching verbs, flowing participle forms and a tone of exhortation, which announce in miniature the key themes of the Elegy: the desire of the lyrical subject to make contact with an unspecified Other (the “call” theme); the attempt to break the bonds of creaturely life, symbolised by the flight of the bird; and the trope of the inwardness of the spirit (the single heart), which alone offers redemption. The language of the first stanza is discursive, its repeated conjunctions and adverbs sustaining a voice of supplication, and apart from the opening and concluding ones, line lengths are in atypically long hexameter form. The main lexical items are linked by alliteration (assibilation), and the key verbs are largely cast in the present tense and framed by verbs in the subjunctive. Although the grammatical subject of these lines is the “entwachsene Stimme” (“outgrown voice”, SW), the real thematic subject is the speaking voice, whose ambit is carefully circumscribed through clauses that tell it what it can and cannot do (the qualifying “nicht” is repeated throughout).
Translations include: “Not wooing, no longer shall wooing, voice that’s / outgrown it, / be now the form of your cry; though you cried as pure as / the bird / when the surging season uplifts him, almost forgetting / he’s merely a fretful creature and not just a single / heart / it’s tossing to brightness, to intimate azure” (L/S), “May this outgrown voice no more be tainted with / the note of supplication; though your cry / take to itself the purity of a bird’s, / when the ascending year so lifts it up, / forgetting that it is a busy bird / and not alone a free and single heart, – / forgetting that it wafts it up on high / into the joy of inmost paradise (SW), “No more wooing, enough of this courting, / your voice has outgrown it – make that the burden / of your call, though you might cry out pure as a bird / when the stirring of the season lifts him / and he almost forgets he is a troubled creature, / not just a single heart flung toward cheerfulness, / to the embrace of heaven” (MC), “No more of wooing, O voice grown beyond it, no more let / wooing be the soul of your cry, though you cry pure as the bird / raised up by the rising days, exalted almost to forgetting / that he is a suffering creature and not just a single heart / flung up to gladness and intimate heavens” (R/S) and “Not wooing, no longer shall wooing, outgrowing voice, / be the nature of your cry; but cry out more purely like the bird, / when the season suddenly rising carries him away, almost forgetting / that he is a troubled sorrowing creature and not one solitary heart / to be thrown into the cheering light and the intimate sky” (R).
Most translate “werben” as “wooing”, which seems appropriate given the reference to the “Freundin” (“girl friend”) later in the stanza, but “wooing” has exclusively romantic connotations that close down the broader meaning of the word. SW rightly feel that a deeper gesture is being described here and choose “supplication”, which accords with the invocation of the angel in the final stanza. “Beseech”, meaning “to ask earnestly for”, “to entreat” (OED), is a possible alternative. The major translating differences concern the final lines, which describe the elevation of the bird who forgets “daß er ein kümmerndes Tier und nicht nur ein einzelnes Herz sei, / das sie ins Heitere wirft, in die innigen Himmel”. “Heiter” describes a disposition that is either “cheerful” or “serene”, with the former, in this context, better conveying the energy of the bird in flight. “Himmel” means both “sky” and “heaven”. “Paradise” (SW) is perhaps an over-elaboration of the latter, but it does capture the spiritually transforming quality of the experience being described, a quality that is not there in “intimate azure” (L/S).
An alternative translation:
No longer beseeching, no beseeching: the voice has outgrown it:
let cry be your nature, and indeed you should cry as pure as the bird,
when the season lifts it up and it climbs on high,
forgetting almost that it is a suffering creature
and not merely a single heart that flings itself
upwards to gladness, towards its inner heaven.
A “du” subject once again appears (perhaps best understood here as the self-addressee of the lyrical voice). Like the bird, it too is or may be beseeching:
Wie er, so
würbest du wohl, nicht minder –, daß, noch unsichtbar,
dich die Freundin erführ, die stille, in der eine Antwort
langsam erwacht und über dem Hören sich anwärmt, –
deinem erkühnten Gefühl die erglühte Gefühlin.
“Werben” is now cast in the conditional-subjunctive form and introduces a vignette of complex sentiment, in which the loved-one is invoked, only for her presence to be moved across a variety of positions of receptivity. In this context, “werben” might be more reasonably translated as “wooing”, although even here the lyrical subject is not asking the loved one to accept him but rather to join him in the shared experience of loving. There is no sense of a dependency. Once again, the grammar of the text is truncated, being structured around caesuras and fastidious punctuation. In the absence of conventional rhyme, the lines are linked through the repetition of the umlaut “ü” (reflecting a poised and deliberative voice), which appears in “würbest” and then again throughout the subsequent lines, suggesting perhaps the union (longed-for or achieved) of the two lovers.
Translations include: “No less / than he, you, too, would be wooing some silent companion / to feel you, as yet unseen, some mate in whom a reply / was slowly awaking and warming itself as she listened, – / your own emboldened feeling’s enfired fellow-feeling” (L/S), “Just like him / you would be wooing, not any less purely –, so that, still / unseen, she would sense you, the silent lover in whom a reply / slowly awakens and, as she hears you, grows warm, – / the ardent companion to your own most daring emotion” (M), “No less than the bird, / you would be wooing – so that your yet unglimpsed / silent lover might sense and learn of you, she in whom answer / slowly awakens and warms with her listening – the burning / counterpart of your own emboldened emotion” (R/S), “Like him, even then / you would be wooing still and the unseen lover / would hear you, the silent lover whose response / stirs slowly in listening as she bodily warms / her passionate response to your bolder passion” (MC).
Differences in translation largely centre on the final line: “deinem erkühnten Gefühl die erglühte Gefühlin”. It is impossible to reproduce in English the element of reciprocation of the German that is created by the assonance of the “üh” formation and the alliteration of the “Ge” consonants (and the fact that the different words are semantically related), although the repetition of “passionate” (MC) goes part of the way. The adjective “erkühnt” is formed from the reflexive verb “sich erkühnen”, which means “to have the audacity” or “to be emboldened” to do something, and this latter translation is chosen by some in spite of its archaic overtones. “Erglühte” is likewise a back formation from “erglühen”, a version of the more common “glühen”, meaning “to glow”, and looks back to “sich anwärmt” and the theme of a growing intensity of ardour between the lover and the loved-one. The neologistic “enfired” (L/S) and “burning” are attempts to retain the tactile quality of the word, although “ardent” (M) from the Latin “ardere”, “to burn” is perhaps the more idiomatic solution.
An alternative translation:
Just like it,
you should be beseeching, not less, so that,
still unseen, she would sense you, the silent one,
in whom an answer is slowly awakening,
warming itself as she listens –
the glowing companion of your ardent feelings.
The second stanza is a flowing narrative formed around the coming to life of Spring. The speaking voice is tentatively querying at first, but then joins with an affirming day, before reaching its apogee in the vision of a temple (of the future) and a fountain of playful promise:
O und der Frühling begriffe –, da ist keine Stelle,
die nicht trüge den Ton der Verkündigung. Erst jenen kleinen
fragenden Auflaut, den, mit steigernder Stille,
weithin umschweigt ein reiner bejahender Tag.
Dann die Stufen hinan, Ruf-Stufen hinan, zum geträumten
Tempel der Zukunft –; dann den Triller, Fontäne,
die zu dem drängenden Strahl schon das Fallen zuvornimmt
im versprechlichen Spiel…. Und vor sich, den Sommer.
This is a vignette of bucolic bountifulness that is formally sustained by strong substantives (particularly in the final three lines), verbs of movement, consequential syntax (“dann”, “schon”, “weithin”) and the alliteration of the closed “t” and open “s” phonemes, suggesting expansion and the promise of a future, perhaps one of ripeness and completion. As so often in the Elegies, Rilke uses grammar instead of rhyme or conventional metre as a structuring function.
The stanza opens with a pathetic fallacy that is, once again, formed (as in “begriffe” and “ trüge”) through Rilke’s favourite conditional-subjunctive tense (perhaps echoing a similar trope in the first Elegy), where Spring or “Springtime” (M) joins with the lyrical subject in offering up a voice of annunciation. The German word is “Verkündigung” which, like its English equivalent, possesses connotations of a religious pronouncement (its most canonical use being the visitation of the Archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary). For that reason, there is a temptation to translate it as “proclamation” (MC) or “announcement” (R), but this is to lose the overtones of spirituality that suffuse this stanza, where nature seems to be informed by a pantheistic presence or perhaps a civic religion, the temple and the fountain suggesting a Greco-Roman tableau vivant.
Translations include: “Oh, and Spring would understand – not a nook would / fail / to re-echo annunciation. Re-echoing first the tiny / questioning pipe a purely affirmative day / quietly invests all round with magnifying stillness. / Then the long flight of steps, the call-steps, up to the / dreamt-of / temple of what’s to come; – then the trill, that fountain / grasped, as it rises, by Falling, in promiseful play, / for another thrusting jet … And before it, the Summer!” (L/S), “Oh and springtime would hold it –, everywhere it would echo / the song of annunciation. First the small / questioning notes intensified all around / by the sheltering silence of a pure, affirmative day. / Then up the stairs, up the stairway of calls, to the dreamed-of / temple of the future –; and then the trill, like a fountain / which, in its rising jet, already anticipates its fall / in a game of promises … And still ahead: summer” (M), “Oh, and the spring would hear and absorb – not a space in it / that would not ring with annunciation. First the tiny / questioning grace-note which pure affirmative day / widely wraps with intensifying silence. / Then the steps upward, the calling flights up to the dreamed / temple that is the future; the trill, the fountain- / play of promise that has in its jetted brilliance / already its pre-known falling ….. And ahead, summer” (R/S), “Oh, and spring would conceive it – no place / would fail to respond to such a proclamation. / At first, small notes would be as questionings / intensified in the surrounding stillness / of the pure and affirming day. Then up steps, / the flight of calls, to the dreamt-of temple / of the future – then a trill of water, a jet, a rising / fountain, already embracing its tumbling down / in a game of promises … And soon to come, summer” (MC).
We are told in the first line “O und der Frühling begriffe –”. “Begriffe” is a subjunctive form of the verb “begreifen”, which can mean “to grasp” something either literally or mentally, in the sense of “to comprehend”. It is possible that the text is attempting to establish an affinity between the “you” of the preceding opening stanza and Springtime, in which case the mental or cognitive meaning of “begreifen” is being evoked. If this is the case, then “understands” is perhaps the more appropriate translation rather than “grasp” or the unidiomatic “absorb”. Spring is the vital subject of these lines, sending out its annunciation to the world, at first tentatively (as a “fragenden Auflaut”), and then in a crescendo that is both aural and spatial. “Auflaut” is a neologism formed from the noun “Laut” (meaning “sound”) and the preposition “auf”, and its literal meaning would be “Upsound”. “Pipe” and “grace note” are attempts to capture the nuance of the word but are not quite idiomatic. The simple “note” or “notes” (the plural suggesting the upbeat of “auf”, which supports the sense of active annunciation) is probably the most appropriate.
