Sonnets to Orpheus, Bilingual Edition

There are a few clunky bits, but more often than not the language flows elegantly in translation. I know there are differences of opinion on this one though. If you have a favorite passage, do yourself the favor of checking it in the bookstore. If your favorite turns out "differently than expected" you'll probably not appreciate the translation as much.

Reading in translation always makes me suspicious. I am among the faithful who believe that a translator should be a translator above all--and a poet second. To dismiss the words of a renowned author and supplement your own is blasphemy and arrogantly disrespectful. I, for one, believe that it *isn't* impossible to capture the spirit of the work and the actual wording. Edward Snow does a fairly good job of keeping pace with Rilke, and in some places he shines brilliantly. However, he strays too far in other areas for my comfort. I have trouble following his reasoning in some of the translated passages, which are altered without apparent benefit to meaning or beauty. Also--and perhaps here I am again missing some greater point--he once changes the tense of a verb (I do not mean the konjunktiv) from past to present. Why? Really? Anyway, Snow is good (this is actually the only translation I've read, so he's really the best I know) enough; for English-only speakers, you will get not only the gist but the passion. But I'll stick to the German part. Students of German: do not rely on it to be strictly accurate.

Edward Snow, who has earned multiple awards for his translations, applies his gift to the original German poems written almost a century ago by master poet Rainer Maria Rilke in Sonnets To Orpheus. A bilingual German/English edition each poem in both languages on every two-page spread, Sonnets To Orpheus resonates with introspective contemplation on the finality of time, transition, change, and death; Rilke wrote it only four years before his own passing. A classic work that remains vividly relevant today. Does it really exist, Time the Destroyer? / When, on the peaceful mountain, does it crush the fortress? / And this heart, always the gods' possession, / when does the Demiurge pillage it?

Praising, That's It! by Tom Goff, Carmichael, CA Rainer Maria Rilke: Sonnets to Orpheus. Translated by Edward Snow. $22 (hb). 122p. North Point Press, 19 Union Square West, NY 10003. Published 2004. ISBN # 0-86547-611-x. For some years now, Edward Snow's free-verse translations of Rilke have allowed that German-speaking Czech poet (really an almost stateless wanderer for much of his life) to speak in English as the modernist he was at heart, his mastery of the sonnet, the elegy, and other verse forms notwithstanding. Chances are that if you know the two books of New Poems-their sculptural intensities inspired by Rodin-you know them in Snow's version; and he has had equivalent success with Rilke's earlier Book of Images, as well as the Uncollected Poems, his terrific choice of works the poet mysteriously failed to unify. So much does Snow emphasize the unknown Rilke, the poet of unsuspected toughness, of constant flickers of poetic improvisation, that he risks slighting the writer's pet projects. In particular, Snow would like to revise the myth Rilke himself generated: that after beginning the Duino Elegies in high style in 1912-ready to utter his whole vision of life's and death's interconnectedness-he fell helplessly silent for almost ten years. Silent, that is, until (working furiously in a secluded tower in Switzerland) he recaptured his touch in one magic February, in 1922. Inspired as perhaps no other poet has ever been, Rilke poured forth the mystical utterances that would complete the Elegies, prompted by a creative icebreaker: the fifty-five Sonnets that are our subject. So goes the legend, much of it true, if we credit Rilke's account of his suffering and triumph. But Snow's introduction to his recent (2000) translation of the Elegies should be read between the lines: it's clear that this sequence of ten poetic meditations in the grand manner is not completely to Snow's taste, nicely rendered as his version is. So it's a relief to see enthusiasm return as Snow now discusses, and then renders, the Sonnets to Orpheus, with a clarity and (unrhymed) musicality these intimate poems-often inspirational teachings-require. The Sonnets came to the poet as he pondered the last letters of Vera Ouckama Knoop (a friend of the poet's daughter Ruth); these described vividly the leukemia that ended this talented dancer-musician's life at nineteen. Thoughts of Vera's fate mingled with musings about the mythic poet Orpheus, and with certain experiments in the sonnet form Rilke had recently been attempting (so much for the notion of total prior "blockage"). Once Rilke was started, there was no stopping the singing, as this example illustrates: Wait..., this taste...Already it's escaping. ...A bit of music, feet tapping, a hum-: You girls, with your silences, your warmth, dance the knowledge of the tasted fruit. Dance the orange. Who can forget it, the way it fights, drowning in itself, against its sweetness. You've possessed

Go to the poetry section of any major bookstore and you will find numerous versions of Rilke's profound and captivating Sonnets to Orpheus, plus many other volumes of his. Besides Dante, Neruda, García Lorca and Rumi, he is one of the world poets most translated into English. Many good versions have been produced and I have bought and enjoyed reading most of them in the past, except some of the earlier, more crabbed versions from last century. The version I remember liking the most was David Young's, which, unfortunately, I do not have at hand for comparison. Since I don't know German and can't access the original, which must be a marvel, I have to trust my instincts concerning an English version, and my instincts tell me to trust Willis Barnstone, one of our foremost translators. This new volume, published by Shambala, includes a revision of Mr. Barnstone's earlier translation of the Sonnets published in To Touch the Sky, by New Directions Press, 1999. Mr. Barnstone has not made any major changes to that earlier translation, which still reads quite smoothly, though he has gone through and made important fine-tunings which give some poems more fluency at certain points than they previously possessed. These changes may not seem important or even that noticeable to the general reader, but they are to the translator and to the more specialized reader. Translation, especially literary translation, is always a work in progress, unless abandoned by the translator. Fortunately, Mr. Barnstone chose not to abandon this work yet, and so we have a newer, brighter version of the Sonnets to enjoy. Another benefit of this volume is the extensive, generous and compassionate introduction. Mr. Barnstone has over the years become a master of the introductory essay, besides being a master translator and poet. The introduction in this volume is the best I've read to date about Rilke. Other introductions have been excellent and informative, but this one provides the most lucid overall picture of Rilke, his life and his art that I can imagine short of reading some of the book-length biographies Mr. Barnstone used as resources. For those interested in the art of translation, a small essay about the tradition of translating the Sonnets in English follows the Introduction. Initially, Mr. Barnstone generously acknowledges the fine work done in the past, starting with J.B. Leishman in 1936 and C.F. MacIntrye in 1940--those earlier "crabbed" versions I mention above--which makes me want to seek them out again, if only to understand where they have been successful. He then goes on to explain his approach: making the "literal literary." This is vastly more difficult than it sounds, and calls for a craftsman of profound skill and experience. To be literal, but unmusical, which is what I understand Mr. Barnstone to mean when he uses the term "literalistic," is to deprive the reader of the poem, though it may give a more accurate understanding of the "meanings