Poems: Rainer Maria Rilke & Francisco Aragón

Francisco Aragón (YouTube.com)

Several days ago in my post featuring a poem by Valerie Martínez I mentioned poet Francisco Aragón, who had organized the "PINTURA: POETA, a project in Ekphrasis program" that Martínez, Carmen Giménez Smith, Blas Falconer, and a number of other leading contemporary Latinx poets had participated in back in 2013. I do plan to feature more of those poets and poems, but you J's Theater readers did not think that I would mention Francisco without sharing one of his poems, did you? In fact, a while ago I thought about posting his poem below, and then, in the swirl of...well, you know the drill. A day, a week, a month, years pass. So, how fitting that this month has provided a reminder to do so.

One of the most famous ekphrastic poems ever written is German poet Rainer Maria Rilke's (1875-1926) "The Archaic Torso of Apollo," a sonnet that initially appeared in his Neue Gedichte (New Poems) of 1907. These poems, and those in the second volume of 1908, were landmarks in European Modernist literature; while many appear in fixed forms like the sonnet, their combination of objective description, incantatory lyricism, and metaphysical heft appeared to mark a new stage in German and European poetry. At times, Rilke's poetic speaker engages in dialogue with himself--or his selves--and the poem's subject and themes, incorporating the reader in the dialogue, in a way that feels distinct from the dialogic approach one finds at times in Romanticism, or the abstractions of Symbolist poetry.

Rilke's "Archaic Torso" is fairly straightforward compared to some of the other poems in the two volumes, but it is less for the description than for its final line that its fame accrues. Many people who  perhaps have never read the German, let alone the English version of the poem know that famous dictum that concludes the sonnet: "You must change your life." As I have pointed out a number of times over the years, this translation is correct, and yet it loses one key component of the German, which is the verb "ändern," meaning to change or alter. "Ändern," and its cognates "ander/e," meaning "other," are directly related etymologically to English's "other." We lost the "n" and in the consonant shifting that occurred, and we got the "th" where German has a "d." Think "thorn" and "Dorn," or "thistle" and "Distel," or, well, "to think" and "denken." The languages, at least in their root words, are close. 

German does have other words for change too; "wechseln," meaning to "change" as in "exchange" money, sheets, etc.; "umziehen," to change one's clothes; "umtauschen," to exchange (something in a store); "verwandeln," to transform. (In the latter word, of course, "ande[r]" makes an appearance. Those "ändern" literally means "to make another" or "to make other." Or "to other." In this one word then, Rilke, as canny as they come, reminds us of the power of what not just the encounter with the work art does to the speaker, to us and any viewer, but what the artist herself must do--make oneself another, an other, other.

I have not forgotten Francisco, though. So below I am posting the German original of Rilke's poem, and Stephen Mitchell's famous translation. And then, I am posting Francisco's riff, which could be thought of also as a creative translation that manages to transform--verwandeln--the poem into something else, wittily but also with a serious little wallop. I think there are several different ways to interpret Francisco's version, but I'll leave that for J's Theater readers to pursue. I've already said quite a bit, though in case you are interested, Francisco is the author of two books of poetry, Puerta del Sol (2005) and Glow of Our Sweat (2010), and among his many activities (some of which I've mentioned on this blog before), he directs Letras Latinas, the literary program of the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

ARCHAISCHER TORSO APOLLOS

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Wir kannten nicht sein unerhörtes Haupt,
darin die Augenäpfel reiften. Aber
sein Torso glüht noch wie ein Kandelaber,
in dem sein Schauen, nur zurückgeschraubt,

sich hält und glänzt. Sonst könnte nicht der Bug
der Brust dich blenden, und im leisen Drehen
der Lenden könnte nicht ein Lächeln gehen
zu jener Mitte, die die Zeugung trug.

Sonst stünde dieser Stein enstellt und kurz
unter der Shultern durchsichtigem Sturz
und flimmerte nicht so wie Raubtierfelle;

und brächte nicht aus allen seinen Rändern
aus wie ein Stern: denn da ist keine Stelle,
die dich nicht sieht. Du mußt dein Leben ändern.

ARCHAIC TORSO OF APOLLO

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could 
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

From Ahead of All Parting: Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell (New York: Modern Library, 1995). All rights reserved.

