Sonnets to Orpheus (Wesleyan Poetry Series) [Paperback]

Rainer Maria Rilke (Author), David Young (Translator, Contributor)

Book Description

Series: Wesleyan Poetry Series | Publication Date: May 15, 1987

Sonnets to Orpheus is Rainer Maria Rilke's first and only sonnet sequence. It is an undisputed masterpiece by one of the greatest modern poets, translated here by a master of translation, David Young.

Rilke revived and transformed the traditional sonnet sequence in the Sonnets. Instead of centering on love for a particular person, as has many other sonneteers, he wrote an extended love poem to the world, celebrating such diverse things as mirrors, dogs, fruit, breathing, and childhood. Many of the sonnets are addressed to two recurrent figures: the god Orpheus (prototype of the poet) and a young dancer, whose death is treated elegiacally.

These ecstatic and meditative lyric poems are a kind of manual on how to approach the world - how to understand and love it. David Young's is the first most sensitive of the translations of this work, superior to other translations in sound and sense. He captures Rilke's simple, concrete, and colloquial language, writing with a precision close to the original.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus (published 1923 in German) rank with the most distinguished works of modern poetry. Written in an extraordinary burst of inspiration, these poems reveal a vision of ``a mode of being in which all the ordinary human dichotomies (life/death, good/evil) are reconciled in an infinite wholeness.'' Stephen Mitchell's translations are masterful re-creations of the original, giving both precise renderings of Rilke's language and sensitive interpretations of his poetic intent. This fine dual-language edition is highly recommended. Ulrike S. Rettig, German Dept., Hervard Univ.
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"An undisputed masterpiece by one of the greatest modern poets translated here by a master of translation"--Voice Literary Supplement

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Product Details

• Paperback: 134 pages
• Publisher: Wesleyan; Bilingual German-English ed. edition (May 15, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0819561657
• ISBN-13: 978-0819561657
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,760,561 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent translation, September 20, 2009

By 

Sandwhich - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sonnets to Orpheus (Wesleyan Poetry Series) (Paperback)

Readers should note that the one star review for this translation gives one star to amazon, not to David Young.

This is my favorite translation of the Sonnets to Orpheus -- and the only one I can read and be reminded of the original German. No translation is perfectly faithful, but Mitchell and Paterson (both beautiful translations, also) take more liberties than Young in interpreting some of Rilke's stranger lines. Look, for example, at the second stanza of sonnet II, 13:

The original reads:

Sei immer tot in Eurydike--, singender steige,
preisender steige zuruck in den reinen Bezug.
Hier, unter Schwindenden, sei, im Reiche der Neige,
sei ein klingendes Glas, das sich im Klang schon zerschlug.

Young translates:

Be dead in Eurydice, always --, climb with more song,
climb with more praise, back up into pure relation.
Here in the kingdom of decay, among what's wasting,
be a tingling glass that shatters itself with sound.

Mitchell:

Be forever dead in Eurydice -- more gladly arise
into the seamless life proclaimed in your song.
Here, in the realm of decline, among momentary days,
be the crystal cup that shattered even as it rang.

And Paterson:

Die, die through Eurydice--that you might pass
into the pure accord, praising the more, singing
the more; amongst the wanting, be the glass
that shatters in the sound of its own ringing.

These are all excellent translations -- but excellent in different ways. Notice how Mitchell skirts over the ambiguities of words like Bezug, "relation," or concepts like rising "zuruck," rising backwards. Paterson attends to those subtleties, but his translation is too charged, passionate -- "Die, die." Rilke wrote these poems at the end of his life, at a time when he'd already departed from "that passionate music," as he writes in I, 3, and developed a song that sounded more like "Ein Wehn im Gott. Ein Wind," "a gust / ripple inside the god. A wind." That's the effect Young more consistently achieves. But not always. If you're new to Rilke I'd consider this translation in conjunction with Mitchell's selected poetry.

Oh -- I should also mention that both this and the Mitchell include the German. The Paterson does not.

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars C'mon Amazon! Give us samples we can use!!!, November 11, 2011

By 

xenos23 - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sonnets to Orpheus (Wesleyan Poetry in Translation) (Kindle Edition)

The one star is for the preview only.

I downloaded the sample so that I could compare Young's translation to others. THE ENTIRE SAMPLE consisted of the introduction. How am I supposed to get an accurate sense of the work from that? Unfortunately, this sort of sampling is all too common on Amazon. I will obviously have to find this work elsewhere to evaluate whether I want to buy it or not.

C'mon guys, you do so much well. fix this!