Jessica's review
The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
by Rainer Maria Rilke, Stephen Mitchell, Robert Hass
more people who actually read poetry, though this is rilke. maybe i should actually publish. i should start a new shelf with this book "stuff i really should've read - and've been meaning to! - but haven't gotten around to it (or had the nerve, or something)".
How better to review a classic translated than by laying it out before the reader like a tapestry. Way to go, Ma'am.
ma'am!
That poem above is from the _Duino Elegies_ and I really suggest if you're going to read Rilke that collection is a great start. Reading those in their own context (he went to a friggin castle in Italy and was just totally possessed by the utter romance, or mystical spirit of it)sort of puts you in his mindset better than some old intro by anyone. I mean, come on:
It's Wonderful! (Xio sings, grinning) !!!
ps: Read Goethe (Werther!!!)next or listen to Parsifal with it.***swoon***
This translation is wonderful , the German is laid out right along aside the English, so even if one doesn't understand German, like me, one can still climb into the poem phonetically and sense its' native beauty in the original. I think the critical consensus is that this is the best tranlation of Rilke in English. Rilke to me has more spiritual depth than any poet of the 20th century and a fierce intellectual rigor to go with it. Just priceless.
OOPS, Matthew,
Can I have a pass if I tell you I lost my computer glasses and am using a five year old pair? And, yes, my Mac has the easy capability of enlarging the text but I didn't use it. But if you blank out the offending honorific, I stand behind the rest.
Way to go, Sir.
it's all good (*sigh* i've become a californian). i was just laughing at the idea of jessica being called "ma'am"; you didn't actually err in any way.
The real problem is that irony doesn't travel electronically.
Since I don't do emoticoms, text-talk like LOL and IMHO aren't really my style, and it looks fairly pretentious to insert something like: Irony alert, I find myself using my ordinary ironic speech without the voice or body language to carry the meaning. I suspect it's a function of my personal style of communication. It suddenly occurs to me that one of the primary functions of poetry is to carry a heavy load of emotion by virtue of the rhetoric alone. So Rilke (or Mitchell) must be even more gifted than we usually think.
Non ironical musing.
I was just re-reading a book by Paul Fussell about World War II and the literarture it spawned this morning(Wartime)and he made the distinction that the difference between popular lit i. e. Herman Wouk and more lasting works, he cited Mailer and Heller's `Catch-22' is that the latter crouched much of their narrative in irony, while the other had no idea irony existed.
So, Ginnie, the fact that you know irony exists and can use it, puts you in increasingly rare company.
Jessica's review
The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke by Rainer Maria Rilke, Stephen Mitchell, Robert Hass
Jessica's review
rating:
bookshelves:
favorites
recommended for: people who don't know german (though the german's here too, if you do)
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them pressed me
suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed
in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely distains
to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.
And so I hold myself back and swallow the call-note
of my dark sobbing. Ah, whom can we ever turn to
in our need? Not angels, not humans,
and already the knowing animals are aware
that we are not really at home in
our interpreted world. Perhaps there remains for us
some tree on a hillside, which every day we can take
into our vision; there remains for us yesterday's street
and the loyalty of a habit so much at ease
when it stayed with us that it moved in and never left.
Oh and night: there is night, when a wind full of infinite space
gnaws at our faces. Whom would it not remain for -- that longed-afte...more
hierarchies? and even if one of them pressed me
suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed
in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely distains
to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.
And so I hold myself back and swallow the call-note
of my dark sobbing. Ah, whom can we ever turn to
in our need? Not angels, not humans,
and already the knowing animals are aware
that we are not really at home in
our interpreted world. Perhaps there remains for us
some tree on a hillside, which every day we can take
into our vision; there remains for us yesterday's street
and the loyalty of a habit so much at ease
when it stayed with us that it moved in and never left.
Oh and night: there is night, when a wind full of infinite space
gnaws at our faces. Whom would it not remain for -- that longed-afte...more
more people who actually read poetry, though this is rilke. maybe i should actually publish. i should start a new shelf with this book "stuff i really should've read - and've been meaning to! - but haven't gotten around to it (or had the nerve, or something)".
How better to review a classic translated than by laying it out before the reader like a tapestry. Way to go, Ma'am.
ma'am!
That poem above is from the _Duino Elegies_ and I really suggest if you're going to read Rilke that collection is a great start. Reading those in their own context (he went to a friggin castle in Italy and was just totally possessed by the utter romance, or mystical spirit of it)sort of puts you in his mindset better than some old intro by anyone. I mean, come on:It's Wonderful! (Xio sings, grinning) !!!
ps: Read Goethe (Werther!!!)next or listen to Parsifal with it.***swoon***
This translation is wonderful , the German is laid out right along aside the English, so even if one doesn't understand German, like me, one can still climb into the poem phonetically and sense its' native beauty in the original. I think the critical consensus is that this is the best tranlation of Rilke in English. Rilke to me has more spiritual depth than any poet of the 20th century and a fierce intellectual rigor to go with it. Just priceless.
OOPS, Matthew,Can I have a pass if I tell you I lost my computer glasses and am using a five year old pair? And, yes, my Mac has the easy capability of enlarging the text but I didn't use it. But if you blank out the offending honorific, I stand behind the rest.
Way to go, Sir.
it's all good (*sigh* i've become a californian). i was just laughing at the idea of jessica being called "ma'am"; you didn't actually err in any way.
The real problem is that irony doesn't travel electronically.Since I don't do emoticoms, text-talk like LOL and IMHO aren't really my style, and it looks fairly pretentious to insert something like: Irony alert, I find myself using my ordinary ironic speech without the voice or body language to carry the meaning. I suspect it's a function of my personal style of communication. It suddenly occurs to me that one of the primary functions of poetry is to carry a heavy load of emotion by virtue of the rhetoric alone. So Rilke (or Mitchell) must be even more gifted than we usually think.
Non ironical musing.
I was just re-reading a book by Paul Fussell about World War II and the literarture it spawned this morning(Wartime)and he made the distinction that the difference between popular lit i. e. Herman Wouk and more lasting works, he cited Mailer and Heller's `Catch-22' is that the latter crouched much of their narrative in irony, while the other had no idea irony existed.
So, Ginnie, the fact that you know irony exists and can use it, puts you in increasingly rare company.