{"id":1831,"date":"2016-01-19T14:24:58","date_gmt":"2016-01-19T13:24:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fondationrilke.ch\/en\/?page_id=1831"},"modified":"2016-02-29T14:44:59","modified_gmt":"2016-02-29T13:44:59","slug":"poems-written-in-valais","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/rilke1.destinazio.info\/en\/rainer-maria-rilke\/poems-written-in-valais\/","title":{"rendered":"Poems written in Valais"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The Valais landscape played its part in a fruitful period of completion for Rilke.<\/p>\n

\u201c[\u2026]as I experience it, the Wallis [Valais] seems to me not only one of the most glorious landscapes I have every seen, but also capaible in grandiose fashion of offering manifold equivalents and correspondences to the expression of our inner world [\u2026]<\/p>\n

Rilke to Xaver von Moos, March 2, 1922.
\n(Trans. by Jane Bannard Greene & M.D. Herter Norton, Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke Vol. II. <\/em>Yale UP: 1947.)<\/h6>\n<\/blockquote>\n

From the 7th<\/sup> through the 26th<\/sup> of February 1922, Rilke was seized with unparalleled creative elan. <\/em>Within a few days, the poet wrote four new elegies and finished two others. The Duino cycle will consist of ten elegies in total when it is finished. At the same time, between February 2nd<\/sup> and 23rd<\/sup>, he composed a cycle of 55 poems hardly less important than the elegies, Die Sonette an Orpheus. <\/em>Both works were published in 1923.<\/p>\n

\u201cEnough. They are here.
\nI went out into the cold moonlight and stroked the little tower of Muzot as if it were a large animal \u2013 the ancient walls that granted this to me. And the ruined Duino.
\nThe whole shall be called:
\nThe Duino Elegies<\/em>.
\nThey will get used to the name. I think.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rilke to his publisher Anton Kippenberg, February 9, 1922.
\n(Trans. by Stephen Mitchell in Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus. <\/em>Ed. Stephen Mitchell. New York: Vintage International, 2009, xviii.)<\/h6>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cIn just a few days, it was a nameless storm, a hurricane in the spirit (like that time at Duino), all that was fiber in me and fabric cracked – eating was not to be thought of, God knows who fed me.
\nBut now it is. Is. Is.
\nAmen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rilke to Marie von Thurn und Taxis, February 11, 1922.
\n(Trans. by Jane Bannard Greene & M.D. Herter Norton, Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke Vol. II. <\/em>Yale UP: 1947.)<\/h6>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cAt last! The Elegies are here, they exist. [\u2026] Dear friend, now I can breathe again and, calmly, go on to something manageable. For this was larger than life \u2013 during these days and nights I have howled as I did that time in Duino \u2013 but, even after that struggle there, I didn\u2019t know that such a storm out of mind and heart could come over a person! That one has endured it! That one has endured.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rilke to Anton Kippenberg, Februrary 9, 1922.
\n(Trans. by Stephen Mitchell in Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus. <\/em>Ed. Stephen Mitchell. New York: Vintage International, 2009, xviii.)<\/h6>\n<\/blockquote>\n

From February 12-15, 1922, in the midst of the work on the elegies and sonnets, Rilke also wrote Letter to a Young Poet. <\/em>It emerged from a prose sketch, \u201cErinnerungen an Verhaeren,\u201d <\/em>whose title references the Belgian poet Verhaeren, with whom Rilke was friends.<\/p>\n

\u2191<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

The Duino Elegies<\/h2>\n
\n

From the Ninth Elegy:<\/h3>\n

\u201cPraise this world to the angel, not the unsayable one,
\nyou can\u2019t impress him with glorious emotion; in the universe
\nwhere he feels more powerfully, you are a novice. So show
\nhim
\nsomething simple which, formed over generations,
\nlives as our own, near our hand and within our gaze.
\ntell him of Things. He will stand astonished; as you stood
\nby the rope-maker in Rome or the potter along the Nile.
\nShow him how happy a Thing can be, how innocent and ours,
\nhow even lamenting grief purely decides to take form,
\nserves as a Thing, or dies into a Thing–, and blissfully
\nescapes far beyond the violin.\u2014And these Things
\nwhich live by perishing, know you are praising them;
\ntransient,
\nthey look to us for deliverance: us, the most transient of all.
\nThey want us to change them, utterly, in our invisible heart,
\nwithin \u2013 oh endlessly \u2013 within us! Whoever we may be at last.<\/p>\n

(Trans. by Stephen Mitchell in Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus. Ed. Stephen Mitchell. New York: Vintage International, 2009, pp. 57-59.)<\/h6>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u2191<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

