A Year with Rilke: And God Said to Me, Write:

September 18, 2011

And God Said to Me, Write:

Mont Saint-Victoire, by Paul Cézanne

Leave the cruelty to kings.
Without that angel barring the way to love
there would be no bridge for me
into time.

From The Book of Hours I, 53

3 comments:

stevenSun Sep 18, 02:05:00 PM GMT+2
it's astonishing just how he can condense and contain so very much in such a small physical space which upon entering expands in every direction beyond the horizon lines. steven
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AnonymousSun Sep 18, 10:52:00 PM GMT+2
beautiful piece. I also like the artist.
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MaggieMon Sep 19, 04:21:00 AM GMT+2
Leave the cruelty to the kings... is this an indictment of the folk at the top? They say absolute power corrupts absolutely, and so that is perhaps what causes the cruelty?
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"Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night."

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Go ahead, bloom recklessly!

About the Blog

We, Lorenzo and Ruth, are blog friends who, upon discovering our shared admiration for Rainer Maria Rilke's writings in a new volume of daily readings, decided to launch this blog.

Lorenzo (in Spain) has a home blog called The Alchemist's Pillow. Ruth (in the U.S.) has a home blog called synch-ro-ni-zing. Both of us also write poems and receive inspiration from Mary Oliver, Rumi, and many other poets.

We hope you will be inspired by this site, and we'd love to hear your responses in comments.

The Challenge of Translation

How can a poem written by Rilke, or anyone, be translated into another language, when a poem by its nature is a snapshot of a feeling, idea or story that also sings in lyricism, cadence, rhyme (sometimes) and other nuances that contribute to the poem intrinsically?

C. John Holcombe has thoroughly and generously explored the "problems" of translation in an article linked here, in which he explores the poem Herbsttag by Rilke. You can read fourteen versions of the first stanza by different translators, as well as a revelation of the issues of translation: word choice when there is no perfect equivalent; diction; word order (maintain the original or rearrange for effect?); rhyme; balance; and looking at the context of the poet's previous work.