"Leaves"

All the talk of "falling" -- of leaves and of lives -- in Rainer Maria Rilke's "Autumn" got me to thinking about one of my favorite poems by Derek Mahon.  The poem has appeared here previously, but, as I have noted before, I am not averse to circling back on my tracks.  My rationalization is (I fear that I am repeating myself again):  we are never the same person that we were the last time we read a particular poem.  You cannot step into the same river twice, or something along those lines.  At least I hope so.

                                     Henry Lamb, "Tea Things" (1932)

               Leaves

The prisoners of infinite choice
Have built their house
In a field below the wood
And are at peace.

It is autumn, and dead leaves
On their way to the river
Scratch like birds at the windows
Or tick on the road.

Somewhere there is an afterlife
Of dead leaves,
A stadium filled with an infinite
Rustling and sighing.

Somewhere in the heaven
Of lost futures
The lives we might have led
Have found their own fulfilment.

Derek Mahon, The Snow Party (Oxford University Press 1975).

                       Thomas Henslow Barnard (1898-1992), "Still Life"

Two Autumns

A few years ago, I posted two translations of Rainer Maria Rilke's poem "Herbsttag" ("Autumn Day").  I have since suggested that I find Rilke's poetry to be a bit overwrought for my taste.  But I acknowledged that the fault is likely my own for not being able to match his passion.  However, when it comes to autumn, a little overwroughtness is acceptable at times.

All of which leads to another poem by Rilke, one that is perhaps less well-known than "Autumn Day."  I again offer two translations, since the different approaches of translators can be interesting.

                             Samuel Palmer, "The Weald of Kent" (c. 1833)

                          Autumn

The leaves are falling, falling from far away,
as though a distant garden died above us;
they fall, fall with denial in their wave.

And through the night the hard earth falls
farther than the stars in solitude.

We all are falling.  Here, this hand falls.
And see -- there goes another.  It's in us all.

And yet there's One whose gently holding hands
let this falling fall and never land.

Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by William Gass), in William Gass, Reading Rilke: Reflections on the Problems of Translation (Knopf 1999).

                   Samuel Palmer, "Pastoral with a Horse-Chestnut Tree"

                             Fall
                        after Rilke

The leaves are falling, falling from trees
in dying gardens far above us; as if their slow
free-fall was the sky declining.

And tonight this heavy earth is falling away
from all the other stars, drawing into silence.

We are all falling now.  My hand, my heart,
stall and drift in darkness, see-sawing down.

And some still believe there is one who sifts and holds
the leaves, the lives, of all those softly falling.

Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Robin Robertson), in The Times Literary Supplement (July 30, 1999).

There are certainly a great number of variations between Gass's version and Robertson's version.  This may be attributable to the fact that Robertson identifies his version as being "after Rilke."  When a translation is described as being "after [insert name of poet]" this is usually a signal from the translator to the reader that the translation is not "literal," and that some artistic license has been employed.  (I realize that the phrase "literal translation" is an oxymoron.)  In any case, I am in no position to render an opinion on either translation since I have no German.

However, at least the translators do agree on two things:  "the leaves are falling" and "we all are falling"/"we are all falling now."  I think that we can assent to both of those statements.

                               Samuel Palmer, "The Timber Wain" (c. 1833)

"Breathe On Me Still, Star, Sister"

Rainer Maria Rilke's "Evening" (which appeared in my previous post) closes by referring to one's life as

. . . the fearful and ripening and enormous
Being that -- bounded by everything, or boundless --
For a moment becomes stone, for a moment stars.

The translation of those lines is by Randall Jarrell.  The juxtaposition of stone and stars puts me in mind of a poem by Jarrell that appears in the same collection in which his translation of "Evening" appears.

                                 Eliot Hodgkin, "Two Large Flints" (1963)

                  The Meteorite

Star, that looked so long among the stones
And picked from them, half iron and half dirt,
One; and bent and put it to her lips
And breathed upon it till at last it burned
Uncertainly, among the stars its sisters --
Breathe on me still, star, sister.

Randall Jarrell, The Woman at the Washington Zoo (1960).