This stanza is about movement, the movement of an unspecified subject oscillating between ascent and descent, between an ascent towards “a game of promises” (MC) that already contains its descent, an ambivalence captured in the phrase “schon das Fallen zuvornimmt”. “Fallen” simply means a “fall” or “falling” in German, and the simplest translation is probably the best (although there is no need to retain the initial letter of the word in its upper case). Translating the verb that governs this falling has proved more difficult. “Zuvornehmen” does not exist as an inseparable verb in German: Rilke has created one by linking the adverb “zuvor”, meaning “before” or “previously”, to the common verb “nehmen”, meaning “to take”. What does exist in standard German is the reflexive verb “sich vornehmen”, meaning “to plan” or “to decide to do” something, and Rilke’s construction takes in of all these lexical components, either through denotation or connotation. The extent of the quite diverging translations reflects the complexity of this word, whose general sense seems to be that the water, even as it rises, is aware that it must fall. “Anticipates its fall” (M) or “foreseeing its fall” (R) best capture perhaps this fatalistic awareness, although “embracing its tumbling down” expresses the Nietzschean amor fati of this experience.
An alternative translation:
Oh, but Spring would understand it –, there is no place in it
that would not bear the voice of annunciation. First, those small
querying notes which, with increasing serenity, fully surround
with silence a day of pure affirmation. Then the steps upwards,
the calling-steps, to the dreamt-of temple of the future –
then the trill, the fountain, its pressing radiance
already given over to decline in a game
of promises …. And still to come: the summer.
Thematically, the third stanza moves from morning(s) to night, from beginning to late, from daytime light to a darkness with stars, which speak of infinity (but only for the dead):
Nicht nur die Morgen alle des Sommers –, nicht nur
wie sie sich wandeln in Tag und strahlen vor Anfang.
Nicht nur die Tage, die zart sind um Blumen, und oben,
um die gestalteten Bäume, stark und gewaltig.
Nicht nur die Andacht dieser entfalteten Kräfte,
nicht nur die Wege, nicht nur die Wiesen im Abend,
nicht nur, nach spätem Gewitter, das atmende Klarsein,
nicht nur der nahende Schlaf und ein Ahnen, abends…
sondern die Nächte! Sondern die hohen, des Sommers,
Nächte, sondern die Sterne, die Sterne der Erde.
O einst tot sein und sie wissen unendlich,
alle die Sterne: denn wie, wie, wie sie vergessen!
The structure of the stanza is provided by the anaphoric “nicht nur” (“not only”), a correlative conjunction whose final term, the “sondern auch (“but also”) component, is withheld until the end of the stanza, to allow the plenitude of the descriptive content of the verse to assert itself in ever more potent imagery. A human subject does not appear until the final lines when, in a sudden plaintive cry, it links its extinction to a full embrace of the stars.
Translations include: “Not only all those summer dawns, not only / the way they turn into day and stream with Beginning. / Not only the days, so gentle round flowers, and, above, / around the configured trees, so mighty and strong. / Not only the fervour of these unfolded forces, / not only the walks, not only the evening meadows, / not only, after late thunder, the breathing clearness, / not only, evenings, sleep coming and something surmised … / No, but the nights as well! the lofty, the summer / nights, – but the stars as well, the stars of the earth! / Oh, to be dead at last and endlessly know them, / all the stars! For how, how, how to forget them!” (L/S), “Not only all the dawns of summer –, not only / how they change themselves into day and shine with beginning. / Not only the days, so tender around flowers and, above, / around the patterned treetops, so strong, so intense. / Not only the reverence of all these unfolded powers, / not only the pathways, not only the meadows at sunset, / not only, after a late storm, the deep-breathing freshness, / not only approaching sleep, and a premonition … / but also the nights! But also the lofty summer / nights, and the stars as well, the stars of the earth. / Oh to be dead at last and know them endlessly, / all the stars: for how, how could we ever forget them!” (M), “Not only all summer’s mornings – not only the way / they modulate into day, and shine with beginning. / Not only days, lying softly round flowers, and above them / canopied patterns of trees, massed in their strength. / Not only reverence in these unfolding forces, / not only paths and ways, the meadows at dusk, / and freshness sighing behind an evening storm, / not only oncoming sleep and a premonition … / but nights! But above all the huge high-summer / nights, and the stars, stars of the earth. /Oh to be dead at last and know them endlessly, / all the stars; for how, how, how to forget them!” (R/S), “Not only all the summer’s dawns – not only / the transformation into day, radiant with beginning. / Not only such days, so tender around flowers /and above, in tree-shapes, huge and powerful. / Not only the reverence of these unfolding forces, / not only pathways, meadowland in the evening, / not only, after late thunderstorms, the breath / of cleared air, not only the on-coming of sleep /and a premonition in the evening … / but the nights too. Those tall nights of summer / and the stars, stars around the earth. / Oh! To be dead at last and know them infinitely, / the stars: then how, how, how could we forget them! (MC).
Translating differences centre on “Morgen” in the first line. Is this “morning” (R/S) or “dawn” (L/S, M and MC). The latter has greater resonance, but Rilke could have used the standard German word for this, “Sonnenaufgang”, and chose not to do so. “Dawn” involves a specific and rather prettified reading of the text, and uses a poeticised idiom that Rilke sought to distance himself from in the Elegies. The text continues to identify natural elements that the unspecified subject of these lines must forgo, including “die Andacht dieser entfalteten Kräfte”. The preferred translation of “Andacht” is “reverence”, which the dictionary defines as “to show deep respect for someone or something”. “Andacht”, however, at least within the context of this poem, points to a spiritual presence of the “unfolded powers” (M) of nature, to their sanctity. Although “fervour” (L/S) does not accord with the dictionary definition of the former, it does capture some of the deeper sense of the German word. “Awe” is an alternative translation.
At the centre of the stanza stands the crucial term, “Klarsein”. It is, once again, a neologism, this time formed from “klar” (“clear”) and “sein/ Sein” (“to be/ Being”). “Sein” is a central concept in Rilke’s philosophy, representing (as it did in the work of Martin Heidegger) an essential ontology of selfhood, a defining quality of the integrity of the human and object world. In this particular section of the poem, Rilke is describing a certain presence that nature possesses after a late storm, a certain quiet and clarity of its Being, a “breathing clearness” (L/S). The latter is an arcane word, largely associated with perception and light, which is here being used as a new coinage to provide a literal translation of the original German. In spite of its obscurity, “clearness” is possibly more appropriate than the preferred translations “freshness” (M, R and R/S) or “cleared air”, which are without that sense of a deeper presence “breathing” through nature.
An alternative translation:
Not only the mornings of all summers, –
not only as they transform themselves through the day
and glow with beginning. Not only the days
delicate around flowers and, higher up,
around the fully formed trees, strong and powerful.
Not only the awe for these unfolding powers.
not only the ways, not only the meadows in the evening,
not only, after the late thunderstorm, the breath
of clear being, not only the coming sleep
and an evening prescience …
but the nights! But the nights of high summer,
the nights, the stars, the stars of this earth.
Oh, to be dead at last, and know them eternally,
all the stars: then, how, how, how could we forget them!
In the fourth stanza, the lyrical subject addresses the lovers once again, but his invocation is overheard by a cohort of diseased girls, who emerge from their graves to learn of the wonder that lies in the simple things of the earth:
Siehe, da rief ich die Liebende. Aber nicht sie nur
käme… Es kämen aus schwächlichen Gräbern
Mädchen und ständen… Denn, wie beschränk ich,
wie, den gerufenen Ruf? Die Versunkenen suchen
immer noch Erde. – Ihr Kinder, ein hiesig
einmal ergriffenes Ding gälte für viele.
Glaubt nicht, Schicksal sei mehr, als das Dichte der Kindheit;
wie überholtet ihr oft den Geliebten, atmend,
atmend nach seligem Lauf, auf nichts zu, ins Freie.
The theme of calling, of supplication, runs like a leit motif throughout the Elegies, and is often allied in the voice of the lyrical subject to the pathos of loss, to a recognition of non-attainability. In the fourth stanza, supplication gives way to invocation. The stanza features the first appearance of an “ich” in this Elegy, and with this appearance a more self-consciously deliberative tone, authoritative, imperious even, can be discerned, a tone that is reflected in the assertive syntax of these lines, with their frequent caesuras, short phrasing, and umlauts in the opening lines communicating a precision of voice.
Translations include: “Look, I’ve been calling the lover. But not only she / would come … Out of unwithholding graves / girls would come and gather … For how could I limit / the call I had called? The sunken are always seeking / earth again. – You children, I’d say, a single / thing comprehended here’s as good as a thousand. / Don’t think Destiny’s more than what’s packed into / childhood. / How often you’d overtake the beloved, panting, / panting from blissful pursuit of nothing but distance!” (L/S), “Look, I was calling for my lover. But not just she / would come … Out of their fragile graves / girls would arise and gather … For how could I limit / the call, once I called it? These unripe spirits keep seeking / the earth. – Children, one earthly Thing / truly experienced, even once, is enough for a lifetime. / Don’t think that fate is more than the density of childhood; / how often you outdistanced the man you loved, breathing, breathing / after the blissful chase, and passed on into freedom” (M), “And see – even now I have called the beloved! / Though it’s not just she who responds … / Out of insecure graves come girls to stand close by … / How can I curb it once the call’s been proclaimed? / For spirits, entombed, still search out the earth. / You children – some earthbound thing experienced / truly, even once, can do service for so much. / Do not think a life’s destiny is anything other / than the felt pressure of sense you knew as a child. / How often since have you out-distanced the one / you loved, breathing, breathless after the joyous / chase, going nowhere but into freedom?” (MC).
Minor differences in translation centre on whether we call “die Liebende” “the lover” (L/S), “my lover” (M), “my love” (R/S), or “the beloved” (MC and R). Likewise, “aus schwächlichen Gräbern” has given rise to “unwithholding graves” (L/S), “fragile graves” (M), “unsettled graves” (R/S) and “insecure graves” (MC) (although it is not clear what some of these translations mean). “Schwächlich” in German means “feeble” or “frail”, and here the word seems to be describing graves that are old and possibly poorly kept. An alternative translation is “decrepit”. The girls who emerge from these graves are called “die Versunkenen”, a noun formed from the past tense of the verb “versinken” (“to sink’). Once again, translation depends on interpretation. “The sunken” (L/S) is a literal translation but it is unidiomatic; “unripe spirits” (M) and “unripe ones” (R) involve a particular reading of the text; whilst “the interred” (L/S) and “spirits, entombed” seem to imply that these “Versunkenen” have remained in the lower depths rather than have reached the surface. Rather than stress their literal entombment, we could develop the metaphorical meaning of the word into a paraphrase such as “those who have reached the depths …”.
The poetic persona then turns to address the “Versunkenen” with “Ihr Kinder, ein hiesig / einmal ergriffenes Ding gälte für viele” (“You children: one simple thing that has been truly / grasped is just as good as many”). It is one of the many universalising obiter dicta that characterise Rilke’s philosophical voice in the Elegies. The first Elegy alone gives us “beauty is the beginning of terror”, “remaining is nowhere” or “the state of death is fraught / but full of retrieval”. Such pronouncements often crystallise the surrounding terms of the text, or stand at odds with them, forcing the reader to juggle with competing layers of sense. Translating problems are presented by “hiesig” and “gälte für viele”. The former simply means “local” or “nearby” (R). “Earthbound” and “earthly Thing” capture the meaning but are a little ponderous. The “viele” in “gälte für viele” has been variously translated as “a thousand”, “a lifetime”, “many” and “so much”. “Viele” is meant to echo the “ein” that came earlier in the line, so a translation should reflect its numerical status. The literal “many” may simply be the best. The general sense of the line is that it is enough for us to grasp the simplicity of the everyday world to find spiritual consummation.
