Rainer Maria Rilke:

Nichts ist mir zu klein, und ich lieb es trotzdem
und mal' es auf Goldgrund und groß
und halte es hoch, und weiß nicht von wem
löst es die Seele los . . .

---

Ich habe Das Stunden-Buch von Rainer Maria Rilke vor langer Zeit einmal geschenkt bekommen. Dank Dir, Felix! Es ist ein kleiner Gedichtband aus dem Jahre 1924, zwei Jahre vor Rilkes Tod vom Insel Verlag gedruckt. Und ganz klein steht dabei "50. bis 54. Tausend". Das waren halt die Zeiten zwischen den beiden Weltkriegen, in denen die Leute wenig außer der Poesie hatten...

---

Mein "Stundenbuch"

"Da neigt sich die Stunde
und rührt mich an..."

Rainer Maria Rilke:

There's nothing too small that I would not love
and paint, on gold ground and whole -
not knowing from whom (as I lift it above)
it is liberating the soul . . .

---

This is the first poem - and, I venture to guess, an introduction of sorts - to Rilke's Book of Hours. This work contains three "books": Vom mœnchischen Leben (1899) (Of life as a monk), Von der Pilgerschaft (1901) (Of pilgrimage), and Von der Armuth und vom Tode (1903) (Of poverty and of death).

You know, of course, what a "book-of-hours" is: A book of prayers and sometimes other devotional images and scriptures. There exist some splendid examples of illuminated medieval manuscripts, like the famous Les trés riches heures du Duc de Berry from the early fifteenth century, with marvellous depictions of the French countryside throughout the seasons. In its narrower sense, the "Book-of-Hours" is the Horologion of the Eastern, the Breviarum (breviary) of the Western Church. Rilke's use of it as metaphor harks back to those times - but portends, of course, a much broader meaning.

The monk painting the image: Is that the poet writing the poem? Is illumination vocation?

Well, suit yourself to proof the pudding. It might, after all, be a higher state of consciousness you are encountering.

Just be warned: Poems, and particularly such as these, should really be read in the original. One feels already that even the German isn't (Maria says "plastic"), well, let's say, malleable enough to assume the form he envisions. And to take that form into English makes it brittler still. I hope it will not break under the prosodial strain - but if it does, please don't blame René Maria, blame Yours Truly. And learn German. It might be worth it.

---

You ask why this strange frame? Follow the links on the bottom of the page and view the rose it sprang from. It bloomed in Vienna's Volksgarten - and belongs, of course, to a different realm than Rilke's Rose. Incidentally: Rilke liked to cultivate roses toward the end of his life; his gravestone speaks of the rose (an epitaph of his own words and choice for the occasion); and he thought - probably in error - that one of his roses had caused his death (from an infection by a thorn-prick) in his last, leukaemia-ridden days.

Rilke and his symbol of the rose: tomes have been written about that topic. And if you are more generally interested, here is a Wikipedia article with biography and all other kinds of Rilke goodies. Plus gif images of the 1918 print of the Stundenbuch available from that source. Naturally, Rilke has all kinds of links on the Web.

As I said above, there is no substitute for proofing the pudding yourself, i.e. for taking in the original poem. That's all that counts. That and perhaps to give Rilke's monastic recipe your very own tryout...

Walter A. Aue: In the Monastery
(Monastery Heiligenkreuz, Lower Austria)

Rainer Maria Rilke:

Rainer Maria Rilke:

Rainer Maria Rilke:

Wir bauen Bilder vor dir auf wie Wände;
so daß schon tausend Mauern um dich stehn.
Denn dich verhüllen unsre frommen Hände,
sooft dich unsre Herzen offen sehn.

