Rilke 23, 1999
citycabn (citycabn@gateway.net)
Sat, 23 Oct 1999 14:43:47 -0700
Or: "Rilke: an Introduction".
(By now I trust the delete has been put to good use by a substantial
majority.)
But for those of you still willing to sit around the campfire, faces not
discernible in the fire-flickering dark, a few words are in order regarding
the Subject Line. Simply, it is based on Seymour Glass's assertion that
Rainer Maria Rilke is the only great poet of this century. Granted, this
rather high-handed pronouncement was issued in 1948, with a good 52 years to
go. And one could counter that, no, it is Yeats, or Eliot, or Stevens, or
Neruda, or Pound (Hugh Kenner would say that), or Valery, or Mandelstam or
one of another dozen or so names. (As for post-1948, I think the only
serious contenders would be Paul Celan or, gasp, given a Buddy Glass
statement in the opening of S:an Intro, Allen Ginsberg.) But the point is,
after this inexcusable build-up, JDS said *Rilke* and so, with 2 months and
one week to go, this century is *his*. Or to use a Buddy-like
construction: Rilke, wonder of the 20th century. (And just to let you know
I realize I am losing all of my short paragraphs (and no doubt many readers
of this post), I am going to make a promise that I intend to keep. Namely:
After December 31st, you shall not read/hear the name of RMR issuing forth
from these lips again on-list. Off-list, oh, that would or could be another
matter.) So, with that stated, as a relief to all, I go on.
Cecilia wrote: "Care to expand on what was happening in his life around that
time [the time of writing the poem, 'You who never arrived', i.e. Winter
1913/14]."
I actually intend to attempt to reply to this question before this sitting
at the key board is done. But first: My main fear in even replying is: I
don't know how it stands between you and him (of course, I mean Herr Rilke).
Or, to rephrase, between any reader and her/his author. The most important
phase of reading, I feel, is the incubation time betwixt reader and author.
And God forbid anyone tampering with that: Well-meaning or otherwise
professors, bad dates, friends who upon hearing you are reading X,
uproariously laugh in your face, or fellow subscribers to list-serves. I
gather this love affair, for you used the word love, has been going on for
several years. (I trust with your Mom's approval, since it seems *she* was
looking forward to a match with a Russian.) And from visiting your site I
understand the central importance of the Kappus letters. This leads me to
*guess* your reading of RMR is *probably* centered in his pivotal
Romantic-to-early-Modern phase, the years of 1902 to 1906. This is to say,
the Kappus letters, the Book of Pictures/Images, The Book of Hours, the
first Rodin essay, perhaps the earlier The Cornet and the Stories of God.
BUT: I could be totally wrong. Perhaps you have high jumped over this
period; perhaps already are enraptured by the New Poems, Requiem, and The
Notebooks of ML Brigge. OR: you have gone straight to the head of the
class and are meditating on the intricacies of the Elegies and Sonnets,
the poems that blossomed around them, but which RMR never bothered to
publish in book format (poems from 1912 to 1922, one of which *is* our
topic of this post, "You who never arrived...") and the post-Elegy poems of
1923-1926. Or, to rephrase again, I ask: *At this point*, is the love
affair with the early-period romantic Rilke, the middle-period modern
artist/sculptor Rilke, or the late-period prophetic Rilke? {One could say,
there is no separation necessary. In fact, RMR himself, in a late letter
to a Rilke scholar, advanced such a theory. The works organically grew out
of each other, and that he found his voice with the 1905 publication of "The
Book of Hours", at the age of 29.} I guess all this is to say, I don't
know really how to pitch my answer. The important thing is *your*
relationship with RMR. Obviously, I have my own relationship with him. And
the last thing I would wish is that I would allow mine to interfere with
yours.
But to close. The poem "You who never arrived...", which is dated by Rilke
scholars to Paris, Winter 1913/14 (odd, for usually most of his poems are
datable to the day or week) is one of a constellation of poems dealing with
the awaited-for Beloved. (Ralph Freedman, I think, does the best job to
date (at least in English) dealing with the thorny Rilkean life Rainer Maria
lived.) To wrap it up *crudely* and *quickly* into a nutshell, or at least
one paragraph: In short, R's marriage did not work out. They separated
after having one child. Clara, his wife, still remained one of his closest
confidantes for about five years. And soon R. was overwhelmed by Paris and
beginning to really write, not craving a companion, writing like a young
master, culminating with the novel Brigge (1910). If you have read that,
you sense where writing that left R. Shortly after 1910, R. increasingly
wondered *if* he could go on writing. And longed for a woman to be with.
(In his case, Dr. Freud, who R. once met, might say R sought a combo of
mother/sister/lover all in one, with the main emphasis on the first.) The
awaited-for Beloved was the woman R. never met (needless to say, that was
quite a menu she would have to cook for him). The Beloved was, in a sense,
the "reward" R. felt he deserved for having held out and finished writing
Brigge. She would be the companion to keep him attached to this life, this
world. And lead him back to the simpler things. (During this time, he even
considered undergoing analysis and becoming a medical doctor.) But as fate
would have it, in January 1912, the Angel spoke at Duino, and the first two
elegies were born. He felt The Elegies were his destiny, AND THAT HE HAD TO
FINISH THEM NO MATTER WHAT. But still he vacillated between wanting the
human companion and knowing of the extreme solitude necessary if he were to
have a chance to complete them. Poem after poem from 1913 up to the
completion of the Elegies speaks of the tension between the yearning for The
Beloved and the demands of The Angel.
Upon re-reading, all of the last paragraph is horribly simplified and
almost repugnant.