—

Abends führt sie ihn hin zu den Gräbern der Alten

aus dem Klage-Geschlecht, den Sibyllen und Warn-Herrn.

Naht aber Nacht, so wandeln sie leiser, und bald

mondets empor, das über alles

wachende Grab-Mal. Brüderlich jenem am Nil,

der erhabene Sphinx —: der verschwiegenen Kammer
Antlitz.

Und sie staunen dem krönlichen Haupt, das für immer,

schweigend, der Menschen Gesicht

auf die Waage der Sterne gelegt.

Nicht erfaßt es sein Blick, im Frühtod

schwindelnd. Aber ihr Schaun,

hinter dem Pschent-Rand hervor, scheucht es die Eule. Und
sie,

streifend im langsamen Abstrich die Wange entlang,

jene der reifesten Rundung,

zeichnet weich in das neue

Totengehör, über ein doppelt

aufgeschlagenes Blatt, den unbeschreiblichen Umriß.

Und höher, die Sterne. Neue. Die Sterne des Leidlands.

Langsam nennt sie die Klage: »Hier,

siehe: den ›Reiter‹, den ›Stab‹, und das vollere Sternbild

nennen sie: ›Fruchtkranz‹. Dann, weiter, dem Pol zu:

›Wiege‹, ›Weg‹, ›das brennende Buch‹, ›Puppe‹, ›Fenster‹.

Aber im südlichen Himmel, rein wie im Innern

einer gesegneten Hand, das klar erglänzende ›M‹,

das die Mütter bedeutet …‥ «

Doch der Tote muß fort, und schweigend bringt ihn die ältere

Klage bis an die Talschlucht,

wo es schimmert im Mondschein:

die Quelle der Freude. In Ehrfurcht

nennt sie sie, sagt: »Bei den Menschen

ist sie ein tragender Strom.«

Stehn am Fuß des Gebirgs.

Und da umarmt sie ihn, weinend.

Einsam steigt er dahin, in die Berge des Urleids.

Und nicht einmal sein Schritt klingt aus dem tonlosen Los.

Aber erweckten sie uns, die unendlich Toten, ein Gleichnis,

siehe, sie zeigten vielleicht auf die Kätzchen der leeren

Hasel, die hängenden, oder

meinten den Regen, der fällt aufdunkles Erdreich im
Frühjahr.—

Und wir, die an steigendes Glück

denken, empfänden die Rührung,

die uns beinah bestürzt,

wenn ein Glückliches fällt.

NOTES AND COMMENTS

FIRST ELEGY

The traditional beginning of a long poem is an invocation, asking for help from a divine source, a muse. Rilke’s is the opposite, a turning away, a refusal. The poet is on his own, considering what poetry can be without supernatural sanctions. But if the poet cannot expect contact with angels, he must nevertheless be attentive to the fact and meaning of death. The invocation gradually takes the form of a willingness, even a desire, to listen to what the dead have to tell us. The distinctions between death and life are re-examined. If the dead do not need us, we begin to realize, we do need them. Music, for example, had its origin in the ancient experience of grief.

angelic orders: Rilke’s angels, as the poem makes clear, are not those of Christian orthodoxy. He once noted that they were more like those of Islam. The best definition of them remains the poem itself.

Gaspara Stampa: an Italian poet of the 16th century. Abandoned by her lover, she responded not with despair but by writing poetry and venturing into other love affairs. She died at the age of thirty-one.

Santa Maria Formosa: a church in Venice Rilke had visited in 1911.

Linos: a vegetation god similar to Adonis. It seems likely that Rilke supposed his mourner to be Orpheus, the legendary first poet and musician. It is as though the first experience of grief produced the first music.

SECOND ELEGY

The poem’s tendency to use motifs both of image and idea is clear as Rilke again takes up the matter of contact with the angels. This time, though the focus is not so much the role of the poet as the meaning of our mutability, our ephemeral place in the world. Lovers seem to be in touch with a more lasting existence, a greater reality, but they cannot sustain it. Greek funerary sculpture (steles are stone slabs carved in relief) shows, in its dignity and restraint, an acceptance of human transience, and we need an equivalent that we can’t seem to find in today’s pictures or statuary.

Tobias: in the apocryphal Book of Tobit, the angel Raphael guides Tobias, who does not recognize him, on a difficult journey.

THIRD ELEGY

The exploration of love continues, and a new motif, that of the child, makes its appearance. Again, we seem to have an equivalent to a traditional feature of the epic: the descent to the underworld. Here the journey is interior, reflecting Rilke’s interest in the contemporary development of Freudian psychology. In its treatment of the child, the mother, the young man and the girl who is in love with him, this Elegy is an extraordinary mixture of bitterness and tenderness.

FOURTH ELEGY

Again, lovers, interior landscape, child and parent, this time the father. And new images—theatrical entertainment, with the puppet preferred to the dancer. The boy with the squint is Rilke’s cousin Egon, who died young and is commemorated in the Sonnets to Orpheus, II, 8. The German word for puppet, Puppe, also means doll, making the transition to the child among his playthings even more natural.