---

Da ich schon einmal damit angefangen habe, gleich noch ein paar meiner Bilder vom vorigen Jahr:

Walter A. Aue: Supreme
(The Cloisters, Ft. Tryon Park, New York)

Walter A. Aue: Feeling
(Minorite Church, Vienna, Austria)

Walter A. Aue: Knowing
(The Cloisters, New York)

Walter A. Aue: As Above
(The Cloisters, New York)

Walter A. Aue: Madonna and Child
(The Cloisters, New York)

Walter A. Aue: Sovereignty
(Wiener Neustädter Altar, Stefansdom, Vienna)

Walter A. Aue: Propitiation

(Ich kenne den Namen des Malers nicht, aber dieses beachtenwerte Gemälde von 1462 ist bekannt als "Hornberger Votivbild" und steht in der Kirche Maria am Gestade in Wien.)
(I don't know the name of the painter, but this magnificent oil from 1462 can be found in in the Church of Maria am Gestade in Vienna, Austria.)

Walter A. Aue: Still Enough Stars
(Sopron, Hungary)

---

---

Ich versteh' ja nichts von bildender Kunst. Meine Bildung liegt nicht in Bildern, wenn überhaupt. Aber Freude macht's mir trotzdem.

Da hat mich also gerade ein Kommentar per E-Mail - Dank Dir, Friedl! - erreicht. Mit beigelegtem Verkündigungsbild, weil meine Webseite schon einmal damit angefangen hat:

Lippo Memmi (ca. 1285-1361) and
Simone Martini (ca. 1280-1344):

Verkündigung (Ausschnitt)

(Ein ausfürlicheres und klareres Bild können Sie von der Web Gallery of Art unter dem Suchwort "Annunciation" erlangen - fast weitere 300 "Verkündigungen" sind dort Ihr Lohn! )

[For more detail, check Web Gallery of Art, my favorite website for old paintings. Its search machine will offer you close to 300 images for "annunciation". Bless you for watching, as the Vicar of Dibley said.]

Friedl writes: "...I was pleased and amused by the Fra Angelico annunciation. Annunciations have always fascinated me. If I ever had studied art history I would have worked on a dissertation about annunciations. I found the devices which were used to separate Gabriel and Mary (particularly in the past) extremely interesting. There are always various and sometimes clever items or objects between the two subjects - mostly pillars, steps, tables, often lilies and even the Holy Spirit in form of a dove. And at times, quite correctly (here a woman is speaking), Mary is rather defensive, turned away, actually horrified..."

Kann man Ihr auch nicht verübeln, liebe Friedl. Wer will schon Lilien gegen einen Dornenzweig(?) umtauschen?

Rainer Maria Rilke:

We're building walls of images before You,
which hide You thousandfold like masonry -
for our hands enrobe You and adore You
while our hearts can see You openly.

---

How poor this translation actually is may be easily recognized by comparing lines three and four: Rilke's magnificently alliterated brush strokes

"Wir holen aus den alten Farbenschalen
die gleichen Striche und die gleichen Strahlen"

lost their divine shine and, under translation, dried down to a dull

"From ancient pigment trays we pick and marry
the selfsame lines to colors salutary"

- and all that just to satisfy prosody! Indeed, I stumbled where I should have strutted; I puttered where I should have painted. Sorry, dear Reader!

This wouldn't bother you as much as the obscure reference to "our Saint" - who is he? Oh, you must be American! And, sorry again, I do not know whom Rilke had in mind. One guess could be Fra Angelico (Guido di Pietro, who painted some of the most beautiful madonnas and who has been justly beatified for it).

But maybe, and much more reasonably, Rilke refers here to the patron saint of painters' guilds, St. Luke the Evangelist, who according to legend painted a picture of the Virgin Mary.

Anyhow, here are two illustrative and very famous oil paintings, both done around the same year (1437), but very different in school, style and sentiment:

Fra Angelico (about 1387-1455):
Annunciation

Rogier van der Weyden (about 1400–1464):
St. Luke painting the Virgin Mary

---

A further question? Why does Rilke's monk maintain that painting the Virgin Mary may not be done in an "arbitrary" manner? Well, depending on time, place and creed, different rules had to be followed in the painting of religious subjects. In fact, the Fra Angelico shown above - download yourself a better copy of this magnificent oil from the Web! - was at least in part designed for the teaching purposes of Fra Angelico's order, the Dominicans.