The stanza concludes with a gesture of liberation, with the lover running past the loved-one, “ins Freie”. It is an expansive act, and the artful repetition of “atmend” communicates the breathlessness of the action. But where is the lover heading? Where or what is the “Freie”? It is tempting to interpret the “frei” in “Freie” as the stem of “Freiheit”, which would give us the preferred translation, “freedom”. The standard dictionary definition of the word, however, is “open (air)”, which is more prosaic, but in Rilke’s use (as in the eight Elegy) “the open” represents expansion, the removal of restrictions. It has a sense of physical liberation that “freedom” lacks. The “Freie” is a space (to follow the other key image of this final line) where one can breathe.
An alternative translation:
See: I called then to my loved one. But not only she
came … out of decrepit graves girls came out
and stood … but then how could I have limited
this call now it had been made? Those who have
reached the depths continue to seek the earth. –
You children: one simple thing that has been truly
grasped is just as good as many. Don’t believe
that fate is anything more than just the intensity
of childhood. How often you swept past
the loved one, breathless, breathless,
after the joyous chase, heading into nowhere,
but into the open.
The fifth stanza reiterates the importance of grasping the jewel that is the immediacy of the common world. Even those who are destitute and downtrodden have the opportunity of experiencing the world as it has been transformed, and in the only place that truly matters – within themselves.
Hiersein ist herrlich. Ihr wußtet es, Mädchen, ihr auch,
die ihr scheinbar entbehrtet, versankt –, ihr, in den ärgsten
Gassen der Städte, Schwärende, oder dem Abfall
Offene. Denn eine Stunde war jeder, vielleicht nicht
ganz eine Stunde, ein mit den Maßen der Zeit kaum
Meßliches zwischen zwei Weilen –, da sie ein Dasein
hatte. Alles. Die Adern voll Dasein.
Nur, wir vergessen so leicht, was der lachende Nachbar
uns nicht bestätigt oder beneidet. Sichtbar
wollen wirs heben, wo doch das sichtbarste Glück uns
erst zu erkennen sich giebt, wenn wir es innen verwandeln.
The fifth stanza begins with one of the most resonant and stylistically characteristic Rilkean statements, its condensation of meaning achieved by a radically innovative neologism: “Hiersein”. The word literally means “Here-being”, and is another example of the verb “sein” employed in an ontologically defining way to characterise a state of existence and to foreground the gains of immediate personal experience. Even “Mädchen”, girls who have emerged from the literal graves of their deaths in the preceding stanza into the moral graves of city life, are open to “Hiersein”. Their squalor seems to contrast with the euphoric celebration of life contained in the opening statement, but it is only an apparent contrast, for the “hier” of “Hiersein” is an absolute: it is not qualified or diminished by circumstantial detail: even in an environment of deprivation a “Herrlichkeit” (“majesty” or “splendour”) of life can be found.
The tone of the stanza is assertive (it is voicing a clear position on the world). Its theme is knowledge, as is indicated by verbs such as “wußtet”, “vergessen” and “erkennend”. Knowledge may have been displaced, may even be invisible, but nonetheless exists, waiting to transform us inwardly. The discursive nature of the lines is supported by the repetition of “ihr”, “Dasein”, “sichtbar” and by conjunctions and adverbs such as “denn”, “nur” and “erst”. The latter are almost banally common in German (as their equivalents are in English), but their use reflects a common stylistic ploy in the Elegies: to frame statements that are challenging in their linguistic and semantic complexity within familiar grammatical formations. The formal coherence of the stanza is further supported through alliteration (particularly in the initial lines where the plight of the girls is reflected in the proliferation of pinched “ä” umlauts), and the artfully placed caesuras, which break up the flow of the verse to allow the insistence of the poem’s argument to come through.
Translations include: “Being here’s glorious! Even you knew it, you girls, / who went without, as it seemed, sank under, – you, in the vilest / streets of cities, festering, or open for refuse. / For to each was granted an hour, – perhaps not quite / so much as an hour – some span that could scarcely be / measured / by measures in time, in between two whiles, when she really / possessed an existence. All. Veins of existence. / But we so lightly forget what our laughing neighbour / neither confirms nor envies. We want to be visibly / able to show it; whereas the most visible joy / can only reveal itself to us when we’ve transformed it ,within” (L/S), “Truly being here is glorious. Even you knew it, / you girls who seemed to be lost, to go under –, in the filthiest / streets of the city, festering there, or wide open / for garbage. For each of you had an hour, or perhaps / not even an hour, a barely measurable time / between two moments –, when you were granted a sense / of being. Everything. Your veins flowed with being. But we can so easily forget what our laughing neighbor / neither confirms nor envies. We want to display it, / to make it visible, though even the most visible happiness / can’t reveal itself to us until we transform it, within” (M), “Being here is glorious. And even you knew it, you young girls / deeply deprived, so it seemed, submerged beyond trace in the / foulest / alleys of cities, festering, laying yourselves open / to filth. For each of you had, for an hour or perhaps even / less, for a time immeasurably short between/ two durations, your own being. Everything. / Arteries running with being. Only – / we can so lightly forget what our laughing neighbour / neither confirms nor envies. We want to lift it, / show it, yet the most evident happiness submits / to our recognition only if we transform it within us” (R/S), “Just being here is glorious! You understood that, / you girls, even you who appeared so deprived / and in decline – you, in the dirtiest alleys of the city, / festering there, or laid wide open to filth. / For each of you had an hour – perhaps not / even an hour, a barely measurable moment / between whiles – when you had a sense / of the destined shape of all things. Everything. / Your veins grew awash with it. But we so easily / forget what our laughing neighbour neither / affirms nor envies in us. For ourselves, / we want to make it visible – though the most / evident happiness goes unrecognised / unless we can transform it – and that is within” (MC).
Differences in translation begin from the very first line. “Hiersein ist herrlich” is an expression celebrating the simple facticity of life, evoking the common (but nonetheless majestic) materiality that adheres to the here and now. The literal translation, which gives us “being here is glorious”, is a flat verbal formulation (with almost holiday-postcard connotations), which loses the existential weight of the German phrase. One solution is to underpin the word with “truly” or “just”, but this is a clear addition to the text. Alternatively, we might paraphrase the “hier” component of the word as “world”, which gives us “Being in the world is glorious”. It is, however, also possible to retain its compact integrity by reproducing Rilke’s neo-logistic formation in English, which would give us “Being-here”.
The “sein” of “Hiersein” anticipates a second use of the word later in the stanza, in “Dasein”. “Sein” is a central concept in Rilke’s thinking, and one that appears in every Elegy. The word plays a central role in existentialist thinking, most notably in that of Martin Heidegger, and has a long philosophical lineage in German philosophy. In the more empirically minded Anglophonic world, “Being” does not have this lineage, but nevertheless it is probably best to employ it here rather than the more neutral “existence”. The paraphrase “a sense of the destined shape of all things” captures the intellectual density of “sein” but involves a specific reading of the text.
We are then told that each of us is granted a moment of time in which we might experience “Dasein” “zwischen zwei Weilen”. “Weilen”, from the verb “weilen” “to stay” or “to linger”, is only found in the singular in German, “die Weile”, meaning “a while”, “a time”. It does not have, as it has here, a plural, and it is therefore tempting to normalise Rilke’s language with translations such as “moments” or “durations”. But these are both too precise and too technical, and do not capture the broad, if vague expanse of time that “Weilen” conjures up. “Weilen” is a new coinage in German, but it is appropriately matched by the English new coinage, “whiles”.
In the short line that follows (in the midst of two phrases extolling “Dasein”) we are presented with the single totalising noun, “Alles”, which stands alone gramatically, a subject without a predicate. The standard meaning of “alles” in German is “everything” or “all”, and these are the preferred translations. But what the text seems to be saying is that “Dasein” is part of our essential constitution, a reality that flows around us in the world but also within us (and the final line of the stanza returns to this theme of an authentic interiority). In that case, “throughout” is a possible alternative translation.
An alternative translation:
Being-here is a glory. You knew this, you girls, even you,
who looked so deprived, were at rock bottom – you,
in the vilest alleyways of the city, festering, or open to filth.
For, each of you had an hour, perhaps not even an hour –
something between two whiles that can hardly be measured by time –
where you felt the presence of Being. Throughout.
Veins full of the presence of Being.
Only, we forget so easily what our laughing
neighbour confirms nor envies. We want
to make it visible, although the most obvious
happiness goes unrecognised, unless we can transform it –within us.
The sixth stanza continues with the theme of inwardness, but this time it is framed within a picture of a world (that of modernity) given over to a mechanistic mindset that has dissolved the ceremonial culture of the past for the sake of a present constructed on artifice and abstract design:
Nirgends, Geliebte, wird Welt sein, als innen. Unser
Leben geht hin mit Verwandlung. Und immer geringer
schwindet das Außen. Wo einmal ein dauerndes Haus war,
schlägt sich erdachtes Gebild vor, quer, zu Erdenklichem
völlig gehörig, als ständ es noch ganz im Gehirne.
Weite Speicher der Kraft schafft sich der Zeitgeist, gestaltlos
wie der spannende Drang, den er aus allem gewinnt.
Tempel kennt er nicht mehr. Diese, des Herzens, Verschwendung
sparen wir heimlicher ein. Ja, wo noch eins übersteht,
ein einst gebetetes Ding, ein gedientes, geknietes –,
hält es sich, so wie es ist, schon ins Unsichtbare hin.
Viele gewahrens nicht mehr, doch ohne den Vorteil,
daß sie’s nun innerlich baun, mit Pfeilern und Statuen, größer!
The stanza begins, “Nirgends, Geliebte, wird Welt sein, als innen” (“Nowhere else, my love, will the world be other than within us”). These are words that stake out the spatial parameters of selfhood, announcing a theme that moves back and forth between the external world of inauthenticity (the product of modernity) and the internal realm of authenticity (that lies as a possibility within the individual). The involved and, at times, paratactic syntax of the earlier stanzas gives way here to simple and compound sentences, which possess a clear subject and finite verbs that are largely in the present tense. The tone of the language is descriptively Olympian: a framework of historical comparison between the past and the present is being established. There is no external and little internal rhyme or alliteration (except for the assibilation of the central lines). The stanza receives its structure through a series of enjambments, which flow into one another through prosaic diction that is self-consciously non-“poetic”, as they sustain the argument. Spatial and structural tropes dominate the stanza, and are approached in terms of their place in time and duration: the solid gives way to the mentally fabricated, and permanence to the transitory but technologically over-empowered present, which, in the age of modernity, no longer has the capacity to recognise the cultural and religious achievements of the past. If we wish to preserve the latter, we must move into yet a further and quite different space: the space within.
