The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke (38 page)

Rilke’s note: “To Vera.”

Rilke’s note: “To a friend of Vera’s.”

l. 3,
like a bell:

l. 4,
What feeds upon your face:

l. 10,
in their magic ring:

Dedication,
E.M.:
Erika Mitterer. In May 1924, at the age of eighteen, she had sent Rilke two poems, initiating an extensive correspondence in verse, from which this poem and “Dove that ventured outside” are taken.

This “taking life heavily” that my books are filled with … means nothing (don’t you agree?) but a taking according to true weight, and thus according to truth: an attempt to weigh Things by the carat of the heart, instead of by suspicion, happiness, or chance.

(To Rudolf Bodländer, March 13, 1922)

He who is solitary … can remember that all beauty in animals and plants is a silent, enduring form of love and yearning, and he can see animals, as he sees plants, patiently and willingly uniting and increasing and growing, not out of physical pleasure, not out of physical pain, but bowing to necessities that are greater than pleasure and pain, and more powerful than will and withstanding. If only human beings could more humbly receive this mystery—which the world is filled with, even in its smallest Things—, could bear it, endure it, more solemnly, feel how terribly heavy it is, instead of taking it lightly. If only they could be more reverent toward their own fruitfulness, which is essentially
one
, whether it is manifested as mental or physical …

(To Franz Xaver Kappus, July 16, 1903)

Women, in whom life lingers and dwells more immediately, more fruitfully, and more confidently, must surely have become riper and more human in their depths than light easygoing man, who is not pulled down beneath the surface of life by the weight of any bodily fruit …

(Ibid., May 14, 1904)

O Lacrimosa:
“O tearful [woman].” The epithet usually refers to Mary lamenting for Jesus at the foot of the cross.

Ernst Křenek
(1900–1991): Austrian composer. His setting for this poem, for “high voice” with piano accompaniment, was published in 1926 as his opus 48.

At Rilke’s request, these lines were carved on his gravestone in the churchyard of Raron.

The “little notebook with four prose-pieces” was sent to Monique Briod on December 10.

l. 8,
Rustic Chapel:
The small St. Anne chapel next to Muzot.

l. 17,
“Farfallettina”:
Little butterfly.

l. 26,
bilboquet:
A wooden toy, consisting of a cord with a ball on one end and a stick on the other; the object of the game is to catch the ball on the spike-end of the stick.

Dedication,
Marina Tsvetayeva
(1892–1941): One of the great modern Russian poets. She and Rilke never met in person, but they exchanged a number of
intense letters during the spring and summer of 1926. Her long elegy, “Novo-godnee” (“For the New Year”), written early in 1927, describes the impact of Rilke’s death on her.

l. 18,
Kom Ombo:
Probably a stop on Rilke’s trip to Egypt in 1911.

l. 20,
marks as a signal on the doors:
Cf. Exodus 12:7, 13.

Written to Erika Mitterer after she had undergone a serious operation.

You honored what is heaviest. You knew

the pull of earth; and you were pulled apart

by the dark angel’s voice that seemed as though

it called from somewhere outside your own heart.

You chose the tao of suffering, which led

past every common joy, past the humane

fulfillments, and delivered you instead

to cancer, in a Nessus’-shirt of pain.

Now, breathless, weightless, you can only fall

into yourself: the invisible, unheard

center that you sang. Ahead of all

parting, you might lean back against your chair

and see a sun-lit garden path. A bird

might whistle through you, in the cool morning air.