5 July 2021
Victoria, BC
Dear Poemgranates,
Annemarie Kidder’s introduction to Rainer Maria Rilke’s The Book of Hours notes that Rilke insisted that there must be no emphatic breaks between the poems. Then, Rilke bound these poems in a title that recalls prayers written for the liturgical season, prayers meant to be recited in lay use at appropriate times. But what is propriety before a god he has created? What are hours? Rilke has made a god of his longing and these poems are a dance that does not care for time.
I wanted to read Rilke’s Book of Hours. I wanted to read Rilke (there is, here, an emphasis on “read” that I cannot quite define without admitting that I was determined to understand Rilke better than any poet before). I understand longing with the most clarity when I sit by the sea, here at Arbutus Cove, so there I went with three translations of the same book to watch Rilke create a god he can only create but never quite turn to.
I imagine Rilke turning: “am I a falcon, / a storm, or a great song?” (tr. Barrows and Macy, I.2). Turning and turning. Fulfilling his own prophecies. “Embody me” (I.59), his god says and how Rilke ripens with god! All the turning in the world, all the chiasmus in a prayer will not embrace Rilke, yet Rilke turns. Turning to whom? Turning on what? You do not ask those questions in a dance.
As I leafed through one book and then the next, sometimes in haste, I thought of Rilke’s compound-noun-god and who gets to unravel a metaphor. Rilke’s god does not say “Embody me” as Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy translate it. Kidder, largely prosaic, translates it as “be my attire” (81). How much of Rilke’s language do I want to build with my own hands? I get to ask this, though, because this is an exercise in (emphatically) reading Rilke and I will not suffer bad, universalized translations, torn from context.
I particularly admired Susan Ranson’s translation and her generous efforts to retain Rilke in his poems. Ranson keeps Rilke’s sharper edges: “For your willing evangelist / misrepresents, and even forgets / to look about for your sound” (65). I came to deeply appreciate Ranson’s simplicity and lack of interpretive splicing. The Barrows and Macy edition (“Your Gospel can be comprehended / without looking for its source” I.51), I think, as a translation, stands in the way of Rilke’s god.
Did I read Rilke, then? I did entirely drown. I woke up long before sunrise to read Rilke say there is always someone awake, turning and turning, in the Book of Pilgrimage. How I have been lured into his dance, his disregard for time! After the Pacific Northwest heatwave, I sat gratefully watching the islands on the Salish sea appear from the fog like they’re a Rilke poem and wondered about longing that wasn’t mine. Have you been turning too? Into what? Tell me.
Ever Yours,
ALHS
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