Religious rules for artistic expression were (and are) particularly strict in the Christian monasteries of Eastern (Byzantine) Rites. Their icons are considered objects of devotion rather than objects of art, both in making and using. And, after all, our monk's job of painting them is what this poem refers to.

---

You are astonished by the weight the Catholic and Orthodox Christian Churches place on the Blessed Virgin? I would go much further than that.

The Catholic Church has often been criticized for its treatment of females. But - at least as measured by art, ritual and, most importantly, the number of prayers from its members - it is really a female church. Because it is the Church of Mary: Run by males serving a female, and attended by vastly more females than males.

Because, as far as my knowledge of such things goes, many more prayers are directed to the Madonna than to her Son - never mind God Father or the Holy Spirit, who would rank in such an (admittedly sacrilegous) statistic even way behind some of the more popular Saints.

But the existence of a "Church of Mary" would make the Holy Virgin a Goddess, you object? Right you are. Not in dogma, of course. But definitely in practice.

Plus, consider this: The Catholic Church addresses the Madonna as "Mother of God" (as opposed to, say, 'Mother of Jesus'). And the "biological father" of Jesus was not God Father, but the Holy Spirit. And Mary - according to a dogma pronounced ex cathedra just in the past century - was without sin, even original sin, and has hence ascended into Heaven with body and soul intact. Just as a "God" would need to have done.

You find that confusing? I don't think it is. All you need to do is to imagine this event occurring on a mythical, a metaphorical - as opposed to a catechismal - level. Or, if you are not on this level and perhaps of a nastier disposition, consider a "scientific", i.e. historical approach by doing a 'comparative-religion' hatchet job on the myths of, among others, the Hindus, Sumerians, Babylonians and Egyptians on one side and the Middle-Age Europeans on the other...

But, really, our simple yardstick of prayer should suffice as a single argument on a sincere website such as this. Did not Jesus Christ say that we "shall know them by their fruits"?

Yes, of course I am familiar with dogma and its treatment of prayer vis-á-vis the special privileges of divinity. But, to me, a true prayer cannot be dogmatic. After all, a prayer is a prayer is a prayer.

So why do more prayers address the Madonna than the Trinity? Here is a visual explanation, one among many...

Walter A. Aue: Protection
(Central church and monastery, Sopron, Hungary)

---

In fact, in Europe whole countries are dedicated to Her. Countries that She is credited saving at some dangerous time of their history. Not to mention countless examples of regions, towns and hamlets, which attribute their sometime deliverance from the ravages of nature or war to Her divine intervention.

Walter A. Aue: "V" for Victory?
(The Cloisters, Ft. Tryon Park, New York)

Sorry for the blasphemy - but if this were a TV contest of real-time participation and popularity, perhaps along the lines of a hypothetical Christian Idol broadcast by one of those "inspirational" stations, whose would be the final victory?

---

---

On the left side, I posed the hypothetical question about the horrified Virgin in this beautiful Annunciation from the Siena School: Who would want to exchange lilies for hawthorn (if such, indeed, the painting shows)?

Here is an admittedly enigmatic, famously controversial and thoroughly modern answer to this question:

Edvard Munch (1863-1944):

"Madonna"

You claim that I am speculating? Well, maybe. But Munch's famous image - which exists in various forms from lithograph to oil painting - has often been compared to the classical Annunciations. Don't ask me to explain the deeply human horror of it all. Art history is still terra incognita for me, although I admittedly like to stroll through its scenery now and then.

But if you must know something further about Munch's so-called "Madonna", screaming scandal and all, just put on your googles on and have a good look!

Rainer Maria Rilke:

Und meine Sinne, welche schnell erlahmen,
sind ohne Heimat und von dir getrennt.

---

Natürlich ist es vor allem Wohllaut und Gesang. Wen interessiert schon die analytische Moderne? Die mystische Seele singt da eine weitaus schönere Melodie...