The Sonnets to Orpheus<\/h2>\n

In Muzot, Rilke went through his correspondence and wrote in this context to a friend in Munich, Gertrud Ouckama Knoop, whose daughter Wera, a talented dancer and musician, died of leukemia at 19. Rilke asked her mother to send him an object dear to Wera. In response, Gertrud Ouckama Knoop sent him sketches she had written about the illness and death of her daughter. Reading these pages became an important catalyst for the creation of the Sonnets to Orpheus.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a few days of spontaneous emotion, when I actually intended to take up some other work, these sonnets were given to me.
\nYou will understand at first glance why it is that you must be the first to possess them. For, undefined as the relation is (only a single sonnet, the next to last, XXVth, calls Vera\u2019s own figure in to this excitation dedicated to her), it dominates and moves the course of the whole and penetrated more and more although so secretly that I recognized it only gradually this irresistible creation that so staggered me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rilke to Gertrud Ouckama Knoop, February 7, 1922.
\n(Trans. by Jane Bannard Greene & M.D. Herter Norton, Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke Vol. II. <\/em>Yale UP: 1947)<\/h6>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n

Sonnet 25<\/strong><\/h3>\n

But you now, dear girl, whom I loved like a flower whose\u00a0name
\nI didn’t know, you who so early were taken away:
\nI will once more call up your image and show it to them,
\nbeautiful companion of the unsubduable cry.<\/p>\n

Dancer whose body filled with your hesitant fate,
\npausing, as though your young flesh had been cast in bronze;
\ngrieving and listening–. Then, from the high dominions,
\nunearthly music fell into your altered heart.<\/p>\n

Already possessed by shadows, with illness near,
\nyour blood flowed darkly; yet, though for a moment\u00a0suspicious,
\nit burst out into the natural pulses of spring.<\/p>\n

Again and again interrupted by downfall and darkness,
\nearthly, it gleamed. Till, after a terrible pounding,
\nit entered the inconsolably open door.<\/p>\n

(Trans. by Stephen Mitchell in Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus. Ed. Stephen Mitchell. New York: Vintage International, 2009, p. 131.)<\/h6>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u2191<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Les Quatrains Valaisans, Vergers, Les Roses, Les Fen\u00eatres 1924-1927<\/h2>\n

Poems in a borrowed language (\u201clangue pr\u00eat\u00e9e<\/em>\u201d).<\/p>\n

For a long while, Rilke\u2019s poem cycles in French, created after the deluge of the Duino Elegies<\/em> and in the aftermath of the Sonnets to Orpheus<\/em>, were seen as nothing more than some light linguistic play. They were received as bucolic genre poems, a sort of tranquil poetic recovery. This is only one aspect of the work, however, as is the poet\u2019s gratitude to the landscape that \u201cmade possible\u201d the completion of the Elegies and Sonnets.<\/p>\n

Rilke had always felt a deep-reaching and constitutive connection to his surroundings. He learned to speak multiple languages, read others, and translated some into German. In these poems, language \u2013 in this case French \u2013 joins Rilke\u2019s appropriation of the spatial & visual and his concern with the continuing influence of the past as a connecting link. Language becomes the medium and mediator of (re)unification (what Rilke refers to as \u201cEinswerdung<\/em>\u201d). The language of these poems, like the Rhone, connects the Valaisan landscape with France \u2013 and therefore with Paris and Rilke\u2019s pre-war period as well. This connection, for Rilke, is profoundly healing (\u201cwiederanheiland<\/em>\u201d). In this \u2018new\u2019 language, the use of which has something playful and rejuvenating about it, the poet seizes new territory both thematically and poetically.<\/p>\n

Exemplary work in French
\n<\/span><\/h3>\n
\n

Les Quatrains Valaisans<\/h3>\n

VI
\nPays silencieux dont les proph\u00e8tes se taisent,
\npays qui pr\u00e9pare son vin;
\no\u00f9 les collines sentent encore la Gen\u00e8se
\net ne craignent pas la fin!
\n[…]
\nPays dont les eaux sont presque les seules nouvelles,
\ntoutes ces eaux qui se donnent,
\nmettant partout la clart\u00e9 de leurs voyelles
\nentre tes dures consonnes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

XXXI<\/h3>\n

Chemins qui ne m\u00e8nent nulle part
\nentre deux pr\u00e9s,
\nque l’on dirait avec art
\nde leur but d\u00e9tourn\u00e9s,<\/p>\n

chemins qui souvent n’ont
\ndevant eux rien d’autre en face
\nque le pur espace
\net la saison.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

