But we, while we are intent upon one object,
already feel the pull of another. Conflict
is second nature to us. Aren't lovers
always arriving at each other's boundaries?—
although they promised vastness, hunting, home.
As when for some quick sketch, a wide background
of contrast is laboriously prepared
so that we can see more clearly: we never know
the actual, vital contour of our own
emotions—just what forms them from the outside. ( )

My introduction to Rilke was through his novel, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, where he introduces many of the themes that permeate the Elegies and Sonnets. Here we find references to alienation, fear, poverty, loneliness, art, disease, and death. Yet even with death there is great beauty and soaring poetry even in translation (especially fine by Stephen Mitchell).

Rilke creates powerful yet elegant poetic odes to the majesty of the human experience and its relationship to the external world in this comprehensive translation of two major works. A realm in which the human being exists in a state of perplexity and struggle. I was fascinated by the ideas of death as an other, the "terrible rival" from the notebooks, and a meditation on the fear of death as well as death overcome. The great joy of learning to be yourself and enjoy your being; what I call a will to relax and "let your being be". The many aspects of love that appear both as desire and as a rival for the work of the artist.

Through it all we find the poet "learning to see" with a new will and a new being. There were moments I was reminded of Nietzsche's Zarathrustra, and of course Orpheus and and other myths from Ovid along with the Bible and other literary resonances. Above all I came to accept Rilke's admonishment for us to go ahead and become "beginners". To begin is to begin to create and will your being and ultimately your life, even in the face of death. ( )

but you really need to read the German. All the salt and dirt is gone from the English. ( )

> LES ÉLÉGIES DE DUINO, de Rainer Maria Rilke, traduites par Armel Guerne
In: Revue Esprit et le Voltigeur Vol. 8, No. 88 (JANVIER 1940), pp. 129-136… ; (en ligne),
URL : https://esprit.presse.fr/article/rilke-rainer-maria/les-elegies-de-duino-15828 ;
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NyrGPoYQ1EN4C97U6yHhEB2i_kALlFAA/view?usp=shari...

> LES ÉLÉGIES DE DUINO, de Rainer Maria Rilke, traduites par Armel Guerne
In: Revue Esprit et le Voltigeur Vol. 8, No. 90 (MARS 1940), pp. 387-390. … ; (en ligne),
URL : https://esprit.presse.fr/article/rilke-rainer-maria/traduction-des-elegies-de-du... ;
https://drive.google.com/file/d/13vAWvmuZTFFwHQ1G0HhTiV10bKWrcBPE/view?usp=shari...

Probably the most infuriating book of poetry I've ever read, perhaps will ever read. The highs and lows are so dizzyingly high and so mind-numbingly, banally low that I couldn't always keep pace. The first and tenth elegies were high, the other elegies interesting and beautiful, if you can stomach the whole whiney little boy thing he falls into occasionally, and his affection for idiot-metaphysics ('Sein Aufgang ist Dasein' and so forth). Many of the sonnets, however, are appalling. Once Rilke ditches the generally critical stance of the elegies (complaints on injustice, suffering etc...) the idiot-metaphysics becomes overwhelming:

"Be - and at the same time know the implication of non-being...
to nature's whole supply of speechless, dumb,
and also used up things, the unspeakable sums,
rejoicing, add yourself and nullify the count."

Not to say there aren't great sonnets in there too, but my overall impression was one of disgust at this wonderful poet - what's more human than poetry? - wanting to become an object, thrilling in a mysticism of death. Add this to the apparent desire for a god to save us from the injustice and suffering so perfectly evoked in the elegies (uh... couldn't we save ourselves?), and my brain explodes. Because the whole thing is so beautiful, and at once so horrible, that there's nothing else for my brain to do. ( )