---

Walter A. Aue: Blossoming Light
(Clematis, Klosterneuburg Monastery, Lower Austria)

Walter A. Aue: The Key
(Göttweig Monastery, Lower Austria)

Walter A. Aue: Transparent Wall
(Klosterneuburg Monastery Church, Lower Austria)

Walter A. Aue: Subconscious
(Sopron, Hungary)

Walter A. Aue: Window or Mirror?
(Krems a/d Donau, Lower Austria)

Rainer Maria Rilke:

And all my senses, which so soon turn lame,
are without home and hidden from your eyes.

---

Walter A. Aue: Glistening Frames
(Icon wall, Greek-Orthodox Church, Vienna, Austria)

---

This is way over the top, you say? What in heaven is Rilke talking about?

If you ask me, it's about the psyche of an Eastern-rite monk in his cell. And Rilke did have some experience in this regard. Not only from an extensive visit to a Russian monastery in his younger days, but also from his own life right up to the end. Could he have otherwise written poems about, say, angels and the young dead (e.g. in the Duino Elegies) as if those were part and parcel of his many hide-away households?

Incidentally - just in case you are interested - the God to whom the idealistic monk speaks in his mind will exist only as long as the monk's mind will keep harboring Him. And both God and the monk know it...

(If you find that kind of God very odd, or at least at odds with Western religious perceptions, check Luke 17:21. Yes, yes, I know. This passage can be spun different ways. But so can most of what's in the Good Books, never mind the Apocrypha. Ironically, such ambiguity sets in when the ecclesiastical alchemy changes from the spiritual/metaphorical/poetical to the documental/historical/judicial. Likewise spake Zarathustra et al.. It's easy to make coal out of diamonds; it is difficult to make diamonds out of coal. Chemically speaking, at least...)

And just as incidentally, yes, the psyche of the mystic is indeed accurately described by the poem. And, no, it doesn't take much erudition or experience to confirm that. Too much has already been written about the state of mystic consciousness.

But, still, if the mere meaning of the poem were the whole measure of its merit, we'd be much less enamored by it. Because what is said in a poem matters much less than how it is said.

Walter A. Aue: Monastery Garden
(The Cloisters, New York)

But this poem does hold a lot of meaning, say you? And that is what Rilke is all about? What much else is there?

Lots, say I. Rilke offers a miracle of verbal mood and music. What's Rilke's meaning compared to that?

Would mystics have to have their daily mystical fix if it consisted of but declarative sentences about, say, bliss in a dark cloud?

Well, yes, I know. Americans tend to (re)search for meaning and, they hope, recipes to be derived therefrom. Can't blame them either. That's where their proverbial ingenuity comes from. But in poetry...

And while it's easy to translate a Rilke poem literally, it is difficult if not impossible to translate its music and mood. So readers without a good knowledge of German have to make do with the Rilke translations available to them. And, of necessity, be short-changed in the process.

(And I'll quickly throw in my very own mea culpa, ok? For poetic flaws first and foremost, but also for prosodic ones: You did notice, did you not, that I changed the original gendermix of rhymes to all-masculine?)

But let's remount my very own soap-box: Americans are often dazzled by erudite analysis, particularly of the superficially brilliant kind. And pity the poor prof in a German Department who has to teach Rilke's mere meaning because Rilke's much more important mood and music, well, sort of wastes away under the analytical onslaught of the anglophone textbook. How then can a student ever learn to appreciate the beauty in Rilke's poetry?

(And, sad to say, in other German - sorry, not only German! - poetry. Plus, even sadder to say, certain illustrious anglophone poetry whose eruditely constructed Cantos are designed and destined to become Wastelands of those still young at heart and experience (i.e., not yet cynical). Saddest, but fortunately so with a silver lining: Poetry remains a mirror more than a window, just as one of the photographs on the left side suggests...)

Rainer Maria Rilke:

Du bist nicht mehr inmitten deines Glanzes,
wo alle Linien des Engeltanzes
die Fernen dir verbrauchen mit Musik, -
du wohnst in deinem allerletzten Haus.
Dein ganzer Himmel horcht in mich hinaus,
weil ich mich sinnend dir verschwieg.