Translations include: “Nowhere, beloved, can world exist but within. / Life passes in transformation. And, ever diminishing, / outwardness dwindles. Where once was a permanent house, / up starts some invented structure across our vision, as fully / at home among concepts as though it still stood in a brain. / Spacious garners of power are formed by the Time Spirit, / formless / as the high-tensioning urge wrested by him out of all. / Temples he knows no longer. We’re now more secretly / saving / such lavish expenses of heart. Nay, even where one / survives, / one single thing once prayed or tended or knelt to, / it’s started to reach, as it is, into invisibleness. / Many perceive it no more, but neglect the advantage / of building it grandlier now, with pillars and statues, / within!” (L/S), “Nowhere, Beloved, will world be but within us. Our life / passes in transformation. And the external / shrinks into less and less. Where once an enduring house was, / now a cerebral structure crosses our path, completely / belonging to the realm of concepts, as though it still stood in the brain. / Our age has built itself vast reservoirs of power, / formless as the straining energy that it wrests from the earth. / Temples are no longer known. It is we who secretly save up / these extravagances of the heart. Where one of them still survives, / a Thing that was formerly prayed to, worshipped, knelt before – / just as it is, it passes into the invisible world. / Many no longer perceive it, yet miss the chance / to build it inside themselves now, with pillars and statues: greater” (M), “The world is nowhere, my love, if not within. / Our life passes in transformation. The external world / is forever dwindling to nothing. Where once / there stood a solid and lasting house, / now a dreamt-up construct straddles our path / and seems to belong entirely to the realm / of conception as if it still stood in the brain. / The spirit of the age has engineered for itself / vast reservoirs of power, though they are shapeless / as the charged force it draws from all things. / Temples are no longer known and it is we who / secretly conserve these extravagances of the heart. / Yes – where one still stands, a thing prayed to once, / worshipped, knelt before – it holds, just as it is / and it passes into the outwardly invisible. / Many no longer see it, so they miss the chance / to build it again, to build within themselves / the pillars and the statues, yet greater still” (MC), “Nowhere, dear one, will our world be but within us. Our / life advances always in transformation. And what’s out there / always becomes smaller / Where there was once an enduring house, / a thoughtful formation now suggests itself, belonging completely / to what’s thinkable, as though it stood wholly within the brain. / Our era builds for itself vast storehouses of power, and formless / like the straining forces it wrests thrillingly from everything. / Temples are no longer known. We are the ones who secretly store up / these extravagances of the heart. Where one of them survives / still, a thing we used to pray to and worship and kneel before –, / it is already passing, just as it is, into the invisible realm within us. / Many no longer perceive it, and miss the fleeting opportunity / to build it once again inside themselves, with pillars and statues, greater!” (R).
Differences in translation centre on a small number of terms connected to mentality and conceptuality. The theme of the stanza is “Verwandlung” (“transformation” or “metamorphosis”), a characteristically Rilkean trope that appears throughout the Elegies. Permanent structures have given way to the impermanence of the artificial, where a house is now merely an “erdachtes Bild”. The parent stem of the phrase is the verb “erdenken”, meaning “to think up”, “to devise”, and hence “erdachtes” converts into “conceived”, “thought-up”, “excogitated”. Possible translations for the entire phrase are “invented structure”, “cerebral structure” and “dreamt-up construct”. “Thoughtful formation”, however, contradicts the negative, arid fact of this process. The structure is “erdachtes” because it comes from the “Erdenklichem”. This is a noun formed from an adjective (a common practice in German, but less common in English). Most translators seek to retain a substantive form, as in “belonging to the realm of concepts”, or to “the realm of conception”, but neither convey the negative quality of the German, which connotes an empty cerebralism.
We are in an age of over-rationalisation, of a blithe functionalism of mind and spirit, which is the “Zeitgeist”. This is now a common loanword in English (and this is how it has been translated by R/S), but the word can still strike the eye as something foreign. “Spirit of the age” is perhaps more appropriate, and it is more natural than the literal “Time Spirit” (L/S), although the simple “era” (R) is another possibility. This spirit of the age has come to assume behemoth proportions, imposing its “Speicher der Kraft” (“reservoirs of power”) upon all through its “spannende Drang”. “Drang” (from “dringen”, “to force one’s way”, “to penetrate”) means an “urge” or “pressure”, and the verb “spannen” means “to tighten” or alternatively “to strain”, depending on the context. The phrase has been translated as “straining energy” and “straining forces”, both of which put the emphasis on the exertion of this “Drang”. If, however, we are meant to see these exertions of power as emanations of a brute pressure, then “charged force” is perhaps more appropriate.
An alternative translation:
Nowhere, my love, will the world be other than within us.
Life passes in mutability. And the external dwindles
to less and less. Where a solid house once stood,
now stands erected some thought-up construction,
completely belonging to the realm of concept, as if
it still stood in the brain. The spirit of the age
has produced for itself vast reservoirs
of power, formless, like the charged force
it draws out of everything. It no longer recognises temples.
It is we who secretly preserve such extravaganzas of the heart.
Indeed, where one still survives, a thing once revered,
once paid homage to and worshipped – it maintains itself, such as it is,
as it passes into the immaterial world. Many no longer
see it, and lose the chance to build it within themselves,
and, with pillars and statues, in an even grander way.
In the face of the aimless, but no less coercive techno-rationalist energies of the modern period (the modern version of fate, “the great destroyer”) the poet exhorts us in the seventh stanza to retain faith in the one principle that has survived throughout: form:
Jede dumpfe Umkehr der Welt hat solche Enterbte,
denen das Frühere nicht und noch nicht das Nächste gehört.
Denn auch das Nächste ist weit für die Menschen. Uns soll
dies nicht verwirren; es stärke in uns die Bewahrung
der noch erkannten Gestalt. – Dies stand einmal unter Menschen,
mitten im Schicksal stands, im vernichtenden, mitten
im Nichtwissen-Wohin stand es, wie seiend, und bog
Sterne zu sich aus gesicherten Himmeln. Engel,
dir noch zeig ich es, da! in deinem Anschaun
steh es gerettet zuletzt, nun endlich aufrecht.
Säulen, Pylone, der Sphinx, das strebende Stemmen,
grau aus vergehender Stadt oder aus fremder, des Doms.
At the centre of the text, both thematically and textually, stands the principle of “form” (“Gestalt”, literally “shape” or “figure”). In the text, its role in the preservation of culture is formally established through the repetition of the key verb, “stand”, and through the use of prepositions of placement, such as “mitten” and “unter”. The logic of the stanza is compelling. It is sustained by a fastidious syntax and frequent enjambments, and its tone is assertive: even the angel is addressed in imperative form, in a short emphatic phrase whose key terms are underscored through italics.
Translations include: “Each torpid turn of the world has such disinherited / children, / those to whom former has ceased, next hasn’t come, to / belong. / For even the next is far for mankind. Though this / shall not confuse us, shall rather confirm us in keeping / still recognizable form. This stood once among mankind, / stood in the midst of Fate, the extinguisher, stood / in the midst of not-knowing-whither, as though it existed, / and bowed / stars from established heavens towards it. Angel, / I’ll show it to you as well – there! In your gaze / it shall stand redeemed at last, in a final uprightness. / Pillars, pylons, the Sphinx, all the striving thrust, / greyly from fading or foreign town, of the spire!” (L/S), “Each torpid turn of the world has such disinherited ones, / to whom neither the past belongs, nor yet what has nearly arrived. / For even the nearest moment is far from mankind. Though we / should not be confused by this, but strengthened in our task of preserving / the still-recognizable form. – This once stood among mankind, / in the midst of Fate the annihilator, in the midst / of Not-Knowing-Whither, it stood as if enduring, and bent / stars down to it from their safeguarded heavens. Angel / to you I will show it, there! in your endless vision / it shall stand, now fully upright, rescued at last. / Pillars, pylons, the Sphinx, the striving thrust / of the cathedral, gray, from a fading or alien city” (M), “Each new lumbering turn of the world has its own disinherited, / those to whom neither the past belongs nor what meets them next. / For even that next is far for mankind. It must not / lead us into confusion but safeguard in us / form we still recognize. – This once stood amongst people, / in the midst of Fate, the annihilator, in the midst / of our Not-Knowing-Where-Next, like an existence, and curved / stars down to it out of their sure heavens. Angel / there! To you I can show it still: in your vision / let it at last stand, saved, now at last upright. Columns, / pylons, the Sphinx, and looming out of a strange / or passing city the grey soar of the cathedral” (R/S), “Every muffled turning of the world discovers / those disinherited ones who do not possess their past, / nor yet what is to come. For even then the next moment / is far off for man. Yet we should not become / confused by this, rather strengthened in preserving / the still-recognisable form … This once stood / among mankind, amidst ever-destructive fate, / in the middle of Not-Knowing-Where it stood as if enduring and it drew down the stars from / their secure heaven. Angel – to you I will show it, / there! In your vision it will stand, now finally / upright and rescued at last. Columns, gateways, / the Sphinx, the up-striving thrust of the grey cathedral / in a city that is passing or is foreign to us” (MC).
Differences in translation begin from the second clause of the very first line of the stanza: “solche Enterbte, / denen das Frühere nicht und noch nicht das Nächste gehört” (the “disinherited ones, / those who do not possess the past nor yet what is to come”, MC). “Enterbte” is a noun formed from the verb “enterben” (“to disinherit”). Such formations are common in German but less so in English, and for that reason some translators choose to add an object, as in “children” or simply “ones”. It is possible, however, to retain the form of the German original as “disinherited”, particularly when it is followed by the demonstrative pronoun “those”, which provides the sense of a subject. “Früher” literally means “earlier”, but in this context it converts into “in former times”, “the past”, and this is the preferred translation. Translating “das Nächste” is difficult. Used as an adjective, “nächste” means “nearest” or “next”, but in its form as a noun, “Nächste”, it normally describes a fellow human being. Rilke wants to retain its adjectival use but in a noun form, which would give us “the next” or “the nearest”, which is how L/S translate it. The sense of these lines is that not only are the disinherited unable to relate to (“hear”) the past; they are unable to grasp the immediate future, that which is almost already here. An alternative translation is “those who do not possess the past nor what is about to come”.
We are told that “Gestalt” resists the destructive impingements of fate, “wie seiend”. “Sein” here, as elsewhere in the Elegies, is a crucial term. It is most commonly used as the simple copulative “ist” or “sind” (“it is”, “they/we are”), but its infinitive form, “sein”, means “to be” as a verb and as a noun “Being” and, as such, forms, along with “Dasein”, a key existentialist trope in Rilke’s work. In this stanza, it is used as a present participle in a stand-alone formation, the sense of the line being that the essence of form, what makes it what it is, cannot be destroyed by the forces or by the indeterminacy (“not-knowing-whereto”) of fate. Form endures, and this is the preferred translation (although translating “wie” with the conditioning conjunctions “as if”, or, as in one translation, “as though”, tends to undermine the integrity of this state of being). “Like an existence”, however, is not idiomatic.
As the final lines of the stanza make clear, the principle of form helped shape the towering edifices of Western civilisation, including the Sphinx and the “strebende Stemmen, / grau aus vergehender Stadt oder aus fremder, des Doms”, a vital image, conveying the energy of the “striving thrust” (M) of the soaring cathedral (whose monumentality of presence is not conveyed by the translation “spire”). “Vergehender” and “fremd”, however, problematise this positive image. “Fremd” means “foreign” or “strange”, and these are the standard translations, although the two words have different connotations, and choosing between them is a matter of interpretation. “Vergehen” has been translated as “passing” or “fading”, but neither quite capture the sense of decline that the original German word possesses. Once again, Rilke is juxtaposing positive and negative tropes. In this case he is stressing that the cathedral asserts itself, as a potent symbol of the human will to form, even in environments that are alien and in decline deplorable environments. “Decaying” is perhaps the more appropriate translation for “vergehend”.
An alternative translation:
Each torpid turning of the world has its disinherited,
those who do not possess the past nor that which is about to come.
For even that which is at hand is still far for mankind.
