A GERMAN POET

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22712, 26 October 1935, Page 4

A GERMAN POET

THE PHILOSOPHY OF RILKE “ Requiem and Other Poems." By Rainer Maria Rilke. With a biographical and critical Introduction by the translator, J. B. Lelshman. London; The Hogarth Press. 10s 6d. Mr J. B. Leishman has undertaken a particularly heavy task in endeavouring to introduce Rainer Maria Rilke, one of the most significant and profound of modern poets, to an English audience. It says much for his conscientiousness as a translator that he lias succeeded not only in producing readable translations, but also in conveying much of the spirit of the original. In this volume he_ has given a biographical and critical introduction which fills half the volume. Knowledge of the details of the_ writer's life are more important with Rilke than with most writers, for one of the outstanding characteristics of big poetry is its personal significance. Rilke, who died at an age when he had just attained full intellectual maturity, was born in Prague in 1875, and from early youth was marked by physical delicacy and intellectual sensitiveness. In his adolescent years he was as sentimental as it was possible only for a young German military cadet of that period to be. He published his first poems at the age of 19. They are not to be compared with his later work —he had not begun to find himself —hut it is significant that in later years the poet himself collected and republished these early writings, was essentially the sum of all that he had been and of what he had seen. Visits to Russia in 1899 and 1900 were profoundly important. for the impressions he received were one of the three great formative influences in his life. Russia to him was “Holy Russia.” He wrote at the time: The mere daily fact of living among this people full of reverence and piety is strange, and I find a deep delight in this new experience. It seems that Russian people live fragments of infinitely long and mighty careers, and even if they only linger therein for a moment, there hang, nevertheless, over these minutes the dimensions of gigantic intentions and unhasting developments And it is just this that comes to us from all their lives with such a thrill of eternity and of the future. Elsewhere he uses the phrases “people becoming something,” and “over all a never fixed, eternally changing and growing God.” His comments are not only enlightening concerning himself, they are interesting because of subsequent events in the history of the country. Of him it could be said that he “saw life whole. ’ Things which have become were to him as important as things which are to come, and death was as important as life. The direct outcome of the Russian visit was the acquisition of a deep mystical sense of the brotherhood and unity of all men and things. He had also been developing hie remarkable powers of observation, the art of what he called “looking at things properly.” . In 1902 he went to Pans, and that city turned out to be the second great influence in hig development. During

residence in Paris he met the sculptor Rodin. the third influence in his life. Paris at first appalled him. “ One feels all of a sudden that in this wide city there are hosts of invalids, armies of dying, nations of dead.” But after the first shock he set himself steadily to comprehend the meaning of the vast confusion of life as exemplified before him. This effort was expressed in one of his poems:— "It may be I am going through heavy mountains . . . and am so deep that I see no end and no distance; all became nearness, and all nearness became stone. As yet I am no expert in pain,—hence this great darkness makes me small; if you, are, though, make yourself heavy, break in; so that your whole hand may fall upon roe and I on you with my whole cry.” Rodin was the only individual influence which aided the growth of his_ intellectual stature. By living with him, in the many and long discussions, he began to comprehend, and his philosophy began to shape itself. Then came his poems. As Mr Leishman says:—“Nothing like these poems had been written before; nothing like them has been written since. Rilke has been called a Symbolist, but his words always have a definite and finally discoverable meaning, and are symbolic only in the sense of being evocative of particular things and experience. . . . The last phrase is the most significant part of that statement. In many of the poems in this collection it' will be found that there are two clearly defined sections. In the first section there is described something that the poet has observed although he often does not tell us definitely what he is describing, and it is here that knowledge of his letters and notebooks are of infinite value in making easier comprehension of the moral or philosophical observation which forms the second part of the poem. These comments are pregnant with meaning in themselves, but definite knowledge of the object which has inspired the comment enlarges the horizon of the reader. One must turn again and again to these short poems, and it is, in a sense, an indication of Rilke’s greatness that one can do so with a sense of pleasure. Even in translation one can obtain a faint idea of the superb technique of the original, for with profundity of observation the poet combined a high degree of craftsmanship. In some poems the philosophical element is dominant, but m others there is an exquisite pathos and beauty. In the present volume one ot the finest poems is “ The Death of the Beloved,” which is worthy of being quoted in its entirety:— He only knew ot death what all men may: That those he takes he thrusts Into dumb night. When she, however, —no, not torn away, But very gently loosened from his sight.— Glided beyond Into the unknown shades, And when he felt that ha had now resigned The moonlight of her laughter to their glades. And all her ways of being kind: Then all at once he came to understand The dead through her, and Joined them In their walk, Kin to them all, ho let the other talk And paid no heed to them and called that land The fortunately-placed, the ever sweet. — And groped out all Us pathways for her feet. In the longer poems of “ Requiem ” he states his philosophy more broadly, and in the extracts from the “ Sonette and Orpheus” he endeavours to express the truth which was dimly glimpsed by the Greeks in the Orphic myths. His meaning is most clearly expressed in the following verses, in which he views the striving of man through the ages, and concludes; — Branch on branch, I ', lime on time, Higher and higher . . . Once free ! O climb ... 0 climb . . . Age breaks and tempest rends. One though attains and bends Into a lyre. D. G. B.