---

Walter A. Aue: Thinking Space
(Maria am Gestade, Vienna, Austria)

Walter A. Aue: Mind Game
(Göttweig Monastery, Lower Austria)

Rainer Maria Rilke:

You do no longer stay among your glances,
where all the traces of your angels' dances
use up your far beyond by music's glee.
You now stay in your last and farthest home
and all your heavens search for me alone -
for, thinking, I withheld myself from thee.

---

The monk playing a hard-to-get game with God? It seems more than that.

But we'll never know. Language is the biggest liar of them all. And "sinnend" is "thinking" only in the dictionary. The poetic halo of "sinnend" is "reflecting", "pondering", "meditating", maybe even "day-dreaming". But then, who knows what Rilke really meant?

And "thinking" doesn't lend itself well to that game of mind in which dualities unite. God (or the mystically inclined brain, or Braman incarnated, etc.: take your pick) and the mystic establish a relationship beyond thinking, in which borders turn fluid and actions become relativ and reciprocal.

The "fusion" with God that follows, and the but consequent final "I AM God" of the mystic is less talked about in the monastery, possibly because quite a few of the prominent Catholic mystics - though nowadays endowed with saintly titles - did not cherish the fast-tracked chance to verify their visions at the stake.

But don't worry. Our meditating monk hasn't gone all the way - yet...

Walter A. Aue: Adam
(The Cloisters, Fort Tryon Park, New York)

Walter A. Aue: Mind Garden
(The Cloisters, New York)

Note: You might think I have used the same image twice. Not so. This one - just look careful at the thin rectangular seams! - is the reflection of the cloister in a glassed wall. But cloister is all we recognize. Just as we see not what is, but what our mind makes of it. Which, much to our benefit, is much less accurate than what we see in a mirror, or a mirror darkly...

Rainer Maria Rilke:

Duft geht aus aus aus deinen runden Zweigen.
Und du fragst nicht, ob ich wachsam sei;
furchtlos, aufgelöst in Säften, steigen
deine Tiefen still an mir vorbei.

---

"September"
(Aus dem Stundenbuch des Duc de Berry; Weingarten vor Chateau de Saumur)

Walter A. Aue: Aus dem Granit
(Findlinge nahe Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia)

Walter A. Aue: Wurzeln
(St. Margaret's Bay Wanderpfad, Nova Scotia)

Walter A. Aue: Flowing Wood
(Alter Wegweiser, Nova Scotia)

Rainer Maria Rilke:

From your branches you keep perfume spending
and you ask not for my watchful eye;
fearless in the tree saps are ascending
your dissolvèd depths that pass me by.

---

Walter A. Aue: Passed By
(Puddle on a trail, Nova Scotia)

---

"Depths that pass me by" and "depths that pass by me" are not necessarily the same thing, you say? Congratulations, your German is excellent! But what if Rilke intended a double meaning here? And, of more immediate importance, what about the poor translator's need for a rhyme?

---

Walter A. Aue: Black Sun
(Garden sunflower, Nova Scotia)

Walter A. Aue: Untouchable
(Plant shadow on rock, Nova Scotia)

Walter A. Aue: Dark Water
(Lewis Lake Park, Nova Scotia)

---

Being the silent observer: It reminds me of the succinct prose of Eckhart Tolle that, Oprah-propelled, recently shot to the top of the New York Times bestseller list.

The brain observing that very brain operating?

(It is proper and instructive to use the word "brain" here - and difficult to avoid its schizoid implications. With language being the liar it is, and with words - really metaphors - like 'self', 'ego', 'soul', 'mind', and 'spirit' being bandied about - words as helpful as they are misleading - I may be excused for avoiding the conundrum of endless further questions by using a word all can define and agree upon: BRAIN. Yes, I know, I am being devious. But this is just my human nature, speak evolution-evolved brain-circuit array.)