That, however, should not unsettle us; it should strengthen our will
to preserve the form that we still see as our own – that
which once stood amongst mankind, stood in the midst
of fate, the great destroyer, stood in the midst
of the not-knowing-whereto, as though it were
a form of being, and bent stars down to it: out
of their sure heavens. Angel – to you I will
show it, there! In your vision, it will stand,
redeemed, and standing tall at last. Columns, gateways,
the sphinx, and striving upwards, grey, out
of a decaying or alien city, the cathedral.
The final stanza of the Elegy begins with a further address to the angel, who is invoked to act as witness to the achievements of humankind, and to the fact that, in spite of all, we have been able to occupy those epic spaces that formed our cultural potential :
War es nicht Wunder? O staune, Engel, denn wir sinds,
wir, o du Großer, erzähls, daß wir solches vermochten, mein Atem
reicht für die Rühmung nicht aus. So haben wir dennoch
nicht die Räume versäumt, diese gewährenden, diese
unseren Räume. (Was müssen sie fürchterlich groß sein,
da sie Jahrtausende nicht unseres Fühlns überfülln.)
The tone is insistent; thelanguage rhetorically inflected. Its argument proceeds through a series of short phrases, separated by caesuras (to make the argument even clearer), and through the repetition of key words, such as the demonstrative pronoun, “diese” and the all-important substantive, “Räume”, the centrality of the latter being secured through alliteration (the “r” phoneme). These are spaces into which we have expanded, in which (as the stanza goes on to make clear) we have retained the possibility for cultural and spiritual self-realisation.
Translations include: “Was it not miracle? Angel, gaze, for it’s we – / O mightiness, tell them that we were capable of it – my / breath’s / too short for this celebration. So, after all, we have not / failed to make use of the spaces, these generous spaces, / these, / our spaces. (How terribly big they must be, / when, with thousands of years of our feeling, they’re not / overcrowded.)” (L/S), “Wasn’t all this a miracle? Be astonished, Angel, for we / are this, O Great One: proclaim that we could achieve this, my breath / is too short for such praise. So, after all, we have not / failed to make use of these generous spaces, these / spaces of ours. (How frighteningly great they must be, / since thousands of years have not made them overflow with our feelings.)” (M), “Marvel at this, Angel, this miracle. For it is we – / tell it, O Great One – we who achieved such a thing; my breath / cannot last for such praise. So, after all, we have not / left these generous spaces unused, these our spaces. / Fearfully great they must be, if millennia of filling them with our feelings have not overflowed them.” (R/S), “Was this not miraculous? Marvel! Angel! We are / all this! We are – oh, great one – will you proclaim / what we can achieve? My own breath is too weak / for such praise! So we have not, after all, / failed to make use of these generous spaces, / these spaces of ours (how frighteningly vast / they must be, since thousands of years have passed / and still they do not overflow with feelings)” (MC), and “Was it not marvellous? Be astonished, Angel, for we are it, / we, O Great One; tell others that we were able to do this, my breath / doesn’t reach far enough for praising. So we haven’t failed / so far to put these spaces to use, the generous spaces, these / spaces of ours. (How terrifyingly great must these spaces be; thousands of years haven’t flooded them with our feelings.) (R).
Differences of translation centre on the short phrase, “nicht die Räume versäumt”. “Versäumen” means “to neglect to do” or “to omit to do” something. It is an auxiliary verb, but Rilke is using it as if it were transitive. The preferred translation is to reinstate the auxiliary status of the verb with “failed to make use of”, but the alternative “neglect” retains the original transitive character of Rilke’s German. More difficult is the final line of this section. The spaces that we have made our own must be “frighteningly vast” (MC) “terrifyingly great” (R), “da sie Jahrtausende nicht unseres Fühlns überfülln”. The syntax is so compact that it is difficult to see where the subject of this clause lies. Is it “sie” (the spaces) or the “Jahrtausende” (the thousands of years)? Answering the question involves an interpretation of the text, but the key epithet “groß” (“great” or “large”) suggests that the ultimate translation should centre on the completion of the spatial identity of these spaces. If that is the case, grammatically we should read “feelings” as the subject and “spaces” as the object of these lines, with “thousands of years” being a temporal adverbial clause. This would give us an alternative translation, “since through thousands of years our feelings have not been able to fill them”.
An alternative translation:
Was it not a wonder? Oh, you should marvel, angel,
for it is we, we. Oh, you Magnificence, speak it forth
that we could accomplish such things. My breath
is not sufficient for such praising. So, we did not,
after all, neglect these spaces, these bountiful spaces
that were ours. (How terribly vast they must have been,
since through thousands of years our feelings have not been able to fill them.)
The final section of the stanza (and the Elegy) is formed around an engagement between an anonymous collective “we” and the angel, who (it seems) has now become a near-familiar:
Aber ein Turm war groß, nicht wahr? O Engel, er war es, –
groß, auch noch neben dir? Chartres war groß –, und Musik
reichte noch weiter hinan und überstieg uns. Doch selbst nur
eine Liebende –, oh, allein am nächtlichen Fenster….
reichte sie dir nicht ans Knie –?
Glaub nicht, daß ich werbe.
Engel, und würb ich dich auch! Du kommst nicht. Denn mein
Anruf ist immer voll Hinweg; wider so starke
Strömung kannst du nicht schreiten. Wie ein gestreckter
Arm ist mein Rufen. Und seine zum Greifen
oben offene Hand bleibt vor dir
offen, wie Abwehr und Warnung,
Unfaßlicher, weitauf.
The invocation of the angel involves, as the stanza progresses, an interrogation of the self, an interrogation of the angel and an interrogation of the lover, all of which is conducted through the lyrical subject’s impatience of wonder, the urgency of the moment being conveyed by the persistent apostrophising and the frequent caesuras and questions. These lines bring in a voice of supplication, and hands and arms that reach out to a resolution that is not there.
Translations include: “But a tower was great, Was it not? Oh, Angel, it was, / though, – / even compared with you? Chartres was great – and music / towered still higher and passed beyond us. Why, even / a girl in love, alone, at her window, at night … / did she not reach to your knee? – / Don’t think that I’m wooing! / Angel, even if I were, you’d never come! For my call / is always full of outgoing; against such a powerful / current you cannot advance. Like an outstretched / arm is my call. And its hand, for some grasping, / skywardly opened, remains before you / as opened so wide but for warding / and warning, Inapprehensible” (L/S), “But a tower was great, wasn’t it? Oh Angel, it was – / even when placed beside you? Chartres was great –, and music / reached still higher and passed far beyond us. But even / a woman in love – oh alone at night by her window …. / didn’t she reach your knee –? / Don’t think that I am wooing. / Angel, and even if I were, you would not come. For my call / is always filled with departure; against such a powerful / current you cannot move. Like an outstretched arm / is my call. And its hand, held open and reaching up / to seize, remains in front of you, open / as if in defense and warning, / Ungraspable One, far above.” (M), “But a tower was great too, surely? O Angel, it was – / still great, set next to you? Chartres was great – and music / reached up / higher again and transcended us. But even a woman, / in love – oh, alone at night by her window …. / did she not reach to your knee? / Do not take this to be wooing, / Angel, even if it were! You would not come. For my / call is full of my leaving; against this strong / current you cannot move forward. It is like an outstretched / arm, my call. And its open hand, ready / to grasp, remains there before you, open / like a defence and a warning, / you high Ungraspable” (R/S), “But a tower was great, was it not? Oh, angel, it was – / great, even when set beside you. Chartres was great – / and music reached higher still and passed beyond us. / Even a girl in love, all alone by a window at night …. / did she not reach your knee –? / Do not think I am wooing. / Angel, even if I were, you would not come. / For my call is always full of leaving and against / such a powerful current you cannot move. / My call is like an out-stretched arm. / And my hand, held open, reaching high / to grasp, in fact, is lifted before you, /splayed as if to ward off and warn / the ungraspable, far above” (MC).
The final stanza of the Elegy dramatises the intercourse between the lyrical subject and the angel, whose presence is invoked through a series of interrogations that are made by the lyrical subject in the manner of an almost desperate insistence, and this is reflected in the truncated form of the text with its frequent caesuras and shorter line lengths. The angel is invoked only to be revoked, and the structure of the stanza is formed around this tension between bidding and repulsion, between a welcoming openness (of the mouth) and a defensive closedness (of the arm and hand), a cleavage that is (appropriately) reflected in the central line of the stanza: “Denn mein / Anruf ist immer voll Hinweg”. “Hinweg” is an adverb meaning “away”, “over and beyond”, but is here used as a noun. It is important to see that what is being described is the repulse of the angel. Translating “Hinweg” as “departure” or “leaving” does not quite do this. “Rejection” is an alternative translation.
The position of speech of the lyrical subject in this stanza is complex. With its insistent questioning and repetition of the unsubtle qualifier “groß”, the supplication of the angel is marked by an overly emphatic tone that imparts to these lines an ambivalence of tone. The angel is brought before us only to be held at arms-length. The open hand remains open, not as a welcoming gesture but as “Abwehr”. Unlike so many of Rilke’s crucial substantives, this is not a neologism but a standard word that possesses subtle differences of meaning, which include “defence”, “resistance”, “parrying”. Is the lyrical subject here defending himself or actively resisting the angel? It is a matter of interpretation: the former is passive, and has attracted “defence” (R/S) as a translation; the latter is active, as in “ward off” (MC).
The stanza has exploited throughout tactile imagery to suggest (without ever precisely defining) the proximity of the angel. Does the lover reach the angel’s knee? The immanence of the angel remains a mystery here as elsewhere in the Elegies, and it is a mystery that is encapsulated in the “Unfaßlicher” of the final line. Does this refer to the angel or to a general principle, a universal meaning or purpose that cannot be grasped (“not-knowing” is one of the recurrent themes of the Elegies)? It is possible that the two are conflated in the “Unfaßlicher”. This is, once again, a “touching” word (from “fassen”, “to grasp”), and this is the literal translation as in the “ungraspable”. But it has also been translated on a figurative level as “inapprehensible” (L/S). For not only can we not touch the angel; we cannot understand it.
An alternative translation:
But one tower did stand tall, did it not? Oh, angel, it did.
It stood tall, even compared to you. Chartres stood tall –
and music went far beyond that, surpassing us. But even
a lover – oh, someone alone at a window darkened
by night – did she reach no further than your knee?
Don’t think that I am beseeching. And yet,
I would beseech you! But you don’t come.
Because my call to you is full of rejection; against
such a powerful current you will not make headway.
My call is like an arm stretched out. And my open hand,
waiting to seize above, remains before you, open,
as a resistance and a warning, you the ungraspable,
far beyond us.
ELEGY VIII
Mit allen Augen sieht die Kreatur
das Offene. Nur unsre Augen sind
wie umgekehrt und ganz um sie gestellt
als Fallen, rings um ihren freien Ausgang.
Was draußen ist, wir wissens aus des Tiers
Antlitz allein; denn schon das frühe Kind
wenden wir um und zwingens, daß es rückwärts
Gestaltung sehe, nicht das Offne, das
im Tiergesicht so tief ist. Frei von Tod.
Ihn sehen wir allein; das freie Tier
hat seinen Untergang stets hinter sich
und vor sich Gott, und wenn es geht, so gehts
in Ewigkeit, so wie die Brunnen gehen.
The sentences, with their encapsulating enjambments and shorter metric lines, support a succinct vignette on the superiority of animal cognition over the imperfect cognition of the human. In earlier Elegies, animals had been used symbolically (as with the bird in the seventh Elegy, representing the will to transcendence), but here the animal is approached from within, the condition of its being linked to a fuller, because unmediated, consciousness of the external world. The eighth Elegy, in fact, carries Rilke’s most extended meditation on what consciousness is, both as an internal cognitive capacity and as something that takes place in time and space.