TORSO

by Francisco Aragón

    after Rilke

Despite the absent head (whose eyes

were the green of apples)
the supple flesh hums
with the afterglow

of those eyes
which is why the curve
of chest shimmers which is why

the twist of loin turns
that look into a smile, snaring
your eyes, leading

them slowly to regions
below the waist...That block
of stone more than a figure

disfigured and short; cascade
of shoulder glints
like a sinewy beast

of prey, whose edges blink
like stars—that torso:
gazing on its own. Step closer:

go blind

Copyright © 2014 by Francisco Aragón. From Glow of Our Sweat (Scapegoat Press, 2010). Reprinted from Split This Rock’s The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database.

And, lastly, what might that headless torso of Apollo have looked like to Rilke, or how might it appear today?

Torso of Apollo, Roman copy
after a statue of the school of
Polykleitos, ca. 430–420 BC
Villa Ridolfi in Rome, acquired
in 1812 by Wagner for the
 Glyptothek, Munich
(courtesy of The Rapidian)

Chatting with Mark Sussman at the Creative Independent

Recently I chatted with writer Mark Sussman for a short feature that has now posted at The Creative Independent, under the title "Writing from the Inside Out." It was such an honor to be invited to participate on the site, which aims to be "a growing resource of emotional and practical guidance for creative people," and features short interviews with an impressive array of creative people across the artistic spectrum, including Hilton Als, Björk, Taja Cheek, Scott Esposito, Shepard Fairey, Diamanda Galás, Roxane Gay, Nikki Giovanni, Jonathan Gonzalez, Rickie Lee Jones, Isaac Julien, Joseph Legaspi, Carmen Maria Machado, Aparna Nancherla, Morgan Parker, Brontez Parnell, Paul Sepuya, Prageeta Sharma, Danez Smith, Michael Stipe, and many others.

The site's first conversation, after its launch note, was with the incomparable Eileen Miles, and the one that posted right before mine engaged Mrs. Smith, a "philanthropist, tone poet, and the world's most unlikely guitar hero." My conversation with Mark, which took place via Skype, even spilled over the alotted time limit, I think, so he could include only a few key portions of it appear on the site. As always I tried not to cover ground that I had in other public conversations, though some of that is unavoidable. One other aspect of the exchange was the light editing; the transcript is very casual, and close to how it was recorded, so what we said is what the readers get. Mark also shared a few of the excerpts that didn't make to the TCI website on his personal blog.

Here are some thoughts about translation, why new translators for extensively or well-translated texts are needed from time to time, and more specifically, some thoughts about translators of Rainer Maria Rilke's poetry. The bolded statement is Mark's, the response is mine:

One of my teachers once said the text in the original language stays the same, but we always need updated translations. And we’re always getting new translations of old texts. Why is that?
Because I think, with each new translation, you bring a different perspective to it. Often, of course, what happens with new translations is they re-situate the work for a new context. I think of a writer that’s so beloved and has been translated by different people in so many different ways, like Rainer Rilke. Two people whose translations of Rilke I think are really great are William Gass and Steven Mitchell. I believe Gass’s precedes Mitchell’s. You know, William Gass was an extraordinary writer in English. But he was also a profoundly philosophical writer. And he, of course, spoke German. He had training in German. So his translations have a certain kind of philosophical sensibility, like he’s capturing something in Rilke, I think, that most translators probably wouldn’t.

With Steven Mitchell, you have a translator who has an extraordinary ear [and] an extraordinary eye and his desire is to give you a Rilke that, on the one hand is as approximate as possible, but also doesn’t lose any of Rilke’s strangeness. If you go back and forth between those two translations, and of course, many lesser translations, you really start to get a sense, if you don’t speak German, of what Rilke might be like. And that, I think, can be really great.

But at times updated translations can just be terrible. If you’re translating the work of a poet, particularly a poet who is also an extraordinary prose writer, you want to retain that poetry, so you want to err on the side of the lyrical that might not be as exact, as opposed to the exact that is not so lyrical, because [otherwise] you lose what is essential to that writer.

Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud ben
Mohammed Anoun, Moorish
Ambassador to Queen
Elizabeth I (1600), Anonymous
painter.