The problem is an extremely ancient one, and has been unearthed again and again. And suppressed again and again by the silent assumption that there is indeed a reality "out there": a reality that can only be experienced "in here". To the human this seems to be the more comforting of (at least) two alternatives.

I simply mention this conceptual cerebral split because the poem gave me the chance to. But it will take a much more powerful mind than mine to turn that unpalatable truth into hard-wired brain memory.

Fortunately, we don't need logic here. What we need is feeling for the innate beauty of the poem. The poem lets you access the, no, a truth in form of a metaphor, in form of a living image. And what a beautiful image it is, particularly in the marvellous last two lines!

---

Similes and metaphors, what else. But not only because they serve as tropes in poetry. Not only because they are the basis of language and, later, ideographs and hieroglyphs. There is also this rich archive of ancient wisdom, of ancient myth, that is accessible only because of their support. Because a myth defined would mean a myth denied. Besides, many "real" words are really of mythical, not physical reality. Which will continue long after the neurophysiology of the mystical experience has been fully explored.

Our painter-monk has advanced. As friendly as the images of vineyard and orchard are, it is "the dark night of the soul" through which the depths of God rise and, inexorably, bypass the Warden's Ego. The chasm between the God part and the Ego part of the monk's brain is widening.

Only poetry can bridge this logical lobotomy, this modus operandi of meditation...

---

But you object? It isn't clear who is Ego and who is God? Well, of course. You haven't listened to the message. That is, you haven't listened to it with your heart, you merely heard it (however audiologically correct) in your head.

You know why comedians are the saddest of people? You know why teachers are the worst educators of their children? You know why (real) jokes are fraught with the most disturbing psychological insights? Jokes always feed off the tragic and vice versa - whether political correctness accepts it or not. (If you must say it in our times, just say every Yang needs his Yin. Or every Animus needs his Anima.)

In art, each thought is shadowed by its opposite. No human is complete without his shadow - and no poem is either. When you finally meet your shadow, you shall find that it is You. And when you meet a poem, truly meet it, it will likewise be You. Your soul, as Schnitzler says, is a wide land ("Die Seele ist ein weites Land").

But no, dear Reader, that's not an analysis. That's a feeling. Something to absorb, not to understand. But it is "true" - i.e. perceived by own experience - nevertheless.

You claim that's unscientific? Heavens, NO. (Or: Hell, NO - scientifically that's the same thing.) Illogical perhaps - depending on the kind of logic you use - but certainly not unscientific. How do they say in neuroscience? "Neurons that fire together, wire together". So there...

Rainer Maria Rilke:

Und die das Dorf verlassen, wandern lang,
und viele sterben vielleicht unterwegs.

---

Walter A. Aue: Ausgang
(Kreuzweg, Stift Heiligenkreuz, Österreich)

Walter A. Aue: Das letzte Haus
(Krems a/d Donau, Österreich)

Rainer Maria Rilke:

And those that leave the hamlet wander wide
and many die perhaps along the way.

---

Note: The poems before this one were all taken from the "First Book" (Of Monastery Life - or, of you like, Of Life as a Monk, or even Of Mystical Life). This poem is from the "Second Book" (Of Pilgrimage).

Walter A. Aue: Along the Way
(Way of the Cross, Monastery Heiligenkreuz, Austria)

Rainer Maria Rilke:

Da blühen Jungfraun auf zum Unbekannten
und sehnen sich nach ihrer Kindheit Ruh;
das aber ist nicht da, wofür sie brannten,
und zitternd schließen sie sich wieder zu.
Und haben in verhüllten Hinterzimmern
die Tage der enttäuschten Mutterschaft,
der langen Nächte willenloses Wimmern
und kalte Jahre ohne Kampf und Kraft.
Und ganz im Dunkel stehn die Sterbebetten,
und langsam sehnen sie sich dazu hin;
und sterben lange, sterben wie in Ketten
und gehen aus wie eine Bettlerin.