Translations include: “With all its eyes the creature-world beholds / the open. But our eyes, as though reversed, / encircle it on every side, like traps / set round its unobstructed path to freedom. / What is outside, we know from the brute’s face / alone; for while a child’s quite small we take it / and turn it round and force it to look backwards / at confirmation, not that openness / so deep within the brute’s face. Free from death. / We alone see that; the free animal / has its decease perpetually behind it / and God in front, and when it moves, it moves / within eternity, like the running springs” (L/S), “With all its eyes the natural world looks far / into the Open. Only our eyes look back, / set like traps about all living things, encircled round their free, outward path. / What is, in that outside, we learn only / by looking in their faces; for we force / even the youngest child to turn and look / backwards into design, not at the Open / deep in animals’ eyes. Free of death. / That, only we can see. The free animal / has its decline perpetually behind it / and God before, and in its movement moves / within eternity, like the welling springs” (R/S), “With all its eyes Creation looks on the Open. / Only ours seem to have been turned backwards /and they appear to lay traps all round it / as if to prevent its going free. / What is really out there we only know / by looking at the countenance of creatures. / For we take a young child and force it / to turn around, to see shapes and forms, / and not the Open that is so deep in the face / of an animal. Free from death. / Alone, we see it. The freed creature’s doom / stands behind it and ahead lies God / and when it begins to move, its movement / is through an eternity like a well-spring.” (MC), and “With all eyes the creature sees / the open. Only our eyes are / reversed and placed all around them / like traps, surrounding their free exit. / What is out there we only know from / the animal’s face; for already we turn / the young child forcibly around, so glancing back / it sees only forms, not the open, so / deep in the animals’ face. Free from death. / We alone see death; the free animal / has its perishing always behind itself /and God in front, and when it moves, it moves / in eternity, as wells and fountains move” (R).
The stanza begins with one of the most memorable lines in the Elegies: “Mit allen Augen sieht die Kreatur / das Offene”. “Kreatur” is a broader concept than “Tier, embracing the entire animal world including human life. It means a “created thing”, an “animate being” (OED), “creation” as it appears in the Bible (Mark 16:17, for example). “Kreatur” is the human reduced to its living base, and as such what Rilke is locating in the animal is also a human capacity. All the translators rightly translate “alle Augen” as “with all eyes” rather than with the more logical “with both eyes”. Rilke wishes to stress the plenitude of perception that is granted to animal life but is lacking amongst humans, because restriction defines who we are. The line introduces a matrix of words in the stanza, such as “Antlitz”, “sehen”, and “Tiergesicht, that centre on perception and the place of the perceiving self in the world that looks out into “das Offene”. Some translators put the initial letter of the word in the upper case but that is unnecessary. The unique status of “das Offene” as a concept has already been established through its use as a noun rather than simply as an adjective.
The animal can look out unhindered into the expanse of the world because it lacks self-consciousness; we, however, are condemned to introspection, and must look inwards. Our eyes are “umgekehrt”, from “umkehren” meaning “to turn around” or “to reverse”. Translations include “reversed”, “look back”, “turned backwards”, but none of these capture the sense of interiority implied by the term. “Turned within” is an alternative translation. We are then told that these eyes are “ganz um sie gestellt / als Fallen”. It is a mysterious phrase. What does the “sie” refer to? It is largely translated as “it”, but that means that it must refer to “das Offene”, but that is a neuter word and hence would take “es” as its pronoun. One solution is to expand the pronoun into a clause, as in “all living things” (R/S), but this involves a specific reading of the text. This mysterious “es” prevents us from seeing “was draußen ist”. What is out there is unmediated reality (that which truly is, existing beyond standardised interpretation or the conventions of thought), and we know this only from the expansive and all-embracing “Antlitz” (“face”, L/S, or “countenance”, MC) of animals.
The child is subject to a mental upbringing that prevents it from grasping this unmediated reality: “Was draußen ist, wir wissens aus des Tiers /Antlitz allein; denn schon das frühe Kind /wenden wir um und zwingens, daß es rückwärts / Gestaltung sehe, nicht das Offne, / denn schon das frühe Kind / wenden wir um und zwingens, daß es rückwärts / Gestaltung sehe” (and, once again, Rilke uses the first-person plural pronoun in quite different ways here. The “wir” of the former line cannot possibly be the latter “wir”. One executes an act of sympathy; the latter represses that sympathy. The former “wir” belongs to the lyrical subject, who is in continual development in the Elegies; the latter is a demotic “we”, a collective subject, the social “we”, perhaps, whose exact identity and provenance Rilke never specifies). What the child sees when it looks back, or looks within, is “Gestaltung”. Rilke had used this term before in the third Elegy to describe the controlling influence of the mother, and here in this Elegy it is also intended to describe an imposition. “Gestaltung” has a broad semantic ambit in German, which includes “arrangement”, “design”, “presentation”, “structure”, and it is this last meaning that Rilke seems to be employing here, the sense of the line being that even at an early stage our cognitive capacities are formed in a certain way to prevent us from experiencing the world in a spontaneous and open fashion. Some of the translations, which include “confirmation”, “design”, “shapes and forms” and “forms”, come near to this meaning, but the alternative translation, “formation”, draws our attention to the fact that this is a process imposed by another.
The specifically human awareness of time has been formed through this structuration of consciousness. Unlike us, the animal lives in the ever-present of perpetual time (a state reflected in this stanza through the consistent use of verbs in the present tense). In particular, we are haunted by one particular event that will take place in the future: death. Animals may well encounter the death of other animals, but they will not see this as part of a necessary temporal narrative in which they are involved and which will, at some point in the future, mean the end of their lives. Only we humans see this. Because the animal has no sense of the future, it is “frei von Tod” (“free from death”, L/S, “free of death”, R/S). It already has its “Untergang” behind it, because for it past and future merge into the always present. “Untergang” has been variously translated as “decease”, “decline”, “doom” and “perishing”. “Decline” is (along with “downfall” and “demise”) the literal meaning of “Untergang” in German, but what is being referred to here is “death”, which is the simple alternative translation. The animal has no sense of time, and hence belongs to eternity (where time likewise does not exist). The final line of the stanza, “wenn es geht, so gehts / in Ewigkeit, so wie die Brunnen gehen”, involves an audacious repetition (of “gehen”), a technique that is intended to create the effect of a life that knows (and needs) no progress, but which moves around the circle of the present, just as the fountains continue to give up the same water in a continual process. Only one of the cited translations retains this threefold repetition, but it is important to do so, because it is precisely the theme of repetition that is central here.
An alternative translation:
With all eyes, animal life looks out
into the open. Our eyes only
are turned within, and encircle on every side, like traps
set around its free, outward path. What truly
exists out there, we know only through the gaze
of the animal; for even the young child
we twist it around and compel it to see
formation, not the open that is so
deep in the face of the animal. Free from
death. We alone see that; the free animal
has its death long behind it and, before
it, God, and if this happens, it happens
in eternity, just as fountains happen.
As the stanza develops, the child appears again as a reminder of what might have been possible, but no longer is:
Wir haben nie, nicht einen einzigen Tag,
den reinen Raum vor uns, in den die Blumen
unendlich aufgehn. Immer ist es Welt
und niemals Nirgends ohne Nicht: das Reine,
Unüberwachte, das man atmet und
unendlich weiß und nicht begehrt. Als Kind
verliert sich eins im Stilln an dies und wird
gerüttelt. Oder jener stirbt und ists.
Denn nah am Tod sieht man den Tod nicht mehr
und starrt hinaus, vielleicht mit großem Tierblick.
Assertive temporal motifs dominate this section of the stanza, and they are supported by apodictic statements that tell us that we live on the wrong side of responsive experience. Translations include: “We’ve never, no, not for a single day, / pure space before us, such as that which flowers / endlessly open into: always world, / and never nowhere without no: that pure, / unsuperintended element one breathes, / endlessly knows, and never craves. A child / sometimes gets quietly lost there, to be always jogged back again. Or someone dies and is it. / For, nearing death, one perceives death no longer, / and stares ahead – perhaps with large brute gaze.” (L/S), “Never, not for a single day, do we have / before us that pure space into which flowers / endlessly open. Always there is World / and never Nowhere without the No: that pure / unseparated element which one breathes / without desire and endlessly knows. A child / may wander there for hours, through the timeless / stillness, may get lost in it and be / shaken back. Or someone dies and is it. / For, nearing death, one doesn’t see death; but stares / beyond, perhaps with an animal’s vast gaze.” (M), “Never, for a day, do we have / pure space before us for the opening / of endless flowers. Always there is World / never the negativeless Nowhere: that pure, / unoverlooked, breathed element we know / endlessly, without desire. A child / if left in stillness, can be lost in it / till shaken out. Or we may die: may be it. / For nearing death one loses sight of death / and stares out, vastly perhaps, like animals.” (R/S), “Even for a single day, we do not have / that pure space before us into which flowers / endlessly bloom. We face always World / and never Nowhere without No: / that unsurveyed purity we might breathe /and know without limit and not desire. / In such stillness, a child may lose itself / but then is shaken from it. Or someone / dies and becomes it. So close to death / we do not see death as much, but look out / perhaps with the greater animal gaze.” (MC).
There is general agreement amongst the translators until we reach “Unüberwachte”. It is a typically Rilkean construction, a noun formed from a verb, in this case “überwachen”, which means “to monitor”, “to oversee” or “to supervise”. The word has been variously translated as “unsuperintended”, “unseparated”, “unoverlooked” and “unsurveyed”. The general sense of this line is that we humans are bereft of that “pure” integrity in our contact with the world that animals enjoy. Our contact is always subject to scrutiny by others (or in a self-consciously analytical way by ourselves). It is a form of control, and this is also implied in the “über” component of “überwachen”. An alternative translation is “unsupervised”. We are then told: “Als Kind / verliert sich eins im Stilln an dies und wird / gerüttelt. Oder jener stirbt und ists.” When free of parental control, the child loses itself “im Stilln”. The latter, a neologistic formation created out of the noun “Stille” (“silence”), is lexically close to the verb “stillen”, which means “to breastfeed”, but the logic of the poem suggests that Rilke is evoking here a quality of existence, a “stillness” (R) that the adult does not know. For that reason, a translation that suggests inactivity rather than activity (“wander for hours”) is more appropriate.
The ultimate stillness is found in death, and here one “ists”. Once again, Rilke is using a conjugation of “sein” to express an ontology of selfhood (in this case, a final one). It is an audaciously stark formulation, and Rilke emphasises its starkness by italicising the word. The simple translation “is it” has a similar effect in English. It is possible that what is being described here is the anticipation rather than the fact of death. So much is implied by the concluding line and its reference to the nearness (“nah am Tod”) of death. When this state has been reached, one is no longer preoccupied with the gross facticity of death but “starrt hinaus”. It is a highly condensed phrase. “Starren”, which means “to gaze” or “to stare” in German, presents no problems, but translating the “hinaus” is more difficult and involves interpretation. The sense of the text here seems to be that when near to death we come to accept it as a stage in life: we come to see it in perspective. It is the acceptance of death as a condition for our self-understanding and expansion of vision. Being near to death focuses our attention on life, what it offers and what we will be losing. If this is the case, then we do not “look out” or “ahead” at death; we look beyond it, perhaps finally reaching that simple breadth of vision that only animals know.
