(To Magda von Hattingberg, February 1, 1914)
l. 108, hazel-trees: Rilke had originally written “willows”; this was corrected on the advice of a friend, who sent him a small handbook of trees and shrubs.
What a kind thought it was of yours to introduce me so clearly and thoroughly to the elements of “catkinology” with your book and the explanatory letter; after this there is no need for further or more exact information: I am convinced! So (remarkably enough) there are no “hanging” willow catkins; and even if there were some rare, tropical exception, I still would not be able to use it. The place in the poem that I wanted to check for factual accuracy stands or falls according to whether the reader can understand, with his first intuition, precisely this falling of the catkins; otherwise, the image loses all meaning. So the absolutely typical appearance of this inflorescence must be evoked—and I immediately realized from the very instructive illustrations in your little book that the shrub which, years ago, supplied me with the impression I have now used in my work must have been a hazelnut tree; whose branches are furnished most densely, before the leaves come out, with long, perpendicularly hanging catkins. So I know what I needed to know and have changed the text from “willow” to “hazel.”
(To Elisabeth Aman-Volkart, June 1922)
APPENDIX TO DUINO ELEGIES
[Fragment of an Elegy] (Duino, late January 1912)
Written between the First and Second Elegies.
[Original Version of the Tenth Elegy] (Lines 1–15: Duino, January / February 1912; continued in Paris, late in 1913)
Antistrophes (Lines 1–4: Venice, summer 1912; the rest: Muzot, February 9, 1922)
See note to the Fifth Elegy, this page.
Antistrophe: “The returning movement, from left to right, in Greek choruses and dances, answering to the previous movement of the strophe from right to left; hence, the lines of choral song recited during this movement.” (OED)
THE SONNETS TO ORPHEUS (1923)
These strange Sonnets were no intended or expected work; they appeared, often many in one day (the first part of the book was written in about three days), completely unexpectedly, in February of last year, when I was, moreover, about to gather myself for the continuation of those other poems—the great Duino Elegies. I could do nothing but submit, purely and obediently, to the dictation of this inner impulse; and I understood only little by little the relation of these verses to the figure of Vera Knoop, who died at the age of eighteen or nineteen, whom I hardly knew and saw only a few times in her life, when she was still a child, though with extraordinary attention and emotion. Without my arranging it this way (except for a few poems at the beginning of the second part, all the Sonnets kept the chronological order of their appearance), it happened that only the next-to-last poems of both parts explicitly refer to Vera, address her, or evoke her figure.
This beautiful child, who had just begun to dance and attracted the attention of everyone who saw her, by the art of movement and transformation which was innate in her body and spirit—unexpectedly declared to her mother that she no longer could or would dance (this happened just at the end of childhood). Her body changed, grew strangely heavy and massive, without losing its beautiful Slavic features; this was already the beginning of the mysterious glandular disease that later was to bring death so quickly. During the time that remained to her, Vera devoted herself to music; finally she only drew—as if the denied dance came forth from her ever more quietly, ever more discreetly.
(To Countess Margot Sizzo-Noris-Crouy, April 12, 1923)
Even to me, in the way they arose and imposed themselves on me, they are perhaps the most mysterious, most enigmatic dictation I have ever endured and achieved; the whole first part was written down in a single breathless obedience.
(To Xaver von Moos, April 20, 1923)
I myself have only now, little by little, comprehended them and found a way to pass them on;—with brief comments that I insert when I read them aloud, I am able to make the whole more intelligible; interconnections are established everywhere, and where a darkness remains, it is the kind of darkness that requires not clarification but surrender.
(To Clara Rilke, April 23, 1923)
…we, in the sense of the Elegies, are these transformers of the earth; our entire existence, the flights and plunges of our love, everything, qualifies us for this task (beside which there is, essentially, no other). (The Sonnets show particular examples of this activity, which appears in them, placed under the name and protection of a dead girl, whose incompletion and innocence holds open the grave-door so that, having passed on, she belongs to those powers which keep the one half of life fresh, and open toward the other, wound-open half.)
(To Witold Hulewicz, November 13, 1925)
I say “sonnets.” Though they are the freest, most (as it were) conjugated poems that have ever been included under this usually so motionless and stable form. But precisely this—to conjugate the sonnet, to intensify it, to give it the greatest possible scope without destroying it—was for me a strange experiment: which, in any case, I made no conscious decision to undertake. So strongly was it imposed, so fully did it contain its solution in itself.
