Re: The Russians and Rilke [was Re: 1999 Nobel Prize in Literatur
citycabn (citycabn@gateway.net)
Thu, 21 Oct 1999 09:44:28 -0700
Cecilia,
I confess to never having read Khlebniknov. Of course, I don't have your
Mum as my Mom.
The reference to Tsvetaeva makes sense only if you have read the most recent
biography on Rilke ("Life of a Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke" by Ralph Freedman,
pub. Farrar Straus, 1996) or, god forbid, have read my manic post from
January 15, 1999, titled, "Loose Ends from San Francisco." (*If* you
venture there via Tim's Bananafish Archives, I suggest stopping after the
first quarter--after that it crosses into the unintelligible.)
"The Letters to a Young Poet." As a very young boy of 19, in 1970, I saw
my first reference to "this bastard Rilke" courtesy of JDS and sought out
that wonderful poem of a name: Rainer Maria Rilke, in my university
library. As fate would have it, it was the young poet letters I first read,
read, and turned to as to a Bible for several years. There are passages
from those letters that will be read in the 25th century, if indeed there is
a 25th century. And speaking of passages, I visited your site, and
encountered one of my all-time favorite Rilke poems, one that I would and do
read or remember late at night, the one that almost breaks one's heart as
one recalls Rilke's personal life: "You who never arrived..."
"The Selected Poetry of RMR" trans. Mitchell: I own his later volume,
titled "Ahead of All Parting" which I believe is pretty much the same text
as yours. Mitchell is very good. In fact, I believe he usually wins the
vote as the best translator of RMR. But having grown up on the Herter
Norton translations (which I think I trumpeted in an earlier post) and the
Spender/Leishman trans. of The Duino Elegies, I usually opt for those, plus
the recent *complete* translations of RMR's two seminal middle-period
volumes of poems: "The Book of Images" and "The New Poems" (in 2 volumes)
by Edward Snow. (Also, Snow's must-have translation of the poems RMR didn't
bother to publish in book format during his life: "Uncollected Poems."
Mitchell includes some of these but Snow adds a good deal more.) Since I am
blathering on, might as well add: seek out the out-of-print trans. of The
Letters of RMR, in two volumes, trans. by M.D. Herter Norton, published by
Norton Library AND for the most incredible exchange of letters between poets
that *I* know of: "Letters: Summer 1926" by Pasternak, Tsvetayeva, and
Rilke, published by Harcourt Brace in 1985. This is beginning to get to a
Hapworth-like length and I'd better stop before the whistle is blown for
another camp activity.
Happy reading!
regards,
Bruce
-----Original Message-----
From: Baader, Cecilia <cbaader@casecorp.com>
To: 'bananafish@lists.nyu.edu' <bananafish@lists.nyu.edu>
Date: Wednesday, October 20, 1999 11:31 PM
Subject: RE: The Russians and Rilke [was Re: 1999 Nobel Prize in Literatur
e:Gunter Grass]
>> Cecilia wrote:
>>> "Last week she bought me a book of poetry by some unknown
>>> Russian because
>>> I'd rambled a bit one time about how I loved Rilke."
>
>To which Bruce responded:
>>
>> Surely the Russian was *not* Tsvetaeva.
>>
>> Care to amplify re your love for Rilke?
>>
>
>No, Mom's unknown Russian was not Tsvetaeva. (And I'm missing the
>connection, if one has been made before...) Rather, it was Khlebnikov.
>Now, I'm afraid that the admission that my Russian was unknown to me until
>now will probably draw scandalized breaths from bananafishes the world
over.
>I wouldn't be surprised if Scottie once had coffee with him in a cafe in
St.
>Petersburg, or if will is preparing to teach a class on him next semester,
>or if Jim was considering covering the mathematical beauty of his poems in
>his dissertation. Alas, no, I had not heard of him before now... but
poems
>like "Cracking the Universe" are pure beauty:
> ...My mind, precise to the nth degree,
> like a heart of burning coal, I placed on
> the tongue of the dead prophet of the universe...
>
>Lovely. Now as to our man Rilke, the story behind my passion for him is
>really an odyssey, begun several years ago. For when old Jerry slipped his
>mention of "that bastard Rilke" into _Franny_, I put his name on a mental
>list. (This list is long... I'm constantly finding books published by
>people who have been on my mental list for years. That's pretty much why I
>never walk out of a bookstore without making a purchase.) Anyway, with the
>name Rilke knocking around at the back of mind, I came across a little tome
>entitled _Letters to a Young Poet_. I read these letters greedily, then
>read them again, then searched every anthology I had for his poetry. I
>found one poem, in the thousands of pages of poems at my hands, and then
the
>search began in earnest. Internet searches yielded few fruits, and then
one
>day I found it: The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by
>Stephen Mitchell. Now I can't comment on how good or how bad Mitchell's
>translation is, but I can say that the rest is history.
>
>And now for my last confession. In a fit of love for the man, I
transcribed
>his letters and put them up on my, er, website. I'm no programmer and
>you're not going to find any bells and whistles, but if you have ever been
>curious about them, you can find them at:
>
>http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Lofts/5596/rilke/rilke.htm
>
>Regards,
>Cecilia.
>
>(It's probably not a coincidence that many of the stories in my life in
some
>way involve a bookstore of some sort.)
>