Yes I know we had Rilke just a short time ago but that was
amaraals guest column !Sticking to my first shelf of the poetry bookcase we have now reached "R" and so to my own volumes of Rilke.
Although I had read a very little Rilke before it was moving to live in Germany which firmed up my love for his work and I have since been fascinated by the various transalations available - which seem to grow almost yearly.
Another guest column in two weeks time :)
Today's poem is one of the Sonnets to Orpheus written in 1922 as a memorial to Vera Ouckama Knoop,a young woman who had been a childhood friend of Rilke's daughter Ruth. The English translation is the one by Stephen Mitchell.
Rühmen, das ists! Ein zum Rühmen Bestellter,
ging er hervor wie das Erz aus des Steins
Schweigen. Sein Herz, o vergängliche Kelter
eines den Menschen unendlichen Weins.
Nie versagt ihm die Stimme am Staube,
wenn ihn das göttliche Beispiel ergreift.
Alles wird Weinberg, alles wird Traube,
in seinem fühlenden Süden gereift.
Nicht in den Grüften der Könige Moder
straft ihm die Rühmung Lügen, oder
daß von den Göttern ein Schatten fällt.
Er ist einer der bleibenden Boten,
der noch weit in die Türen der Toten
Schalen mit rühmlichen Früchten hält.
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Praising is what matters! He was summoned for that
and came to us like the ore from a stone's
silence. His mortal heart presses out
a deathless, inexhaistible wine.
Whenever he feels the god's paradigm grip
his throat, the voice does not die in his mouth,
all becomes vineyard, all becomes grape,
ripened on the hills of his sensuous South.
Neither decay in the sepulchre of kings
nor any shadow that has fallen from the gods
can ever detract from his glorious praising.
For he is a herald who is with us always,
holding far into the doors of the dead
a bowl with ripe fruit worthy of praise.
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