An alternative translation:
We never, not even for a single day, have pure
space before us, into which flowers eternally bloom.
Always it is world, and never nowhere without no:
that pure, unsupervised, that one breathes and
knows eternally but does not covet. A child
might lose itself quietly in this, and is
shaken. Or someone dies and is this.
For, close to death, one no longer sees death,
but looks out beyond it, perhaps
with the greater gaze of the animal.
The stanza concludes by returning to the theme of the lovers who, once again, must be held to task for their failure to grasp the potential of experience. In contrast to the animal, their outward gaze always encounters the other, not as presence but as obstacle:
Liebende, wäre nicht der andre, der
die Sicht verstellt, sind nah daran und staunen…
Wie aus Versehn ist ihnen aufgetan
hinter dem andern… Aber über ihn
kommt keiner fort, und wieder wird ihm Welt.
Der Schöpfung immer zugewendet, sehn
wir nur auf ihr die Spiegelung des Frein,
von uns verdunkelt. Oder daß ein Tier,
ein stummes, aufschaut, ruhig durch uns durch.
Dieses heißt Schicksal: gegenüber sein
und nichts als das und immer gegenüber.
As in the earlier Elegies, the theme of sight also frames this stanza. Lovers (perhaps in their carnal loving) come close to that expansive engagement with the world that the animal enjoys, but their fixation on the self prevents this, and they must return again to the world (the “interpreted world of restricted vision). Rilke’s language in this section of the stanza is studiously prosaic. The initial calculating conditional-subjunctive is followed by adverbs of place and placement (“nah”, “hinter”, “gegenüber”) that tie the lovers (and us) to a perspective of non-attainment. Translations include: “Lovers, if the beloved were not there / blocking the view, are close to it, and marvel … As if by some mistake, it opens for them / behind each other … But neither can move past / the other, and it changes back to World. / Forever turned toward objects, we see in them / the mere reflection of the realm of freedom, / which we have dimmed. Or when some animal / mutely, serenely, looks us through and through. / That is what fate means: to be opposite, / to be opposite and nothing else, forever.” (M), “Lovers, if the other were not standing / in the light, approach, marvelling … / An inadvertent view appears to open / behind the other, and is in the World again. / Turned back to face creation’s face, we see / the mere reflection of the free reaches, / which we have darkened. Or an animal / mutely, serenely, looks us through and through. / We call this fate: always to be opposed / and nothing else, opposite, for ever” (R/S), “Lovers – were it not for their loved ones / obstructing their view – they come near it / and are amazed … As if by some mistake, / it opens to them, there, beyond the other … / But neither can slip past the beloved / and World rushes back before them. / Forever turned to the created, we see / in it only reflections of the free realm / we darken with our very presence. / Or it happens, an animal, mutely, quietly, / looks up, stares us through and through. / We call this Fate: to be opposed to World / forever and nothing else but opposite” (MC) and “Lovers, were not another nearby, ever / blocking the view, are near to it and astonished … / As if by oversight it opens for them / behind each other … But neither moves past / the other, and once again there comes to be a world. / The creation is ever turning back, and we / see in its only the reflection of its free space, / darkening before us. Or that some animal, / mutely and serenely looks us through and through. / That is what destiny means: to be opposed / and nothing save this and opposed forever.” (R)
Differences in the translations begin with “der andere” in the first line. It literally means “the other” in German, and it is important to retain the dimension of alterity because this corresponds to the tension and sense of otherness that Rilke sees in the experience of love, and this sense is lost in translations that refer to the “beloved” or “loved ones”. The simple “other” is an alternative translation. The lovers impede one another’s perception of openness, and we too, caught within over-interpreted modes of perception, also fail to see it. We see only a dimmed reflection of what is there. As the crucial central lines of the stanza explain: “Der Schöpfung immer zugewendet, sehn / wir nur auf ihr die Spiegelung des Frein, / von uns verdunkelt”. “Die Schöpfung” is German means “Creation”, in the biblical sense, and hence possesses a degree of religious import that goes well beyond “objects” or even beyond “the created”. Although forever turned to face Creation, we see nothing but the mirror image of what Rilke terms “des Frein”. It is a compact, suggestive word, and difficult to translate. “Das Freie” means “open space” or “the outdoors”, and Rilke used the word as a trope connoting spatial and conceptual liberation in the seventh Elegy. The stem of the word is “frei” meaning “free”, and this has been retained by most translators. Not only can we now only see this “free space” (R) as a mirror image, as something that is mediated (rather than unmediated or immediate) by something else, but by our very presence we have darkened or “dimmed” (M) it. This stanza is dominated by tropes of placement (we are positioned, or position ourselves, in the world in such a way that we do no not see what it contains), and those tropes reach their culmination in the concluding lines: “Dieses heißt Schicksal: gegenüber sein und nichts als das und immer gegenüber”. The tone is apodictic, assertive: this is fate or “this is what destiny means” (R), and Rilke emphasises its depressing finality in the monumental and unsubtle grammar of the lines, which begin and end with the same word: “gegenüber”, positions that frame negativity (“nichts”) and empty repetition (“und immer”). “Gegenüber” simply means “opposite” in German, so to translate it as “opposed” is to offer a specific reading of the text. It also loses the effect of sterile monotony that Rilke is aiming for.
An alternative translation:
Lovers, if the other were not there, distorting sight,
they often come near to this, and marvel …
Almost, as if by mistake, it opens itself to them,
to one behind the other … But neither can
move past the other, and it becomes world again.
Continually turned to face Creation, we only see
the free realm as a mirror image, darkened
by us. Or that some animal, mutely and serenely,
looks through us. This is called fate: to be
opposite nothing more than that
and always opposite.
The second stanza is the most discursive of all the stanzas. It begins with the assertive conditional “wäre”, which introduces a concept that runs throughout the Elegies but one that is not always explicitly formulated: consciousness (“Bewußtheit”):
Wäre Bewußtheit unsrer Art in dem
sicheren Tier, das uns entgegenzieht
in anderer Richtung –, riß es uns herum
mit seinem Wandel. Doch sein Sein ist ihm
unendlich, ungefaßt und ohne Blick
auf seinen Zustand, rein, so wie sein Ausblick.
Und wo wir Zukunft sehn, dort sieht es Alles
und sich in Allem und geheilt für immer.
In contrast to the rigid comportment of the human, the animal combines movement and stasis, the latter being not a sterile lack of motion but the capacity to see its place as firmly fixed in nature, and it is this facility to combine these states that accounts for its experiential expansiveness and depth of vision. The stanza begins with verbs of movement and substantives of change (“Wandel”) and concludes with a single sentence centred on the repetition of two key terms: “sehen” and “Alles”. Translations include: “Did consciousness such as we have exist / in the sure animal that moves towards us / upon a different course, the brute would drag us / round in its wake. But its own being for it / is infinite, inapprehensible, / unintrospective, pure, like its outgazing. / Where we see Future, it sees Everything, / itself in Everything, for ever healed” (L/S), “If the animal moving toward us so securely / in a different direction had our kind of / consciousness –, it would wrench us around and drag us / along its path. But it feels its life as boundless, / unfathomable, and without regard / to its own condition: pure, like its outward gaze. / And where we see the future, it sees all time / and itself within all time, forever healed” (M), “Were the animal that moves towards us / in its assured direction to possess / consciousness such as ours – it would wrench us / round in its steps. But it feels itself / inexhaustible, unapprehended, unaware / of its condition, pure, like its regard. / And where we see the future it sees all, / and, in the all, itself, healed, for ever” (R/S), and “If the animal that moves towards us / with such confidence in another direction, / possessed our kind of consciousness, / it would wrench us around and drag us / under its sway. But it feels its existence / is boundless, unknowable, moves without / regard to its own condition: pure / as its outward gaze. And where we see / the future, it sees all things and itself / amongst all things and forever whole” (MC).
In spite of the difficult syntax of the opening lines, there is general agreement on how to translate them. Differences occur, however, with the central lines: “Doch sein Sein ist ihm / unendlich, ungefaßt und ohne Blick / auf seinen Zustand, rein, so wie sein Ausblick”. It is an attempt to define the animal being in terms of the expansive nature of its gaze. With “Sein”, Rilke is drawing upon a German intellectual tradition that remains alien to most Anglophone translators. “Sein” means “being”, and is often in philosophical contexts put into the upper case as “Being”. One of the cited translators calls it “existence”, which is one meaning of the word; another defines it as “life”, which “being” certainly contains but this loses the existential-metaphysical connotations of the word; while one translator ignores it completely collapsing the personal import of the word into “it feels itself”. We are then told that the animal’s gaze is “unendlich”. This simply converts into “eternal”, but “boundless”, and “inexhaustible” are more graphical communications of the same. This gaze is not only eternal it is also “ungefaßt”. This is a new coinage. Its root is “fassen”, which means “to grab” or “to seize” something, either literally (with one’s hands) or figuratively (in a mental way), which is the way the word is being used here. “Ungefaßt”, therefore, is something that has not been taken or grasped, in other words, has resisted the impositions of classification. It has remained “unfathomable” (M) or “unknowable”, but not “inapprehensible” nor “unapprehended” (which are literal translations), neither of which have clear meanings.
The animal can retain this pristine (“rein”) quality of selfhood because it lacks self-consciousness, being “ohne Blick /auf seinen Zustand”. The preferred translation of “Blick” is “regard”, which seems to combine the visual connotations of the German word with the English synonym “concern”. It is, however, the latter sense of the word that now prevails in contemporary English (the French origins of the word, “regarder”, “to see”, being largely forgotten). Without an “eye on his condition” is an alternative translation, which has the advantage of retaining the optical theme that concludes with “Ausblick”. The latter has been translated as “outgazing”, “outward gaze” and “regard”. “Gaze beyond” is an alternative. The stanza concludes with lines that circle around the tropes of “sehen” and “Alles” where, for once, repetition is not sterility but the confirmation of being in the world.
An alternative translation:
Should our type of consciousness be in that confident
animal, coming to meet us from another direction –,
it would tear us around in its turning. But for it Being is eternal,
untouched and has no eye for
its condition, is pure, as is his gaze beyond.
And where we see the future, it sees everything,
and itself in everything, redeemed for ever.
In the third stanza, memory problematises the unselfconscious integrity of the animal. It has now taken the fatal step of attempting to be human by looking within. The animal self is now fatally linked to consciousness:
Und doch ist in dem wachsam warmen Tier
Gewicht und Sorge einer großen Schwermut.
Denn ihm auch haftet immer an, was uns
oft überwältigt, – die Erinnerung,
als sei schon einmal das, wonach man drängt,
näher gewesen, treuer und sein Anschluß
unendlich zärtlich. Hier ist alles Abstand,
und dort wars Atem. Nach der ersten Heimat
ist ihm die zweite zwitterig und windig.
