An early freeze on an early eve in early December. I am stopping briefly in my frigid apartment on a day that has been go-go-go before I dash again into the outdoors cold, the subway, and then, I hope, the overheated snug of a birthday party, then, after the party, to a bus aiming for the greater than ever cold of upstate New York.
But it all stops for a moment, for a book, a present for the birthday girl/woman. (I would really not mind getting the book myself some day–hint hint.) The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, a bilingual version edited and translated by Stephen Mitchell. I’ve had other books that were selections from Rilke — I guess mine was Selected Poems. This is more comprehensive.
What I love about Rilke: well, everything. (What I don’t love about Rilke: not much, although sometimes I find the longer poems, a bit difficult to sustain as a reader. But truthfully I have this problem with any long poem that doesn’t contain a clear narrative. The Odyssey, for example, is okay.)
What I find especially remarkable is the blend of music and meaning. I don’t read German enough to get anything but the sound; but the poems, amazingly, the same poems whose sensations and points and observations are so subtle and perspicacious and unique in English often rhyme in German, or slant-rhyme, and scan, and if not, still have a lilting haunting music (even in my halting pronunciation.)
And then, there’s “the vision thing.” Rilke continually sees what is there, and what is not there, but what is, of course, really there, the “reflections upon the polished surface of our being”– only that’s not a good quote truly because he sees the core, not just the reflections, and he see that that is beneath or outside of the polish: the gaze of Apollo in the headless torso (“Archaic Torso of Apollo”), the shell of face of the woman weeping who has left it in her hands (The Notebooks of Malte Laurid Brigge), the ghost of his lost friend (Requiem.) He sees all these things (and they see us), then he tells us we must change our lives.
But I’m not quite changing mine yet. (Got the book for someone else.) Must run.
(ps – sorry this painting not really Greek! Edited!)
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