And here's one snippet from the excerpt, where we discuss William Shakespeare's Othello, which we both love and have taught:

There’s this amazing portrait of an ambassador, I guess, from one of the North African countries that would have existed then, it wasn’t Morocco. There’s this amazing portrait of this ambassador, and it’s unclear whether Shakespeare would have ever seen that particular picture, but imagery of that kind circulated about Northern Africa and the Middle East, and of course Africa itself. There was also a moment where, in his transposition of the story from Britain to Venice, he’s picking a very similar society. A maritime society, but also a society that you could say gives him a little bit more leeway, but, like Britain, [one that] is very much engaged in mercantilism. So there are all of these parallels between the Britain of his day and the fictional Venice.

But the fascinating thing that most people usually don’t talk about is that, in Shakespeare’s time, he would see Black people walking through the streets of London. They may have been working in the theater, or they may have been working on the docks. This is also the moment where slavery is getting going. So you have all of these things happening in the background, and as you pointed out, they all feed into the play.

I think it’s very interesting that in the play, you have these moments of slippage. One of the things the students always ask is, “What is a Moor?” This is what the dictionary says a Moor is. And then, when you read through it and you see how, in fact, it’s not even so much about Moorishness Africanness. It really is about Blackness. When you think about all of those insults that come out of Iago’s mouth or the horror that Desdemona’s father feels about this. He’s a warrior, he’s just like this big “black ram.” So you see that. Shakespeare was kind of working through multiple things at once, which makes the tragedy that much more powerful. So when Joyce Carol Oates makes the statement, I was just sort of like, “What are you doing? You’re smart enough to know, you’re not making any sense.” You know? I don’t know. I don’t know.

Do read the rest of both interviews if you can.

Poem: Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Rilke

My very first post in 2005 was a notice about Jay Wright; my second offered a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), a poet who needs little introduction, one of the most original versifiers in late 19th and early 20th century German-language and European poetry, a poet whose vision into the inner heart of things can often provoke a feeling beyond the limits of astonishment. Every so often I will read a bit of Rilke to disorient my sense of language, beginning with the German and then with English translations or, if it is simple enough, a rarity with Rilke, with my own English versions.

Take the poem below, its title declaring its aptness for this month's selections. It opens with the personification of the evening (Der Abend) changing its robes, which Stephen Mitchell adroitly translates as "puts on the darkening coat," held for it by a row of old trees, and then we get one of those abruptions Rilke is famous for--the semicolon, followed by the direct address, familiar, du schaust--you look, or watch, which of course you have already been doing, and before your eyes, as evening settles in, from you (von dir) the lands grow different (scheiden), or as Mitchell says, grow distant (distinct), one "himmelfahrendes" (traveling to the sky, to heaven) and one that falls (fällt)...okay, by this point, what began as a fairly simple conceit has turned into something quite strange. That is Rilke. He is already beyond the mere image, impression, vision, into something deeper, beyond.

By the second stanza you are utterly unsettled; the lands' departures have left you in nowhere, in a no-place, which is an inner space and outer one, one material as those houses but not those houses, and one like that feeling, barely expressible, that surges up to the sky, like, as he says, never losing the exactitude of the German rhymes, like a star (Gestirn). (There is also the play on the word "Stirn," which in German means "end," to which you have come though the scope of the poem bursts through the plane of the screen. And there is the repetition and echo of the opening line's Abend...wechselt [evening changes] in the final line's abwechselnd [alternated; taken turns].) Earthly, unearthly, at the same time. There are poets, and there are poets. And there is Rilke.

ABEND

Der Abend wechselt langsam die Gewänder,
die ihm ein Rand von alten Bäumen hält;
du schaust: und von dir scheiden sich die Länder,
ein himmelfahrendes und eins, das fällt;

und lassen dich, zu keinem ganz gehörend,
nicht ganz so dunkel wie das Haus, das schweigt,
nicht ganz so sicher Ewiges beschwörend
wie das, was Stern wird jede Nacht und steigt -

und lassen dir (unsäglich zu entwirrn)
dein Leben bang und riesenhaft und reifend,
so dass es, bald begrenzt und bald begreifend,
abwechselnd Stein in dir wird und Gestirn. 

EVENING

The sky puts on the darkening blue coat
held for it by a row of ancient trees:
you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight,
one journeying to heaven, one that falls;

and leave you, not at home in either one,
not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses,
not calling to eternity with the passion
of what becomes a star each night, and rises;

and leave you (inexpressively to unravel)
your life, with its immensity and fear,
so that, now bounded, now immeasurable,
it is alternately stone in you and star.

Copyright © Rainer Maria Rilke. Translation © by Stephen Mitchell from The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. New York: Vintage, 1989.