---

J. Henry Fuseli
(Johann Heinrich Fuessli, 1741-1825)

Der Nachtmahr

Walter A. Aue

Musikalische Maske
(Schaufenster, Wien, Innere Stadt)

James Ensor (1860-1944):
Intrigen (Detail)

Edvard Munch (1863-1944):
Abends auf der Karl Johan Strasse (Detail)

Edvard Munch: Angst

Rainer Maria Rilke:

There, virgins, blooming, toward the unknown turning,
are yearning for their childhood's quiet peace;
not finding that for which they had been burning,
they shiver - and they close again and freeze.
And they are living, in apartments hidden,
through motherhoods of disappointed frights,
the endless nights of sighs and whimpers ridden
and frigid years bereft of fights and rights.
In deepest darkness stand their death-beds waiting
and their own longing draws them closer still;
and they die slowly, die in chains abating
to vanish like a beggar-woman will.

---

I found this nightmarish poem about the horrors of the city fascinating, particularly in a Book of Hours. (The double meaning of 'Stundenbuch', 'Book of Hours', is similar in German and English and needs no further clumsy explanations from me.)

But I have selected a few famous paintings to mediate its impact. Many more, sad to say, could be found. Not to mention some remembrances of own lives passed.

Rilke was made into a "girl" for the first six years years of his forever after sensitized and troubled life. Is this what lent the "modern" feminist slant to the final stanza?

In any case, since we started with Munch's so-called "Madonna" earlier on - and shockingly so - we might as well continue with this famous painter - who, like James Ensor [ see left side :-( ] was a contemporary of Rilke:

Edvard Munch: Puberty

Edvard Munch: The Dead Mother

---

But I really don't want to trouble you further with urban horror visions. So the next poem shall look at "Armut", at "poverty", from the other side of the Mount: a look at the blessed poor.

Rainer Maria Rilke:

Sie werden dauern über jedes Ende
und über Reiche, deren Sinn verrinnt,
und werden sich wie ausgeruhte Hände
erheben, wenn die Hände aller Stände
und aller Völker müde sind.

---

Sie haben meine Jamben in der letzten Zeile nachgezählt und sind mir auf einen Schwindel draufgekommen: Vier zu fünf wäre nicht fair, finden Sie? Oh, Sie mit den ganz feinen Haaren!

Was ich zu meiner Entschuldigung anzuführen hätte? Jo mei, eine Menge. Aber um Sie zu beruhigen, versuchen Sie's doch mal vierlangs:

"and nations tire out at last."

Hatte ich ja auch am Anfang da stehen. Aber dann fing ich an zu grübeln:

Warum wohl Rilke - und nur in der letzten Zeile der letzten Strophe! - vom Pentameter zum Tetrameter wechselt? Naja, weil's so besser klingt. Und etwas abschließt. Ein kurzer, linker Haken - eine "punchline", wie die Angelsachsen sagen würden.

Ja, sehen Sie, verehrte Leserin,

"and all the nations tire out at last"

mit seinem Anklang an die vorhergehende Zeile - wie bei Rilke - klingt halt noch ein bißchen besser im Englischen. Das hätte selbst Rilke gutgeheißen. Denn für ein Gedicht ist es vor allem wichtig, daß es wirksam sei.

Was ich mir auch für meine armselige Übersetzung erhoffe. Denn die Wirksamkeit ist das sine qua non für beide: Das, was die Frucht tausendfach sich füllen läßt...

---

Walter A. Aue: Wilde Brombeeren
(St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia)

Rainer Maria Rilke:

They will continue way beyond all ending
and way beyond the realms whose time has passed -
like rested hands that, ready for the mending,
shall rise when all authorities are bending
and all the nations tire out at last.

---

That's a bit optimistic, isn't it? Or does that merely foreshadow Marx and the rise of the proletariat? Or, as Ortega y Gasset put it, the revolt of the masses?

You claim that "the poor" occur only in translation? Right you are. But I have a ready explanation. This poem is taken from the Third Book "Of Poverty and Death".