The animal has become subject to the vices of the human; in this case to memory. Indeed, the animal now seems to have become the human animal. Its pressing warmth has degenerated into a weighty melancholia, and Rilke sketches out its sorry plight with heavy metrical emphasis and banal adverbs such as “doch”, “denn”, “hier” and “dort”. Translations include: “And yet, within the wakefully-warm beast / there lies the weight and care of a great sadness. / For that which often overwhelms us clings / to him as well, – a kind of memory / that what one’s pressing after now was once / nearer and truer and attached to us/ with infinite tenderness. Here all is distance, / there it was breath. Compared with that first home / the second seems ambiguous and fickle” (L/S), “And yet the animal, alert and warm, goes / weighed by the shadow of a sad heart, / like us laden with what overwhelms / us often – the memory that we strive for / was perhaps nearer once, truer to us, / bonded to us with ties infinitely / tender. Here all is set apart; there / it was breath, close. After the first home, / the second seems ambivalent and wind-blown” (R/S), “And yet, in the alert warm-blooded beast, / there is the weight and a concern of a great / melancholy. For it too always feels / the presence of what often overpowers us – / a recollection, as if what we push for / endlessly, once was closer and more true, / our links to it infinitely more tender. / Here, all is distance; there, it was breath. / After that first home, this second / seems to be windswept and uncertain” (MC), “And still there is in the wakeful, warm animal / the weight and the concern of a great sadness. / For it also always bears the burden of what / often overwhelms us, – the recollection, / as if the place we are ever pressing toward was / once nearer and more true and its communion / infinitely tender. Here everything is distance, / and there it was breath. After that first home / the second one is ambiguous and windy” (R).
There is general agreement on how to translate these lines. “Wachsam” means both “alert” and (perhaps slightly archaically) “wakeful”; “Schwermut” is “sadness” or having a “sad heart” (although “melancholy” has a greater resonance); and here, in this world of inauthenticity and failed contact, all is “Abstand”, “set apart” or “is distance”. We, like the warm animal, have left our first home, to find a second that is “zwitterig”, “ambivalent” or “uncertain”.
An alternative translation:
And yet there is in the animal alert and warm
weight and care for a greater presence.
For it too remains subject to something
that often overwhelms us – memory,
as if this that which one has pressing toward
had been nearer, more precious and its contact
eternally tender. Here everything is distance;
but there it was breath. After the first homeland,
the second is to him dubious and windswept.
In the concluding section of the stanza we move back from the “Tier” to “Kreatur”, that broader expanse of the natural world that also includes the human. While the animal looks outward, its gaze embracing the plenitude of the world, the little creatures of the world (us, in fact) seek to remain in the safe cave of the womb:
O Seligkeit der kleinen Kreatur,
die immer bleibt im Schooße, der sie austrug;
o Glück der Mücke, die noch innen hüpft,
selbst wenn sie Hochzeit hat: denn Schooß ist Alles.
Und sieh die halbe Sicherheit des Vogels,
der beinah beides weiß aus seinem Ursprung,
als wär er eine Seele der Etrusker,
aus einem Toten, den ein Raum empfing,
doch mit der ruhenden Figur als Deckel.
Und wie bestürzt ist eins, das fliegen muß
und stammt aus einem Schooß. Wie vor sich selbst
erschreckt, durchzuckts die Luft, wie wenn ein Sprung
durch eine Tasse geht. So reißt die Spur
der Fledermaus durchs Porzellan des Abends.
In the womb, animal life is beyond consciousness; it simply does and remains what it is. Consciousness here has been left far behind. In its place comes self-realisation within the womb, the place where small beasties (described here, perhaps, in mock ironic fashion) disport themselves. Translations include: “Oh, bliss of tiny creatures that remain / for ever in the womb that brought them forth! / Joy of the gnat, that can still leap within, / even on its wedding-day: for womb is all! / Look at the half-assurance of the bird, / through origin almost aware of both, / like one of those Etruscan souls, escaped / from a dead man enclosed within a space / on which his resting figure forms a lid. / And how dismayed is any womb-born thing / that has to fly! As though it were afraid / of its own self, it zigzags through the air / like crack through cup. The way a bat’s track runs / rendingly through the evening’s porcelain” (L/S), “Oh, and the bliss of the little creature / that remains in the womb that bore it: / happiness of the gnat that hops within / even to its marriage! Womb is everything. / And look at the half-certainties / of the bird that knows both states almost /from hatching – as if were the soul / of an Etruscan, released from the dead / only to be received into another space / that has for its lid a reclining figure. / And how bewildered is any creature / that is womb-born and yet has to fly. / As if frightened of itself, it must hurtle / through the air the way a crack goes / through a tea-cup – so a bat’s track / streaks through the porcelain of evening” (MC), and “O the bliss of the tiny creature, / which remains always in the sheltering womb; / O joy of the gnat which still leaps within, / even when it is to marry: for everything is womb. / And look at the partial security of the bird, / which almost knows both from their source, / as if it were the soul of an Etruscan, / out of the dead one and received in a space, / but with its reclining figure serving as a lid. / And how dismayed is the one who must fly / and who emerges from the womb. As if terrified / before itself and crossing through the air, the way a / crack runs through a cup. So the trace of a bat / quivers and tears through the porcelain of evening” (R).
Differences of translation begin with “austrug” in the second line. In the opening lines of this stanza, we are told that tiny creatures remain always in the womb. If that is the case then “austrug” (from “austragen”) cannot be translated as “brought them forth” (L/S). The retentive “bore it” or “sheltering” make more sense (although the latter stretches the normal meaning of the word in German). An alternative is “bore it to completion”. More substantial difficulties are encountered in the central lines of this section: “Und sieh die halbe Sicherheit des Vogels, /der beinah beides weiß aus seinem Ursprung, / als wär er eine Seele der Etrusker, / aus einem Toten, den ein Raum empfing, / doch mit der ruhenden Figur als Deckel”. What is the “beides” that the “half-certainties of the bird” (MC) knows? There is no clear grammatical antecedent. One translator interposes “state”, which clarifies matters, but perhaps it is best to leave the referent unspecified. As so often in the Elegies, aporia, the withholding of semantic closure, may be what Rilke intends. The bird is likened to the soul of an Etruscan, in lines that are syntactically complex and semantically ambivalent. Are the Etruscan and the dead man one and the same, and is it the dead man or the soul that has been received into the space? And what exactly is being covered by the “resting” or “reclining” figure? Certain translations resolve matters by making the Etruscan, the dead man and the resting figure a single subject; other translations leave the matter open, and retain the mystery of one of Rilke’s most enigmatic funereal images.
An alternative translation:
Oh, the bliss of tiny creatures,
who forever remain in the womb that
bore them to completion. O the happiness of the midge
that still leaps within, even on
its wedding day. For the womb is all.
And look at the half certainty of the bird,
which knows both from their source,
as if it were the soul of an Etruscan,
that of a dead man, who was received by space
but with his reclining figure as a covering.
And how distraught is the one that
has to fly and leave the womb. As if
terrified before itself, it zigzags through the air,
just like a crack going through a cup.
Just so does the trace of a bat
tear through the porcelain of an evening.
The fourth stanza is the shortest stanza in the Elegy. It is a succinct statement on the deficiencies of a human subject, who must confront the world to impose order on it. And fail:
Und wir: Zuschauer, immer, überall,
dem allen zugewandt und nie hinaus!
Uns überfüllts. Wir ordnens. Es zerfällt.
Wir ordnens wieder und zerfallen selbst.
Alliteration and shorter lines sketch out what is a comic tableau worthy of vaudeville farce. The short, pithy and assertive structure of the sentences only serve to highlight the redundancy of human action that they describe. Translations include: “And we, spectators always, everywhere, / looking at, never out of, everything! / It fills us. We arrange it. It collapses. / We re-arrange it, and collapse ourselves.” (L/S), “And we: spectators, always, everywhere, / turned toward the world of objects, never outward. / It fills us. We arrange it. It breaks down. / We rearrange it, then break down ourselves.” (M), “And we: onlookers, always, everywhere, / face a world of Things, and never outwards. / We brim with it. Arrange it. It fragments. / We rearrange it and we too fragment” (R/S), “And we: spectators, always, everywhere, / we face all this, never see beyond it! It spills from us. We arrange it. / It falls to pieces. We arrange it again. / We ourselves fall to pieces” (MC), and “And we: spectators, always, and everywhere, / turned toward everything and never outward! / It overfills us. We arrange it. And it falls apart. / We arrange it once again and fall apart ourselves” (R).
There is general agreement on how to translate this short stanza. What separates the translators are largely word order and emphasis (although “world of objects” for “allen” (M) involves a specific reading of the text). “Zerfallen” generates the only major translating difference in the final lines (which are existential slapstick: “Waiting for Godot” avant la lettre). The “zer-” prefix in German is a demonstrative prefix of dissolution, and this is not reflected in “collapse” or “break down”. “Falls apart” and “falls to pieces are perhaps more appropriate, because they capture the sense of dissolution, of a movement away from a centre.
An alternative translation:
But we: spectators, for ever and everywhere,
turned to everything but never beyond.
This fills us totally. We put it in order. It falls apart.
We put it in order again, and fall apart ourselves.
Rilke (or at least his poetic persona) now pauses in the fifth and final stanza to ask a question that has been waiting in the wings throughout this Elegy, a question relating to the bankruptcy of perception (of a gaze that looked not only without but within) that has been addressed in all of the preceding stanzas:
Wer hat uns also umgedreht, daß wir,
was wir auch tun, in jener Haltung sind
von einem, welcher fortgeht? Wie er auf
dem letzten Hügel, der ihm ganz sein Tal
noch einmal zeigt, sich wendet, anhält, weilt –,
so leben wir und nehmen immer Abschied.
Translations include: “Who’s turned us round like this, so that we always, / do what we may, retain the attitude / of someone who’s departing? Just as he, / on the last hill, that shows him all his valley / for the last time, will turn and stop and linger, / we live our lives, for ever taking leave” (L/S), “Who has twisted us around like this, so that / no matter what we do, we are in the posture / of someone going away? Just as, upon / the farthest hill, which shows him his whole valley / one last time. he turns, stops, lingers –, / so we live here, forever taking leave” (M), “Who swivelled us like this, so that whatever / course we take we have the air of someone / who is departing? On the last hill, / which shows him one more time his whole valley, / like him as he turns, and stops, and lingers – / so we live. For ever in farewell” (R/S), “Who has twisted us this way round, / so no matter what we do we are always / in the position of one leaving? Just as, / on the last possible hill from which he can / glimpse his whole valley one final time, / he turns, stops there, he lingers – / so we live on, forever bidding goodbye.” (MC).
Differences of translation centre on two crucial words: “Haltung” and “Abschied”. “Haltung” means “comportment” or “disposition”: it expresses a quality of selfhood that is directed at or to something (possibly seeking to act on something). For that reason, neither “posture” nor “position” are really appropriate, whilst “has the air” suggests mere appearance. “Attitude” perhaps more accurately reflects the active nature of this “disposition”, the latter being an alternative translation. The final lines of the Elegy depict a man standing on the final or furthest ridge in a valley, from where he can view the latter in its entirety. The translators essentially concur until the concluding “Abschied”. The word is a central term in Rilke’s vocabulary, appearing in the second and fourth Elegies. It means “departure” or “leave-taking” in German, but it possesses undertones of resignation and world-weariness, as in Schubert’s famous Lied. “Saying farewell” and “forever in farewell” are not really resonant enough to communicate these qualities of the word. “Forever taking leave” is perhaps more appropriate. All translations, however, are appropriate in using the present participle form: for even when we wish to leave, we cannot. There is no ultimate resolution; just a perpetual movement to a resolution.
An alternative translation:
But who has turned us around this way,
so that we, whatever we do, have the disposition of someone
forever departing. As if on that final ridge, where the valley
shows itself entire once again to him,
he turns around, pauses and stands still –,
this is the way that we live: forever departing.
Rilke, Duino Elegies Comparing Translations Martin Travers 