A Year with Rilke: The Poet's Epitaph

December 29, 2011

The Poet's Epitaph

Rose photo, by Ruth

Rose, oh pure paradox, desire
to be no one's sleep beneath
the many eyelids of your petals.

Uncollected Poems

(Lines composed on October 27, 1925,

with instructions to be carved on his gravestone)

2 comments:

MaureenFri Dec 30, 01:26:00 AM GMT+1
To be always open to seeing the possibilities and the beauty they hold....
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Fakhruddin Adamji (Hass)Fri Feb 17, 05:50:00 PM GMT+1
Isnt he saying that we tend not to present our real selves to the world; that we are usually contradictory and may even live lives in contradiction to who we really are until we find our natural rythm (God, if you will) that is usually hidden within us and that requires a lot of work to find; and once discovered we live authentically; in Heaven, if you will.
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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.