Subject: The Dwarf's Song
From: Cecilia Baader (ceciliabaader@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri May 25 2001 - 09:48:13 GMT
--- Zack Wyatt <zwyatt@stanford.edu> wrote:
> "The Laughing Man" is
> matched with a poem entitled "The Song of the Dwarf," written from the
> perspective of a distressed dwarf questioning why God created him.
This is perhaps the most interesting connection so far. The poem:
The Dwarf's Song
Perhaps my soul is straight and good;
but my heart, my bent and twisted blood,
and all the things that make me hurt,
it just can't make them stand erect.
My soul has no garden, no bed;
it hangs on this sharp, brittle skeleton
with horrified beats of the wings.
My hands won't amount to much either.
Look how stunted they are: look here:
all damp and swollen, they make little rigid hops
like small toads after rain.
And everything else on me
is sad or old or half flushed away;
Why does God hesitate then
and not throw it all out with the manure.
Is it because he's angry about my face
with its grumpy mouth?
In principle, its always been ready
to be light and clear;
but nothing ever came as close
to it as the large dogs have.
And dogs don't have that.
(Source: http://members.aol.com/tela43560/voices.html )
Of course, we're dealing with the vagaries of translation here, but I
think we can get the general sense of what Rilke wrote. Rilke always
breaks me into pieces. His Sonnets to Orpheus and Mary Cycle absolutely
destroy me. These poems I've never seen before. (And to be frank, I
thought I'd seen them all. The man was truly prolific.)
This is terrific, Zack. Thanks for bringing it up.
Regards,
Cecilia.
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