                                     Eliot Hodgkin, "Four Flints" (1939)

I never felt that I understood this poem, and then I came upon a passage in a memoir of Jarrell written by Mary von Schrader Jarrell, his second wife. Soon after they first met, she and Jarrell were out for a walk along a dry stream bed in Colorado, where she found an unusual-looking stone.  She suggested jokingly to Jarrell that it was a meteorite.  Jarrell later wrote "The Meteorite":  he is the meteorite; she is the star.  Mary von Schrader Jarrell, Remembering Randall: A Memoir of Poet, Critic, and Teacher Randall Jarrell (1999), pages 9-10.

The anecdote provides a good lesson:  poems often have their origins in prosaic circumstances.  I am reminded of Wallace Stevens's explanation of "A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts," that lovely and enigmatic poem:  at the time that he wrote it, he was worried about a rabbit that was visiting his garden each morning and eating the flower bulbs.

                    Eliot Hodgkin, "Feathers and Hyacinth Heads" (1962)

Evening

I confess that the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke strikes me as being somewhat overwrought and histrionic.  Having said that, I am willing to admit that the fault is my own: I cannot match his romantic passion, and I am too dull to penetrate what seems to me to be his obscurity.  Moreover (and this is likely a crucial "moreover"), because I am bereft of German, I am dependent upon translations -- which no doubt means that I am missing the whole point.

Still, because I consider this to be a blog about enthusiasms, not strictures, I do not intend to warn anybody off Rilke's poetry.  Although my tastes tend to run to the likes of Larkin and Edward Thomas and Hardy, I am not interested in grinding axes.  Life is too short.

Well, after that little diversion, there are poems by Rilke that I like a great deal.  The following poem (which, as it happens, was translated by Randall Jarrell) came to mind after I posted Jarrell's "The Breath of Night." Twilight, stars in the trees, eternity, mortality, and so on . . .

                     James Bateman (1893-1959), "Woodland and Cattle"

                       Evening

The evening folds about itself the dark
Garments the old trees hold out to it.
You watch: and the lands are borne from you,
One soaring heavenward, one falling;

And leave you here, not wholly either's,
Not quite so darkened as the silent houses,
Not quite so surely summoning the eternal
As that which each night becomes star, and rises;

And leave you (inscrutably to unravel)
Your life: the fearful and ripening and enormous
Being that -- bounded by everything, or boundless --
For a moment becomes stone, for a moment stars.

Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Randall Jarrell), in Randall Jarrell, The Woman at the Washington Zoo (1960).

                               James Bateman, "Lullington Church" (1939)

For purposes of comparison, here is another translation of the same poem.

                         Evening

The sky puts on the darkening blue coat
held for it by a row of ancient trees;
you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight,
one journeying to heaven, one that falls;

and leave you, not at home in either one,
not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses,
not calling to eternity with the passion
of what becomes a star each night, and rises;

and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel)
your life, with its immensity and fear,
so that, now bounded, now immeasurable,
it is alternately stone in you and star.

Stephen Mitchell (editor and translator), The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke (1982).

              James Bateman, "The Pool, Blockley, Gloucestershire" (1926)

"Autumn Day": Two Versions Of Rilke

In keeping with the autumnal turn that this month's posts have taken, Rainer Maria Rilke's poem "Herbsttag" ("Autumn Day") came to mind.  When it comes to Rilke, I rely upon translators.  The poem has likely been translated into English dozens of times.  I am familiar with the following two versions.

                            Autumn Day

Lord:  it is time.  The huge summer has gone by.
Now overlap the sundials with your shadows,
and on the meadows let the wind go free.

Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine;
grant them a few more warm transparent days,
urge them on to fulfillment then, and press
the final sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander on the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.

Translated by Stephen Mitchell in The Selected Poetry of  Rainer Maria Rilke (1982).

                           Samuel Palmer, "The Bright Cloud" (1834)

                            Autumn Day

Lord, it is time.  The summer was too long.
Lay your shadow on the sundials now,
and through the meadows let the winds throng.

Ask the last fruits to ripen on the vine;
give them further two more summer days
to bring about perfection and to raise
the final sweetness in the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now will establish none,
whoever lives alone now will live on long alone,
will waken, read, and write long letters,
wander up and down the barren paths
the parks expose when leaves are blown.

Translated by William Gass in Reading Rilke: Reflections on the Problems of Translation (1999).

                         Samuel Palmer, "The Gleaning Field" (c. 1833)