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Authors: William H. Gass
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who have given us new renderings of Rilke’s fiction (both novels and stories), his published poetry, his uncollected poems, his early plays, his journals, his ventures into French verse, as well as many of his countless letters.
If I receive some petty request in the post (can’t we imagine our poet peevishly complaining as he picks his way down the narrow path to the bastions?), even a nag from a nobody, good manners compel me to respond; its silliness will occupy my thoughts like a game of cards; but if I were to entreat the higher powers, cry out from my soul, pray to the so-called gods for my poetry to be returned to me, for a little rain after this long drought, whom would my words reach?
No one. The mountains of the heart entertain no echo. The Abyss does not respond. Heaven is as indifferent as the land. The ocean holds no intermission.
But the voice, of course, is not heard as the poet’s own. It comes from the clean wind, the bora, burning his face like thesun, and it has the same elemental force, the same cold grip, as the streaming air which would lift him like a leaf and whirl him away over the glare of the sea.
Thus it is not the fastidious, fussy little person of the petitioner who wonders these words (it is everybody’s elemental outcry); and although addressed to the Angels, it is as if the Angels spoke them, because their meaning is not common, small, or mean—earthbound—as most of our fears and worries are, most of our thoughts, hopelessly human as we are; hence the poem which appears like the wind in our ear must have all the fundamental mystery and breathtaking grandeur we feel whenever we encounter that simple, plain, and pure correctness about the nature of things which only the gods possess.
These are not poems, then. These are miracles. And they must seem miraculous … Ein Gott vermags .
Well, can we make up our minds? does the poet cry or shout or, again, cry out? aloud? and do the angels fail to hear or heed or listen to him? How deep is their indifference? The cry is surely an inward cry, a cry to heaven as empty as the air, a cry blown out like a flame. Why write “cry out” then?… to avoid any sense of sniveling. Yet this cry, in a few lines, will include the child’s. In any case, it is scarcely so crude as a shout. And the Angels, more self-absorbed than Narcissus, will not hear, let alone listen, not to say heed. Nor are they l.c. angels, smallish, cupid-like. They surpass Gabriel, who has to fetch, toot, and carry. What then does this dissonant clamor from the tents of the translators come to?
My version has striven for a more euphonious line and has tried to reflect the hierarchy which Ordnungen suggests by invoking one of the arrangements associated with the traditional conception of angels, namely their division into seraphim, cherubim, thrones—dominations, virtues, powers—principalities, archangels, angels; but Behn’s and Boney’s “hosts” areentirely too churchy, while MacIntyre’s “shout” and again Behn’s “heed” are simply misinterpretations.
As for that preposition: is it to be “among the Angelic orders,” “amid” them, “from” them, or “in” or “out” instead? Hammer/Jaeger’s “through” is simply bizarre. Poulin wants the angels not only to “hear” but to “listen,” while Behn requires obedience. The nature of Rilke’s Angels is such, as the Elegies will indicate as they proceed, that although they might find themselves in an order, they would never arrange it, no more than the stars might design their constellations. The hierarchy isn’t theirs, even if Mitchell and Flemming would have it so. Boney and Miranda want to single out an angel like a calf from the herd, while Hunter and Hammer/Jaeger bump “order” and “Angel” awkwardly together. Cohn’s expression “ranked Angels” sounds ludicrous in English (Angel A, Angel B …).
No one has tried to mimic the wenn-denn division—a discretion which was
If I receive some petty request in the post (can’t we imagine our poet peevishly complaining as he picks his way down the narrow path to the bastions?), even a nag from a nobody, good manners compel me to respond; its silliness will occupy my thoughts like a game of cards; but if I were to entreat the higher powers, cry out from my soul, pray to the so-called gods for my poetry to be returned to me, for a little rain after this long drought, whom would my words reach?
No one. The mountains of the heart entertain no echo. The Abyss does not respond. Heaven is as indifferent as the land. The ocean holds no intermission.
But the voice, of course, is not heard as the poet’s own. It comes from the clean wind, the bora, burning his face like thesun, and it has the same elemental force, the same cold grip, as the streaming air which would lift him like a leaf and whirl him away over the glare of the sea.
Thus it is not the fastidious, fussy little person of the petitioner who wonders these words (it is everybody’s elemental outcry); and although addressed to the Angels, it is as if the Angels spoke them, because their meaning is not common, small, or mean—earthbound—as most of our fears and worries are, most of our thoughts, hopelessly human as we are; hence the poem which appears like the wind in our ear must have all the fundamental mystery and breathtaking grandeur we feel whenever we encounter that simple, plain, and pure correctness about the nature of things which only the gods possess.
These are not poems, then. These are miracles. And they must seem miraculous … Ein Gott vermags .
Well, can we make up our minds? does the poet cry or shout or, again, cry out? aloud? and do the angels fail to hear or heed or listen to him? How deep is their indifference? The cry is surely an inward cry, a cry to heaven as empty as the air, a cry blown out like a flame. Why write “cry out” then?… to avoid any sense of sniveling. Yet this cry, in a few lines, will include the child’s. In any case, it is scarcely so crude as a shout. And the Angels, more self-absorbed than Narcissus, will not hear, let alone listen, not to say heed. Nor are they l.c. angels, smallish, cupid-like. They surpass Gabriel, who has to fetch, toot, and carry. What then does this dissonant clamor from the tents of the translators come to?
My version has striven for a more euphonious line and has tried to reflect the hierarchy which Ordnungen suggests by invoking one of the arrangements associated with the traditional conception of angels, namely their division into seraphim, cherubim, thrones—dominations, virtues, powers—principalities, archangels, angels; but Behn’s and Boney’s “hosts” areentirely too churchy, while MacIntyre’s “shout” and again Behn’s “heed” are simply misinterpretations.
As for that preposition: is it to be “among the Angelic orders,” “amid” them, “from” them, or “in” or “out” instead? Hammer/Jaeger’s “through” is simply bizarre. Poulin wants the angels not only to “hear” but to “listen,” while Behn requires obedience. The nature of Rilke’s Angels is such, as the Elegies will indicate as they proceed, that although they might find themselves in an order, they would never arrange it, no more than the stars might design their constellations. The hierarchy isn’t theirs, even if Mitchell and Flemming would have it so. Boney and Miranda want to single out an angel like a calf from the herd, while Hunter and Hammer/Jaeger bump “order” and “Angel” awkwardly together. Cohn’s expression “ranked Angels” sounds ludicrous in English (Angel A, Angel B …).
No one has tried to mimic the wenn-denn division—a discretion which was
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