have been set down otherwise. Our translations will make a batch of botches, but it will not matter, crush them all into a ball and toss them to the trash. Their real value will have been received. The translating reader reads the inside of the verse and sees, like the physician, either its evident health or its hidden disease. That reader will know why Hardy couldn’t come right out and say: “Someday we’ll have a roll in the hay.”
EIN GOTT VERMAGS
What lover of poetry has not read the story? Rainer Maria Rilke, that rootless poet whom we’ve followed like a stray for so long we know the smell of his heels, has been lent the offseason use of the Castle Duino by the Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis-Hohenlohe. The place is huge and stern, alternately menacing and boring, too austere even for a soul sold on austerity. Rilke, as sensitive to weather as a vane, also found the climate trying. Yet it was economical. It spoke to him only of work. Nevertheless, the poet would have preferred Capri. Duino it was.
Pent up there by a bitter Adriatic winter and, more willingly, by the stones of the place itself, he continues to be deserted by his Muse so that he feels barren, arid of spirit, yet driven deeply into himself like a stake meant for his own heart. Sterile as a wooden cuckoo, then, and surrounded like the sea below him by a loneliness which has for months embarrassed his much prized solitude with occult visitations and handmade sex, shaming and humiliating him, the Poet has had—this fateful morning—to deal with an annoying business letter he feels asks too loudly for its answer. Preoccupied, he walks along the precipitous edge of the Duino Castle cliffs, his head bent into a bright wind which buries his breath. Then … then, like the rattle in a hollow gourd, he hears in his head what will one day be the celebratedquestion with which the Elegies are at last to announce themselves: Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen ?
Or (in the presence of any poet is it possible to say the phrase?)—in other words:
Leishman. (1939/60)
Who, if I cried, would hear me among the angelic orders?
Behn. (1957)
Who, if I cried out, would heed me amid the host of the Angels?
MacIntyre. (1961)
Who, if I shouted, among the hierarchy of angels would hear me?
Garmey/Wilson. (1972)
Who, if I cried, would hear me from the order of Angels?
Boney. (1975)
Who of the angelic hosts would hear me, even if I cried out?
Poulin. (1977)
And if I cried, who’d listen to me in those angelic orders?
Young. (1978)
If I cried out
who would hear me up there
among the angelic orders?
Miranda. (1981)
What angel, if I cried out, would hear me?
Mitchell. (1982)
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’ hierarchies?
Flemming. (1985)
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’ hierarchies?
Hunter. (1987)
Who, though I cry aloud, would hear me in the angel order?
Cohn. (1989)
WHO, if I cried out, might hear me—among the ranked Angels?
Hammer/Jaeger. (1991)
If I did cry out, who would hear me through the Angel Orders?
Oswald. (1992)
Who, if I cried out, would hear me then, out of the orders of angels?
Gass. (1998)
Who, if I cried, would hear me among the Dominions of Angels?
In so many other words …
When, in 1975, Ingo Seidler presented his “Critical Appraisal of English Versions of Rilke” to a Rilke Centennial at Wayne State University, 1 he remarked on “the astonishing bulk of available English versions” of Rilke’s work in print, at least according to publishers’ catalogues. “Five complete translations of the Duino Elegies are listed” (Leishman to Boney, in my enumeration), and Professor Seidler says he knows “of at least another two.” What must he think now when my catalogue (surely not exhaustive) finds without trying fourteen complete versions as well as many incomplete ones? Nor of course are the Elegies the sole target of the translators,
EIN GOTT VERMAGS
What lover of poetry has not read the story? Rainer Maria Rilke, that rootless poet whom we’ve followed like a stray for so long we know the smell of his heels, has been lent the offseason use of the Castle Duino by the Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis-Hohenlohe. The place is huge and stern, alternately menacing and boring, too austere even for a soul sold on austerity. Rilke, as sensitive to weather as a vane, also found the climate trying. Yet it was economical. It spoke to him only of work. Nevertheless, the poet would have preferred Capri. Duino it was.
Pent up there by a bitter Adriatic winter and, more willingly, by the stones of the place itself, he continues to be deserted by his Muse so that he feels barren, arid of spirit, yet driven deeply into himself like a stake meant for his own heart. Sterile as a wooden cuckoo, then, and surrounded like the sea below him by a loneliness which has for months embarrassed his much prized solitude with occult visitations and handmade sex, shaming and humiliating him, the Poet has had—this fateful morning—to deal with an annoying business letter he feels asks too loudly for its answer. Preoccupied, he walks along the precipitous edge of the Duino Castle cliffs, his head bent into a bright wind which buries his breath. Then … then, like the rattle in a hollow gourd, he hears in his head what will one day be the celebratedquestion with which the Elegies are at last to announce themselves: Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen ?
Or (in the presence of any poet is it possible to say the phrase?)—in other words:
Leishman. (1939/60)
Who, if I cried, would hear me among the angelic orders?
Behn. (1957)
Who, if I cried out, would heed me amid the host of the Angels?
MacIntyre. (1961)
Who, if I shouted, among the hierarchy of angels would hear me?
Garmey/Wilson. (1972)
Who, if I cried, would hear me from the order of Angels?
Boney. (1975)
Who of the angelic hosts would hear me, even if I cried out?
Poulin. (1977)
And if I cried, who’d listen to me in those angelic orders?
Young. (1978)
If I cried out
who would hear me up there
among the angelic orders?
Miranda. (1981)
What angel, if I cried out, would hear me?
Mitchell. (1982)
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’ hierarchies?
Flemming. (1985)
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’ hierarchies?
Hunter. (1987)
Who, though I cry aloud, would hear me in the angel order?
Cohn. (1989)
WHO, if I cried out, might hear me—among the ranked Angels?
Hammer/Jaeger. (1991)
If I did cry out, who would hear me through the Angel Orders?
Oswald. (1992)
Who, if I cried out, would hear me then, out of the orders of angels?
Gass. (1998)
Who, if I cried, would hear me among the Dominions of Angels?
In so many other words …
When, in 1975, Ingo Seidler presented his “Critical Appraisal of English Versions of Rilke” to a Rilke Centennial at Wayne State University, 1 he remarked on “the astonishing bulk of available English versions” of Rilke’s work in print, at least according to publishers’ catalogues. “Five complete translations of the Duino Elegies are listed” (Leishman to Boney, in my enumeration), and Professor Seidler says he knows “of at least another two.” What must he think now when my catalogue (surely not exhaustive) finds without trying fourteen complete versions as well as many incomplete ones? Nor of course are the Elegies the sole target of the translators,
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