Unthinkingly,
as I’m leaving for work this morning, I grab a book: The
Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke. What I forgot, until just a few seconds ago, was
that he was born on this day (1875).
I’ve known this poet for a long time, and appreciate the sincere depth of his
melancholic insight. His works wreak of existential despair, and bare the same
oppressive mark of despondency that plagued Confessional poets such as Plath and Sexton and Berryman.
I would warn anyone who would read Rilke’s works to do so in small doses. His poetic
darkness isn’t the kind of darkness we see reflected in works such as Bauldelaire's Les Fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil). No … Rilke’s darkness is dangerously
close to suicidal reflection and flirts with despair’s menacing onslaught (Baudelaire’s
darkness is merely that of audacity).
With that said, I will say that I love this poet. In July I composed a list of
my top 20 favorite poets, Rilke was my fifth. The poem below (Duino Elegy #9) I
carry in my wallet …
Duino Elegy #9
Why, when this span of life might be fleeted away
as laurel,
a little darker than all
the
surrounding green, with tiny waves on the border
of every
leaf (like the smile of a wind): - oh, why
have to be
human, and shunning Destiny,
long for
Destiny?...
Not because happiness
really
exists,
that precipitate profit of imminent loss.
Not out of
curiosity, not just to practise the heart,
that could
still be there in laurel...
But
because being here is much, and because all this
that's
here, so fleeting, seems to require us and strangely
concerns
us. Us the most fleeting of all. Just once,
everything,
only for once. Once and no more. And we, too,
once. And
never again. But this
having
been once on earth - can it ever be cancelled?
And so we
keep pressing on and trying to perform it,
trying to
contain it within our simple hands,
in the
more and more crowded gaze, in the speechless heart.
Trying to
become it. To give it to whom? We'd rather
hold on to
it all for ever... But into the other relation,
what,
alas! do we carry across? Not the beholding we've here
slowly
acquired, and no here occurrence. Not one.
Sufferings,
then. Above all, the hardness of life,
the long
experience of love; in fact,
purely
untellable things. But later,
under the
stars, what use? the more deeply untellable stars?
Yet the
wanderer too doesn't bring from mountain to valley
a handful
of earth; of for all untellable earth, but only
a word he
has won, pure, the yellow and blue
gentian.
Are we, perhaps, here just for saying: House,
Bridge,
Fountain, Gate, Jug, Fruit tree, Window, -
possibly:
Pillar, Tower?... but for saying, remember,
oh, for
such saying as never the things themselves
hoped so
intensely to be. Is not the secret purpose
of this
sly Earth, in urging a pair of lovers,
just to
make everything leap with ecstasy in them?
Threshold:
what does it mean
to a pair
of lovers, that they should be wearing their own
worn
threshold a little, they too, after the many before,
before the
many to come,... as a matter of course!
Here is
the time for the Tellable, here is its home.
Speak and
proclaim. More than ever
things we
can live with are falling away, for that
which is
oustingly taking their place is an imageless act.
Act under
crusts, that will readily split as soon
as the
doing within outgrows them and takes a new outline.
Between
the hammers lives on
our heart,
as between the teeth
the
tongue, which, in spite of all,
still
continues to praise.
Praise
this world to the Angel, not the untellable: you
can't
impress him with the splendour you've felt; in the cosmos
where he
more feelingly feels you're only a novice. So show him
some simple
thing, refashioned by age after age,
till it
lives in our hands and eyes as a part of ourselves.
Tell him
things. He'll stand more astonished: as you did
beside the
roper in Rome or the potter in Egypt.
Show him
how happy a thing can be, how guileless and ours;
how even
the moaning of grief purely determines on form,
serves as
a thing, or dies into a thing, - to escape
to a bliss
beyond the fiddle. These things that live on departure
understand
when you praise them: fleeting, they look for
rescue
through something in us, the most fleeting of all.
Want us to
change them entirely, within our invisible hearts
into - oh,
endlessly - into ourselves! Whosoever we are.
Earth, is
it not just this that you want: to arise
invisibly
in us? Is not your dream
to be one
day invisible? Earth! invisible!
What is
your urgent command, if not transformation?
Earth, you
darling, I will! Oh, believe me, you need
no more of
your spring-times to win me over: a single one,
ah, one,
is already more than my blood can endure.
Beyond all
names I am yours, and have been for ages.
You were
always right, and your holiest inspiration
is Death,
that friendly Death.
Look, I am
living. On what? Neither childhood nor future
are
growing less.... Supernumerous existence
wells up in my heart.