(To Katharina Kippenberg, February 23, 1922)
Today just one favor more, which I have been wanting to ask of you for a long time: could you eventually have printed for me one copy of the “Sonnets to Orpheus,” and perhaps also one copy of the “Elegies,” interleaved with blank pages, using paper that can absorb good ink without making it “bleed”? I would like to append brief commentaries here and there to the more difficult poems, for my own use and for the benefit of a few friends; it would be a curious work, in which I would strangely have to account for the place of this verse within my own inner proportions. Whether or not that happens, I would in any case be glad to have both books, especially the “Sonnets,” prepared in this way, so that I can make notes in it whenever I feel the inclination. (There is no hurry, of course!)
(To Anton Kippenberg, March 11, 1926)
FIRST PART
I (Muzot, February 2/5, 1922)
II (Muzot, February 2/5, 1922)
l. 1, almost a girl:
Siehe, innerer Mann, dein inneres Mädchen
Look, inner man, at your inner girl
(“Turning-point,” this page)
The deepest experience of the creative artist is feminine, for it is an experience of conceiving and giving birth. The poet Obstfelder once wrote, speaking of the face of a stranger: “When he began to speak, it was as though a woman had taken a seat within him.” It seems to me that every poet has had that experience in beginning to speak.
(To a young woman, November 20, 1904)
III (Muzot, February 2/5, 1922)
ll. 3f., crossing / of heart-roads: “The sanctuaries that stood at crossroads in classical antiquity were dedicated to sinister deities like Hecate, not to Apollo, the bright god of song.” (Hermann Mörchen, Rilkes Sonette an Orpheus, Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1958, p. 66)
l. 13, True singing:
It is not only the hearable in music that is important (something can be pleasant to hear without being true). What is decisive for me, in all the arts, is not their outward appearance, not what is called the “beautiful”; but rather their deepest, most inner origin, the buried reality that calls forth their appearance.
(To Princess Marie von Thurn und
Taxis-Hohenlohe, November 17, 1912)
l. 14, A gust inside the god. A wind.:
All in a few days, it was a nameless storm, a hurricane in the spirit (like that time at Duino), everything that was fiber and fabric in me cracked.
(Ibid., February 11, 1922, just after the completion of the Elegies)
Never have I gone through such tremendous gales of being-taken-hold-of: I was an element, Liliane, and could do everything elements can do.
(To Claire Studer-Goll, April 11, 1923)
IV (Muzot, February 2/5,1922)
V (Muzot,
February 2/5, 1922)
l. 5, It is Orpheus once for all:
Ultimately there is only one poet, that infinite one who makes himself felt, here and there through the ages, in a mind that can surrender to him.
(To Nanny Wunderly-Volkart, July 29, 1920)
True art can issue only from a purely anonymous center.
(To R. S., November 22, 1920)
VI (Muzot, February 2/5, 1922)
l. 2, both realms:
Angels (they say) don’t know whether it is the living
they are moving among, or the dead. The eternal torrent
whirls all ages along in it, through both realms
forever, and their voices are drowned out in its thunderous roar.
(The First Elegy, ll. 92 ff.)
l. 4, willow-branch: From Psalm 137, to Desdemona’s song, to modern poetry, the willow has been a symbol of grief. Its association with the dead goes back at least as far as Homer:
But when the North Wind has breathed you across the River of Ocean,
you will come to a wooded coast and the Grove of Persephone,
dense with shadowy poplars and willows that shed their seeds.
Beach your boat on that shore as the ocean-tide foams behind you;
then walk ahead by yourself, into the Land of Decay.
(Odyssey X, 508 ff.)
l. 10, earthsmoke and rue: Herbs used in summoning the dead.
But slowly growing beside it is patience, that delicate “earthsmoke.”
(To Gudi Nölke, October 5, 1919)
l. 11, connection:
The comprehensible slips away, is transformed; instead of possession one learns connection.
(To Ilse Jahr, February 22, 1923)
VII (Muzot, February 2/5, 1922)
l. 9, decay in the sepulcher of kings:
It is true, the gods have neglected no opportunity of exposing us: they let us uncover the great kings of Egypt in their tombs, and we were able to see them in their natural decay, how they were spared no indignity.
(“On the Young Poet,” this page f.)
