New Poems by Rainer Maria Rilke (review)

Len Krisak's new translation of Rilke's New Poems consists of the translator's preface, George Schoolfield's introduction, and, of course, the poems themselves.

In his preface, Krisak tells readers he came to Rilke's New Poems when he was asked to translate "The Archaic Torso of Apollo" for a class assignment. With no previous knowledge of the German language, he armed himself with a German-English dictionary and the work of earlier translators, including J. B. Leishman and Edward Snow, and, as he was instructed, "figured it out." Over the course of nearly two decades, Krisak taught himself the German language by translating Rilke's Neue Gedichte. Although not an ordinary strategy for learning a major European language, Krisak's technique (eventually) resulted in the current volume. With the aim of "poetry above all" in this new publication, Krisak brought "Rilke's New Poems over into English" (xi). In choosing the word "over," Krisak suggests a crossing over of some border or divide. Paul Riceour might invoke the words of Friedrich Schleiermacher to describe this process as "bringing the author to the reader." It is now up to the reader to come to the author.

Schoolfield's introduction helps the reader do just that—to come to Rilke. By beginning with a simple count of the translations of Rilke's New Poems—Krisak's is the fifth—Schoolfield reminds readers that these poems are not easy to translate. (By comparison, for example, more than twenty-five separate translations of Rilke's Duineser Elegien exist.) Thus readers know from the outset that Krisak faced and dealt with the technical challenges of bringing Rilke's New Poems poems "over" into English. Schoolfield takes only eighteen lines to identify the importance of Krisak's translation. In a word: vitality. As Schoolfield puts it, "Krisak's translation […] comes closest to replicating Rilke's poems' vitality and their subtleties of diction and form" (xvii).

Schoolfield's talent for providing knowledgeable background is everywhere evident in his introduction to these New Poems. He provides helpful insights into the events and people that informed Rilke before and during his writing of the New Poems. In particular, he calls attention to Rilke's time in Paris, his travels and correspondence with Lou Salomé, his boyhood education, and Rilke's ability to "squirrel" away poems until just the right moment (xxi). Schoolfield's narrative takes into account the two books Rilke always kept in his possession and the influence of Cezanne, especially on the poems in the second half of Part Two. Schoolfield also provides a helpful tour through the volume (xxv–xxx). Schoolfield unearths a letter from Rilke to his publisher outlining plans for a third volume of Neue Gedichte. These scattered fragments appeared in later works of Rilke.

Now to the real gems of the volume, Rilke's poems themselves. A comparison of Krisak's translation of the final two stanzas of Rilke's "Archaic Torso of Apollo," the opening poem of Part 2, which includes the well-known half-line "Du mußt dein Leben ändern," reveals what Schoolfield refers to as Krisak's "advantage in the naturalness of his diction and the vitality of his verse" (xvii).

Rilke:

Sonst stünde dieser Stein entstellt und kurzunter der Schultern durchsichtigem Sturzund flimmerte nicht so wie Raubtierfelle und bräche nicht aus allen seinen Rändernaus wie ein Stern: denn da ist keine Stelle,die dich nicht sieht. Du mußt dein Leben ändern.

J.B. Leishman:

Or else this stone would not stand so intactbeneath the shoulders' through-seen cataractand would not glisten like a wild beast's skin;

and would not keep from all its contours givinglight like a star: for there's no place thereinthat does not see you. You must change your living.

Snow:

Otherwise this stone would stand deformed and curtunder the shoulders' invisible plungeand not glisten just like wild beasts' fur;

and not burst forth from...