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- Herausgeber: Pushkin Press
- Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
A collection of haunting, mystical poems of the night by the great Rainer Maria Rilke, appearing together for the first time in EnglishIn 1916, Rainer Maria Rilke presented his friend Rudolf Kassner with a notebook, containing twenty-two poems meticulously inscribed in his own hand and bearing the title Poems to Night. This evocative sequence of poems, which echoes some of the great themes of German romanticism, is now thought to represent one of the key stages in the creative breakthrough and spiritual evolution of the pre-eminent European poet of the twentieth century.This collection brings all the poems together in English for the first time and is enhanced by a rich selection of further poems Rilke dedicated to night at various stages of his life. The Poems to Night and the background to them are illuminated by the translator's insightful introduction.
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POEMS TO NIGHT
Rainer Maria Rilke
Edited, Translated and with an Introduction by Will Stone
PUSHKIN PRESS
LONDON
5
I believe in Night…
rilke
(from The Book of Monkish Life, 1899)
CONTENTS
LIST OF POEMS
Poems to Night
The Siblings
When your face consumes me
Once I took into my hands
From face to face
Look, angels sense through space
Did I not breathe out of midnights
So, now it will be the angel
Away, I asked you finally to taste my smile
Strong, silent, candelabra placed
Out of this cloud, see: the one that so wildly obscures
Why must one go out and take alien things
But for myself, when I find myself back in the cities’
Straining so hard against the powerful night
Overflowing skies of squandered stars
Where I once was, or am: there you are treading
Thoughts of night, raised from intuited experience
Often I gazed at you in wonder. I stood at the window begun yesterday
I want to hold out. Act. Go over
Ah, from an angel’s touch falls
Is pain – as soon as the ploughshare
You who super-elevates me with this
Lifting one’s eyes from the book, from the close and countable lines
Poems to Night: Drafts
Isn’t there a smile? See, what is there
Turned upwards to the nourishing one
Why does the day persuade us
(To the Angel)
How did I hold out this face, that its feeling
When I feed on your face this way
Only now, at the nocturnal hour, am I without fear
Further Poems and Sketches around the Theme of Night
Now the red barberries are already ripening
From a Stormy Night
Night of the Spring Equinox
Stars Behind Olives
Nocturnal Walk
Urban Summer Night
Moonlit Night
Like the evening wind
At night I wish to converse with the angel
Night Sky and Falling Star
Love the angel is space
From the Periphery: Night
Strong star, without need of support
What reaches us with the starlight
Earlier, how often, we stayed, star in star
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to acknowledge the generous assistance of Brigitte Duvillard, Director of the Fondation Rilke in Sierre, who arranged a residence at the Villa Ruffieux in the Château Mercier above Sierre during June/July 2019, to enable me to work on these translations. I should also like to express my gratitude to writer and critic Bruce Mueller in San Francisco for his valuable contributions around Rilke’s biographical details, travel itineraries and publishing history. Lastly, I must give fulsome thanks to Linden Lawson, friend and editor, whose suggestions and editorial input have proved invaluable and have served to maintain this translator’s foothold at precarious moments on the path.
*
These translations were realized with the assistance of the Fondation Rilke, Sierre, Switzerland.
INTRODUCTION
At the end of 1916, Rainer Maria Rilke presented the writer Rudolf Kassner, his friend and confidant, with a notebook containing twenty-two poems which bore the title Gedichte an die Nacht (Poems to Night). These poems, linked by the recurring theme of night, were copied out in Rilke’s hallmark meticulous hand. Ernst Zinn, compiler of Rilke’s SämtlicheWerke (Collected Works) [Insel 1992], tells us in his notes that the Poems to Night were written between January 1913 and February 1914. What makes them significant is that they were created at the same time as Rilke’s most renowned work, the DuineserElegien (Duino Elegies), whose eighth elegy Rilke dedicated to Kassner, and reveal correspondences to its genesis as well as anticipating its structure and ushering in new psychic and linguistic territories. In fact, Rilke had originally considered adding the night poems to form a second section of the Elegies.