VIII (Muzot, February 2/5, 1922)
IX (Muzot, February 2/5, 1922)
X (Muzot, February 2/5, 1922)
l. 2, coffins of stone: Used as troughs or basins in the fountains of Italian towns.
Da wurde von den alten Aquädukten
ewiges Wasser in sie eingelenkt …
Then, eternal water from the ancient
aqueducts was channeled into them …
(“Roman Sarcophagi,” New Poems)
l. 5, those other ones:
(what is being referred to, after the Roman ones, are those other, uncovered sarcophagi in the famous cemetery of Aliscamps, out of which flowers bloom)
—Rilke’s note
l. 6, shepherd: See “The Spanish Trilogy,” this page f.
l. 7, bee-suck nettle: Lamium album, white dead-nettle.
XI (Muzot, February 2/5, 1922)
l. 1, “Rider”:
—Look, there:
the Rider, the Staff, and the larger constellation
called Garland of Fruit.
(The Tenth Elegy, this page.)
XII (Muzot, February 2/5, 1922)
l. 7, antennas:
Oh how she [Vera] loved, how she reached out with the antennas of her heart beyond everything that is comprehensible and embraceable here— …
(To Gertrud Ouckama Knoop, January 1922)
XIII (Muzot, February 2/5, 1922)
Comme le fruit se fond en jouissance,
Gomme en délice il change son absence
Dans une bouche où sa forme se meurt,…
(Valéry, “Le Cimetière Marin”)
So wie die Frucht sich auflöst im Genusse,
Abwesenheit Entzücken wird zum Schlusse
in einem Mund, drin ihre Form verschwand,…
(Rilke’s translation, March 14 and 16, 1921)
l. 9, “apple”:
At various times I have had the experience of feeling apples, more than anything else—barely consumed, and often while I was still eating them—being transposed into spirit. Thus perhaps the Fall. (If there was one.)
(To Princess Marie von Thurn und
Taxis-Hohenlohe, January 16, 1912)
XIV (Muzot, February 2/5, 1922)
XV (Muzot, February 2/5, 1922)
XVI (Muzot, February 2/5, 1922)
One has to know—or guess—that Sonnet XVI is addressed to a dog; I didn’t want to add a note to this effect, precisely because I wanted to take him completely into the whole. Any hint would just have isolated him again, singled him out. (This way he takes part down below, belonging and warned, like the dog and the child in Rembrandt’s Night Watch.)
(To Clara Rilke, April 23, 1923)
Now it is my turn to thank you, not for Pierrot, for God’s sake no: it would be his ruin, Pierrot’s ruin, the saddest story in the world. How could you even think I might adopt him, what kind of match could I be for his boundless homesickness? Furthermore, apart from the torment of helplessly looking on, I would have the additional torment of sacrificing myself for his sake, which I find especially painful where dogs are involved: they touch me so deeply, these beings who are entirely dependent on us, whom we have helped up to a soul for which there is no heaven. Even though I need all of my heart, it is probable that this would end, end tragically, by my breaking off little pieces from the edge of it at first, then bigger and bigger pieces toward the middle (like dog biscuits) for this Pierrot as he cried for you and no longer understood life; I would, after hesitating for a little while, give up my writing and live entirely for his consolation.
(To N. N., February 8, 1912)
l. 7, You know the dead:
“And I was about to (I feel quite cold, Malte, when I think of it), but, God help me, I was just about to say, ‘Where is …’—when Cavalier shot out from under the table, as he always did, and ran to meet her. I saw it, Malte; I saw it. He ran toward her, although she wasn’t coming; for him she was coming.”
(The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, p. 89)
ll. 11 f., don’t plant / me inside your heart:
“In the end a responsibility would arise, which I can’t accept. You wouldn’t notice how completely you had come to trust me; you would overvalue me and expect from me what I can’t perform. You would watch me and approve of everything, even of what is unworthy. If I want to give you a joy: will I find one? And if one day you are sad and complain to me—will I be able to help you? —And you shouldn’t think that I am the one who lets you die. Go away, I beg of you: go away.”
(“A Meeting,” this page)
l. 13, my master’s hand:
In the poem to the dog, by “my master’s hand” the hand of the god is meant; here, of “Orpheus.” The poet wants to guide this hand so that it too may, for the sake of his [the dog’s] infinite sympathy and devotion, bless the dog, who, almost like Esau, has put on his pelt only so that he could share, in his heart, an inheritance that would never come to him: could participate, with sorrow and joy, in all of human existence.