If music, architecture, sculpture, heroism, and love stood for the achievements of the human imagination before, poetry now begins to come into its own as Rilke considers the function of language itself as a means of identification and praise. The letter (quoted in the note, the Seventh Elegy) in which Rilke speaks of “the things we move among and use” as “our possession and our friendship,” is relevant here as well.

TENTH ELEGY

Rilke takes several risks in the final Elegy. If the Third Elegy paralleled the epic descent to the underworld, this one seems to take us beyond life and into death in a way that no other poet has attempted. The narrative line and allegorical manner make this Elegy somewhat more accessible, but there is no slackening of imaginative intensity. After an opening ‘prayer’ of great beauty, we get the wry portrait of “Pain City,” and then, in a kind of pastoral ‘swaying’ into the countryside, we cross that land—based partly on ancient Egypt, the most death-oriented civilization we have had—where visible and invisible are so astonishingly mingled. Motifs from the rest of the poem stream together in this Elegy, as in the list of constellations. And Rilke stretches our imaginative capabilities to their limits, as when we are asked to comprehend that the owl, startled from behind the edge of the Sphinx’s crown, traces the shape of the huge face with one wing as it flies across and down it, a tracing which is transferred to the dead man’s sharpened sense of hearing as if a book which already lay open could somehow be opened again! The ending of the poem either needs no explanation or simply lies beyond it.

ALSO BY RAINER MARIA RILKE

In Translations by M. D. Herter Norton

Letters to a Young Poet

Sonnets to Orpheus

Wartime Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke

Translations from the Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke

The Lay of the Love and Death of Cornet Christopher Rilke

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

Stories of God

Translated by Jane Bannard Greene and M. D. Herter Norton

Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, Volume One, 1892–1910

Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, Volume Two, 1910–1926

Translated by David Young

Duino Elegies

In Various Translations

Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties.

Translations and

Considerations of Rainer Maria Rilke

Compiled by John J. L. Mood

This translation was originally published in FIELD,

Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, issues 5 through 9

Copyright © 1978 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Reissued in a Norton paperback editions 1992, 2006

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Rilke, Rainer Maria, 1875–1926.

[Duineser Elegien. English & German]

Duino elegies / Rainer Maria Rilke ; translated by David Young ; with an introduction and commentary.

p. cm.

English and German on facing pages.

“This translation was originally published in Field, Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, issues 5 through 9. Reissued in Norton paperback editions 1992, 2006.”

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN-13: 978-0-393-32884-4 (pbk.)

ISBN-10: 0-393-32884-8 (pbk.)

1. Rilke, Rainer Maria, 1875–1926—Translations into English.

I. Young, David, 1936– II. Field. III. Title.

PT2635.I65D813 2006

831'.912—dc22

2006009872

ISBN 978-0-393-35065-4 (e-book)

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110

www.wwnorton.com

W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.

Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT

.