Vergers<\/h3>\n

XVIII
\nEau qui se presse, qui court \u2013, eau oublieuse
\nque la distraite terre boit,
\nh\u00e9site un petit instant dans ma main creuse,
\nsouviens-toi!<\/p>\n

Clair et rapide amour, indiff\u00e9rence,
\npresque absence qui court,
\nentre ton trop d’arriv\u00e9e et ton trop de partance
\ntremble un peu de s\u00e9jour.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

Les Fen\u00eatres<\/h3>\n

III
\nN’es-tu pas notre g\u00e9om\u00e9trie,
\nfen\u00eatre, tr\u00e8s simple forme
\nqui sans effort circonscris
\nnotre vie \u00e9norme?<\/p>\n

Celle qu’on aime n’est jamais plus belle
\nque lorsqu’on la voit appara\u00eetre
\nencadr\u00e9e de toi; c’est, \u00f4 fen\u00eatre,
\nque tu la rends presque \u00e9ternelle.<\/p>\n

Tous les hasards sont abolis. L’\u00eatre
\nse tient au milieu de l’amour,
\navec ce peu d’espace autour
\ndont on est ma\u00eetre.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2191<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Rilke as translator<\/h2>\n

After the elegies were finished, Rilke focused on both his poems in French and the Val\u00e9ry translation. Rilke felt connected with France and frequently emphasized how important Val\u00e9ry\u2019s poetry was for him. He admired the French poet deeply, both for the exact conceptions of his poems and his sophisticated sensuality. His translations are unsurpassed. In 1921, he translated the poem Le cimeti\u00e8re marin<\/em>. Between 1921 and 1923, he translated 23 poems from Charmes<\/em>, which were published in 1925 under the title Paul Val\u00e9ry, Gedichte <\/em>(Poems<\/em>). In 1924 and 1926, he completed translations of the prose dialogues Eupalinos ou l\u2019Architecte<\/em> and L\u2019\u00e2me et la danse<\/em>. He followed these between the 15th<\/sup> and the 27th<\/sup> of October 1926 with Tante Berthe<\/em>. Rilke valued his German translations of Val\u00e9ry\u2019s poems more highly than his own poetry in French. Val\u00e9ry could not read Rilke\u2019s German texts, but published a few of Rilke\u2019s French poems as \u201c\u00e9chantillons modestes\u201d (\u201cseveral modest attempts\u201d) in November 1924 in the journal Commerce<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Monique Saint-H\u00e9lier describes Rilke\u2019s admiration for Val\u00e9ry with an enthusiasm that matches the poet\u2019s own:<\/p>\n

\u201cRilke may have loved and admired Val\u00e9ry more deeply than anyone else in the world. \u2018I was alone,\u2019 he said later, \u2018I was waiting, my entire work was waiting. One day I read Val\u00e9ry \u2013 I knew that my waiting was at an end.\u2019 Rilke drew all of what was valuable from this work \u2013 its gold, frankincense, and myrrh. He poured over it with love, patience, tenderness. In the stillness of Muzot, in the hushed hours of that Valaisan tower, Val\u00e9ry\u2019s verses were weighed upon the scales of a time that does not err, an inner quiet that speaks the truth. No one has yet paged through Val\u00e9ry\u2019s poems with more enamoured soul or angelic hands. And no one has agreed with him more unequivocally. Rilke did not translate Val\u00e9ry\u2019s poems \u2013 his love transcended mere translation. The vital will he brought to the work created it anew. This was not translation, this was osmosis, a blood transfusion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Monique Saint-H\u00e9lier, \u00c0 Rilke pour No\u00ebl. Bern 1927 (orig. French).<\/h6>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n
\n

Inhalt<\/h3>\n

\u2013 Duineser Elegien (Duino Elegies)<\/a>
\n\u2013 Die Sonette an Orpheus (The Sonnets to Orpheus<\/a>
\n\u2013 Les Quatrains Valaisans (The Valais Poems), Vergers (Orchards), Les Roses (Roses), Les Fen\u00eatres (Windows)<\/a>
\n\u2013 Rilke as Translator<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Die<\/a>
\n\"Radierung<\/a>
\n\"5.<\/a>
\n\"Wera<\/a>
\n\"Giovanni<\/a>
\n\"Radierung<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\n

The Valais landscape played its part in a fruitful period of completion for Rilke.<\/p>\n

\u201c[\u2026]as I experience it, the Wallis [Valais] seems to me not only one of the most glorious landscapes I have every seen, but also capaible in grandiose fashion of offering manifold equivalents and correspondences to the expression of our inner world [\u2026]<\/p>\n

Rilke to Xaver von Moos,<\/p><\/div>\n

…<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more ›<\/a><\/div>\n

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