Rilke

Stepping into the mystic (The Bus 5.41)

Welcome aboard The Bus!

The Stop

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) was born in Prague to Josef - a ‘frustrated’ civil servant - and Sophie - the daughter of an upper-middle-class merchant and imperial councillor. The marriage was an unhappy one, largely because his mother felt she had ‘married beneath her.’ After she left the family when her son was eleven, Rilke’s life was plunged into a chaos which would eventually see him ‘recognised as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets.’¹

Rilke in 1900/Public Domain

After attending numerous unsuitable military schools as an adolescent - a period he described as a ‘primer of horror’ - he was finally expelled due to medical issues and returned to Prague at 16. Over the next three years he was tutored for the university entrance exam, which he passed in 1895 and began to take classes in literature, art history, and philosophy. At 19 Rilke published his first volume of poetry - Life and Songs - and, upon leaving school the next year, began a life which saw him move between inspirational mistresses, mentors and numerous countries.

Rilke's poetry was influenced by an early exposure to the arts and interactions with renowned figures like Rodin, Tolstoy and the father of Boris Pasternak. Though his early work - verse, short stories, and plays - are characterised by a youthful romanticism, his willingness to delve into the subconscious - and his unique ability to capture the ephemeral beauty of life - led him to uncover a depth of understanding which set him apart from many of his contemporaries. Themes of love, absence, death and the ‘interconnectedness of all things’ emerged from his interest in the artistic rhythms of nature, and he grew to believe the task of poetry was to ‘sing the hidden life of things’ in order to reveal the meanings beneath the world’s surface.

His ability to do this is best seen in the Duino Elegies, in which Rilke ‘turned to his own personal vision to find solutions to questions about the purpose of human life and the poet’s role in society.’ The title of the cycle of ten poems comes from the setting where he began them in 1912 - Duino Castle on the Italian Adriatic coast. Over the following ten years he wrote the poems around a unifying poetic image of angels, beings which ‘carry many meanings, albeit not the usual Christian connotations,’ as he uses them to represent a ‘higher force in life, both beautiful and terrible, completely indifferent to mankind.’ For Rilke, angels ‘represent[ed] the power of poetic vision, as well as [his] personal struggle to reconcile art and life.’ The ‘Duino angels … allowed Rilke to objectify abstract ideas … while not limiting him to the mundane materialism that was incapable of thoroughly illustrating philosophical issues.’

Rilke was ‘unique’ in the success of his attempts to ‘expand the realm of poetry through new uses of syntax and imagery’ while developing an ‘aesthetic philosophy that rejected Christian precepts and strove to reconcile beauty and suffering, life and death.’ Despite being raised a Christian, Rilke ultimately rejected his parents’ faith, and when he uses terms like ‘God’ or ‘angels’ he is ‘not referring to … deity in the traditional sense.’ Instead, Rilke used these words to refer to ‘the life force, or nature, or an all-embodying, pantheistic consciousness that is only slowly coming to realise its existence.’ Having suffered from various illnesses his entire life, he eventually died of leukemia in 1926 while staying near Lake Geneva. Remaining true to his anti-Christian beliefs to the end, he ‘refused the company of a priest’, choosing instead to find ‘peace in his art.’

The Detour

Today’s Detour is to a bizarre short film (4:00) by Nick Leng called Beetlebugs. A synopsis: ‘A mysterious young beetle arrives at the desk of Nick Leng, Personal Investigator... for Creatures. She can’t find her missing partner, Blu Buhg. After exhausting all their leads, they discover a dark truth lurking deep inside them both (literally).’ A great blend of live and animation - set to a great soundtrack - it’s trippy fun, and entirely worth the time.

Beetlebugs

The Recommendation

Today’s Recommendation is Rilke’s Duino Elegies, translated by Stephen Cohn (1989).² A series of ten poems, the elegies explore the fundamental questions of human existence by contemplating love, death, and the the relationship between the finite and the infinite which Rilke believed defined the human condition.

From the back: With all his contradictions, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) is one of the fathers of modern literature and the Duino Elegies is one of its great monuments. Begun in 1912 but not completed until 1922, they are ‘modern’ in almost every sense the word has acquired; yet Rilke was by temperament anti-modern, a snob and a romantic. He was devoted to the three A’s: Architecture, Agriculture, Aristocracy.

The Duino Elegies aroused real excitement among English readers when the now-dated Leishman/Spender versions first appeared in the 1930s. Stephen Cohn, the distinguished artist and teacher, has worked for over three years to complete this outstanding new translation. Peter Porter³ writes: ‘Your translation must have grandeur, essential size in its component parts, and speed to catch the marvellous twists of Rilke’s imagination.’ He adds, ‘Cohn has met all these requirements.’ These versions show a rare empathy with the originals and an instinct for the right diction and cadence. They are, says Porter, ‘the most flowing and organic I have read.’

The Sounds

Today’s playlist is a collection of five tracks, the titles of which contain a reference - in one way or another - to the power of the mystic:⁴ ‘Mystify’ (INXS, 1987), ‘Mystified’ (Fleetwood Mac, 1987), ‘Mystic Brew’ (Ronnie Foster, 1972), ‘Natural Mystic’ (Bob Marley & The Wailers, 1977) and ‘Mystic Eyes’ (Them, 1965). Enjoy!

The Thought

Today’s Thought is the opening of Rilke’s first Duino Elegy:

‘Who, if I cried out, might hear me - among the ranked Angels?/Even if One suddenly clasped me to his heart/I would die of the force of his being./For Beauty is only the infant of scarcely endurable Terror, and we/are amazed when it casually spares us.

Every Angel is terrible.’

Indeed.

If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:

And that’s the end of this Stop - I hope you enjoyed the diversion!

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Until the next Stop …

1. I think the first time I stumbled upon Rilke was a reference to him in Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow (1973). A Pynchon fan, I thought I’d check him out. Let’s just say I was so suitably impressed that one of the readings at my wedding was from Rilke. Sources for today’s Stop include Rilke (Britannica), Rilke (Wikipedia) and Rilke (Poetry Foundation).

2. This happens to be the first - and only - version I’ve read, so I don’t know if any other translations are better. This one would be very difficult to beat.

3. For a brief biography of Porter, see: Peter Porter.

4. Though the obvious choice for this collection would be Van Morrison’s incredible ‘Into the Mystic’ (1970), I’d already used it in a previous playlist (The Bus 3.14 - Wilhelm Nero Pilate Barbellion) so I nodded to him by including ‘Mystic Eyes’ by Them - including Morrison, of course, on vocals. I’ve always been a huge fan of the INXS track, think the Fleetwood Mac selection is one of the more underrated Christine McVie tracks, and the Marley I listened to in-depth as I drove around with a friend in the NC mountains in the late 90s with Exodus on repeat. I’d never heard the Foster track, but think it’s brilliant - and it was only on my second listen last Saturday that I realised I had heard bits of it before - as it’s sampled by A Tribe Called Quest on their excellent ‘Electric Relaxation’ (1993).