February 16, 2011

Born of Both Worlds

Still Life with Skull, by Paul Cézanne

Is Orpheus of this world? No. The vastness of his nature
is born of both realms.
If you know how the willow is shaped underground,
you can see it more clearly above.

We are told not to leave food
on the table overnight: it draws the dead.
But Orpheus, the conjuring one,
mixes death into all our seeing,
mixes it with everything.
The wafting of smoke and incense
is as real to him as the most solid thing.

Nothing can sully what he beholds.
He praises the ring, the bracelet, the pitcher,
whether it comes from a bedroom or a grave.

Sonnets to Orpheus I, 6

5 comments:

  1. We are told not to leave food
    on the table overnight:

    I did not know this, how extraordinary. Fantastic Rilke as ever. Thanks Ruth and Lorenzo

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  2. Like many other Rilke passages, this one lends itself to different interpretations. From my perspective, however, there is more clarity in the Cezanne painting of "Still Life with Skull." The painter seems to be reminding us that the fruit of life can never be fully savored unless we eat it in full awareness of its transience, as well as our own.

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  3. Yes.

    I also remember yesterday's reading, about darkness, which the backdrop behind the skull in Cézanne's painting expresses, like a cave, like the place the skull came out of, or will retreat to.

    If you know how the willow is shaped underground,
    you can see it more clearly above.


    If I picture the roots of a willow tree, the place from where it is born as well as the place to which it will fall and decay eventually, it contains everything, as in his reading yesterday, the entirety of existence. So, too, our invisible realm, inside, contains everything -- the roots of being and mortality, but also the eternal soul.

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  4. Excellent commentary on both words and image.

    I find the tercet, especially its final line "whether it comes from a bedroom or a grave", particularly interesting for its implication of sleep as a kind of death or perhaps otherworldly existence in darkness.

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  5. We know nothing of life until we know death. George has it. Death gives life its bite, its juice, its taste. Without it, fruit is but a table.

    xo
    erin

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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!