October: Fall Starlings and a Poplar Tree

October: Fall Starlings and a Poplar Tree
(click on photo to enlarge)
"There rose a tree. O pure /
transcendence!
O Orpheus sings! O high tree of the ear.
And all was still. Yet in the stillness
new beginning, summoning, change /
sprang forth. "

from the First Part
of the Sonnets to Orpheus
by Rainer Maria Rilke

This week, an image of Fall
Starlings. Also: a new translation
from the German.

(click on photo to enlarge)
	"There rose a tree. O pure / transcendence! O Orpheus sings! O high tree of the ear. And all was still. Yet in the stillness new beginning, summoning, change / sprang forth. " from the First Part of the Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke This week, an image of Fall Starlings. Also: a new translation from the German.

The guest poem for this week is new English translations from the work of the German language
poet, Rainer Maria Rilke (from the Rilke website, a concise hyperlinked biography).

The Sonnets to Orpheus

Rilke wrote the Sonnets to Orpheus * at his modest chateau in Muzot, Switzerland, during a period
of intense activity in February of 1922. It was to be his last published work. The sequence of 55
poems, all sharing the same basic form and divided into two parts, is characterized by a marvelously
light and quick energy. Indeed, they seem filled with the exuberance of the mountains in which they
were composed, where everything seems larger than life, colors brighter and more radiant, and
streams faster and more clear.

This then is a poetry of praise, of the air I breathe, the meadow through which I walk, the beauty
of a single windflower opening to receive the morning sun, and yes, of praise itself:

| listen in German and English in RealAudio [c. 2' 30"] |

I (ERSTER TEIL)

Da stieg ein Baum. O reine Übersteigung!
O Orpheus singt! O hoher Baum im Ohr.
Und alles schwieg. Doch selbst in der /
verschweigung
ging neuer Anfang, Wink und Wandlung vor.

Tiere aus Stille drangen aus dem klaren
gelösten wald von Lager und Genist;
und da ergab sich, daß sie nicht aus List
und nicht aus Angst in sich so leise waren,

sondern aus Hören. Brüllen, Schrei, Geröhr
schien klein in ihren Herzen. Und wo eben
kaum eine Hütte war, dies zu empfangen,

ein Unterschlupf aus dunkelstem Verlangen
mit einem Zugang, dessen Pfosten beben,—
da schufst du ihnen Tempel im Gehör.

I (FIRST PART)

A tree has risen. O pure transcendence!
O Orpheus sings! O high tree of the ear.
And all was still. Yet in the stillness
new beginning, summoning, and change sprang /
forth.

From the silence, creatures pushed out
of the clear, open forest from lair and nest;
and then it happened, that they were not
so quiet because of cunning or fear,

but because of listening. Shrieks, cries, roars
seemed small in their hearts. And where once
scarcely a hut stood to receive this,

a crude shelter made of the darkest of longings
with trembling posts at its entrance way,—
there you created a temple in their hearing.

| listen to German original; listen to English trnaslation # |

| view / print Picture/Poem Poster: I (FIRST PART) (86 K) |

* Orpheus is the musician of musicians of classical Greek mythology. He is the one
whose magical art of the lyre has the power to charm the whole of Nature—the trees,
rivers, stones and even the wild animals, into the silence of listening. Son of Calliope,
the muse of epic poetry, and a Thracian river-god (in some versions of the story Apollo),
Orpheus married the nymph Eurydice who was fated to die of a serpent bite on her heel.
In his profound grief, Orpheus follows his beloved into the underworld, and with the
sound of his lyre enchants the resident deities into consenting to her release. The one
condition which Orpheus has to meet during the ascent back to the upperworld is that
he is not to look back at Eurydice. In a brief moment of weakness, he does, however,
look back, whereby Eurydice vanishes forever without a trace.

Rejecting all women in his sadness afterwards, Orpheus is later ripped to pieces by the
Maenads. This then is the source of the famous image of Orpheus' lyre and singing head,
floating off through empty space to the island of Lesbos.

| see also the Rilke Posters |

| listen to other recordings in English and German of twelve poems from
The Book of Images at The Rilke Download Page (# Includes instructions) |

See other recent additions of new English translations of Rilke's poetry, together with
featured photographs at:

(14) September: Fireweeds,Machines and the Poetry of Listening

(13) August: The Gentian and the Poetry of Light and Darkness

See also a selection of recent Picture/Poem "Rilke in translation" features at the Rilke Archive.

See also another website
by Cliff Crego:
The Poetry of
Rainer Maria Rilke

a presentation of 80 of the
best poems of Rilke in
both German and
new English translations:
biography, links, posters