The bigger question is this: What, then, is "poverty" and who, then, are "the poor"? A book-of-hours is a book of prayer, of poetic and spiritual insight - not a communist manifesto. The Stundenbuch poems resonate with biblical images, here for instance the (in)famous "be fruitful and multiply" from Genesis in the first line. So Rilke's "poor" might well be the "poor in spirit" from the Sermon on the Mount. And the poor in this particular poem are the meek that shall inherit the earth (and the mourners that shall be comforted).

But the beatitudes do not resonate with a New-Ager like you? No problem. Try "non-attachment" and "being, not ego" from the fanciful Western vocabulary of "Eastern" thought. Wouldn't those that "still im Regen stehen ohne Dach", that quietly stand in the rain without a roof, readily qualify for New-Age meditation? (Or for admission to the nearest State House for the Bewildered?)

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But I strayed blasphemously far from my soap box. The question was whether the powers-that-be really would grow tired, drop their levers, and let the poor ascend to the kingdom (never mind which kingdom).

Seems to me to depend on whether, in the end, the fruit of the tree of knowledge turns out to be tonic or toxin, salvation or sin, blessing or curse. And whether or not there exists a physical reality behind the glass darkly. Not to mention whether or not our Darwinian Mother Nature made a fatal mistake when She gave birth to Homo sapiens. And finally - to cut a long list short - whether or not we shall manage to master our human nature before we join the 99+% of all extinct species that once roamed this beautiful blue Earth.

You think we will kill ourselves? Sure, there's a good likelihood. Most of the "intelligent" life forms in the cosmos, who had similarly eaten from the tree of knowledge, must have done that. Wouldn't we have otherwise heard from some of them by now, at least from the more ancient and hence technologically much farther advanced ones?

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Michelangelo Buonarroti: The Fall
(Cappella Sistina, Rome, Italy)

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Yes, I am a bit off here. But I still believe I've upheld the spirit - if not the letter - of the poem. So I might as well add another one of my idiosyncratic comments.

The spirit of Rilke's poem reminds me very much of the "folk"song "God bless the Grass" by Malvina Reynolds / Pete Seeger from the Sixties. Yes, I know, Malvina Reynolds wrote it with the "truth" about President J.F. Kennedy's assassination in mind. But Pete Seeger sings of the meek, but in the end all-conquering grass as the "friend of the poor", and that's the meaning the song has now assumed.

(Sorry, because of copyright considerations I can't offer you the sound track - but you will be better in tracking it down anyway. It's worth the effort!)

Rainer Maria Rilke:

O Herr, gib jedem seinen eignen Tod,
das Sterben, das aus jenem Leben geht,
darin er Liebe hatte, Sinn und Not.

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Ja, ja, ich weiß schon. "Not" heißt nicht ”breath". Aber Atem tut erstens not zum äußeren und führt zweitens zum inneren Leben.

Verzeihe, Meister: Du bist so schwer zu übersetzen, vor allem in Deinen ganz wenigen, ganz einfachen Zeilen. Die viele Bedeutungen haben, aber nur ein Gefühl...

Rainer Maria Rilkes Grabstein
mit der vielumrätselten Roseninschrift
(Raron, Wallis, Schweiz)

Antonio Canova: Der trauernde Löwe (Detail, Grabmahl Maria Christina, Augustinerkirche, Wien. Photographie von Walter A. Aue)

Rainer Maria Rilke:

Oh Lord, award to each his fitting death:
a dying that distills his very life
with all its drive and love and breath.

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Yes, I know. The German noun "Not" does not mean "breath". But breath, often equated with the soul or the divine spark, "tut not", i.e. is necessary for life (and rhyme). And breath is the New-Ager's best guide into himself.

Forgive me, Master: Thou art so hard to translate, and nowhere more so than when you speak in very few, very simple, very beautiful lines. Which have many meanings but only one feeling...

Walter A. Aue: Place of Rest
(Monastic Cemetery, Heiligenkreuz, Austria)

Walter A. Aue: Peace at Last
(Imperial Palace, Vienna, Austria)