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Uncollected Poems: Bilingual Edition

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Edward Snow's translations of Rilke are always beautiful. As a non-German speaker, I don't have the luxury of commenting on the purity of the translation, but having had the opportunity to compare Snow's translation of Duino Elegies to an older textbook version, I would say that Snow has a firm grasp on both the significance and the beauty of Rilke's poetry.

For those who have never read Rainer Maria Rilke, I strongly recommend beginning with these poems. While all his poetry books are powerfully moving, this one rises above the rest in its maturity, and also, due to its "uncollected" nature transcends the bounds of thematic elements. The arrangement is lovely, but I urge you to open this book at random. Whichever poem you turn to will gain different contours in the light of different moods, yet each has lines that resonate-you will find yourself remembering these gems at scattered moments, even months after reading them.

A beautiful translation as usual from Edward Snow. One of my more favorite books in my Rilke collection. Retains the beauty of the german to a high degree. Poems you may not see anywhere else anytime soon, and some fragments which are absolutely lovely.

After four years in college double-majoring in both English and German, and after a long search for German literature that managed to inspire my literary sensibilities, I finally discovered Rainer Maria Rilke the week I graduated.

Rilke's ability to capture moments in nature and to describe events in life both physical and spiritual transcends languages and cultures. His rhythm and use of sounds in poetry is something not to be missed. He is a true poet on every level.

This edition of his poetry gathers together many different subjects and forms that show off his abilities perfectly. My favorite part of it, though, is that it is a bilingual edition. Poetry is difficult (if not impossible) to really translate from one language to another, so if you're reading the text only in English, you can only get one sense of the piece. While I won't judge the translator's interpretation, I will say that having the English and German texts side-by-side makes for a smooth read for German learners trying to read the German side, as well as for non-German readers who want to read the original for the sounds and the form it takes.

Rilke is the perfect poet for Germanophiles with a British poetic sensibility. If you're looking for a book that combines a good poetic translation of Rilke's work with the original text, then this is definitely the one to get.

Rilke was one of the great imagists of the century. This collection contains magnificently translated poems by Edward Snow, who manages to capture the grace and power of Rilke's work. It is not altogether clear whether or not these poems were intended for publication, but it is a miracle that they were.

Rilke was a poet of images and of feelings, he captured again and again the feeling of man the individual caught in the sublime beauty of the earth and the cosmos:

"Earlier, how often, we'd remain, star in star,

when from the constellation the freest,

the announcing star, stepped forth and called.

Star in star we marveled,

He, the speaker of the star-sign,

I, my life's companion star.

And the night, how it granted us

The wide-awake accord" (235).

An excellent bilingual edition on the whole and a must for any reader of modern poetry.

the germans themselves might take a cue from this collection. as far as i know, fischer verlag (Rilke's publisher in germany) has released in the years since the poet's death nothing close to approximating a collection of "uncollected" works, but maybe a few lyrical fragments grouped under the rubric of "unvollendetes" (incomplete works, fragments) at the back of his collected works, or small editions of particular works unpublished in Rilke's lifetime (the Posthumous Papers of Graf C.W. comes to mind). and yet what this book of uncollected works shows is the real Rilke, the deepest terrains of his private self. whether it is the heart-rending last poem from the last notebook at the end of the book, or the small fragment he chose to be his epitaph, in these poems is registered an effort of the poet to come to terms with his own death, as if that were possible, more poignant in my opinion than, say, the Duino Elegies for the very reason that these fragments (among which are some completed lyrics, yes) themselves suffer the unbearable weight of what they need to communicate in a way that they can only be as they are: fragments, small "failures," which are yet more successful in becoming something "rich and strange," to quote Shakespeare, than a poem more thoroughly wrought and not as heart-felt, composed in the moment without the imposition of having a future as a complete poem, and thus which better register a trace of that creating poet's-heart, that missing part of every incomplete poem, what would make the fragment whole. in this book one encounters the very best of Rilke, the "thing poems" of the New Poems or the Book(s) of Images/Hours, and even some Duino-like longer elegiac verses, with some terse shorter lyrics ala Sonnets to Orpheus. There are also some really interesting pieces that are, in tone and syntax, unique in Rilke's oeuvre. Along these lines the poem-fragment "Mausoleum" comes to mind that, with its idiosyncratic syntax, its neologistic word-couplings, looks forward to and augurs the language-scapes of Paul Celan.

to keep it short, i do not agree that one should start here when beginning to read Rilke. in principle i do not even believe in translation, and i mean this as unpretentiously as possible. i think one must travel in languages as one does physically across land, and that if one wishes to encounter a poet or writer, or to read anything, one must travel to them, to their domain, their place within language. with Rilke this is most certainly the case. english doesn't really suit him. even with Snow's superb work, much is still desired and can be improved upon even, i think. the music always only half comes across. and i still think that for english readers at least ( i cannot testify to readers of Rilke in languages other than german or english - who knows, maybe Rilke in russian is good?) Rilke will remain undiscovered. this being said, i think that a good place to start with Rilke would be a selected works, or perhaps the Book of Images or the New Poems, moving on then to the Book of Hours, the Elegies and then the Sonnets, aka the more prime Rilke (i think its good to go chronologically), and then ending with this book. it's what i did, roughly, in my exploration of Rilke's oeuvre: starting from the unsprouted seeds and ending with the dead leaves scattered on the ground below the now aged and grown tree.

also, in a quite recent development, North Point Press (FSG) has released all of Edward Snow's translations of Rilke in one book, which for those who are just now starting their journey through Rilke's country (more like looking at a map of the actual land, or at paintings of it, one might say) i'd say is the best bet to get.

This book contains my favorite poem, but explaining it could be like trying to contend that 2001 is a really great year because it might help ordinary people realize how elements of life might be like understanding the line, "until suddenly out of spitefully chewed fruit." For me, this is the kind of poetry that Harold Bloom was trying to explain in his book, THE ANXIETY OF INFLUENCE/A THEORY OF POETRY, though Bloom's ideas ranged from Milton, with the question, "Why call Satan a modern poet?" (Bloom, p. 20) to more modern poets without suggesting that Rilke might have topped them all in approaching the capability suggested in Bloom's quotation from Kierkegaard, "What inwardness he might have attained!" (Bloom, p. 76). My favorite poem by Rilke starts with the line, "Long you must suffer, knowing not what," and ends with the assertion, "No one will ever talk you out of it." This poem explains as much about how an individual can feel, when utterly singled out by perception, as any of the puzzles that philosophy typically gropes its way through in its efforts to find a world that any one person can understand. And the other poems in this book are also outstanding attempts to deserve the honor of being considered great poetry on a very personal level. Among the host of contenders, the one which is easiest to find begins with the German word, "Aber," so it appears first in the German index. The English translation seems to be suggesting something. "But if you'd try this: to be hand in my hand / as in the wineglass the wine is wine. / If you'd try this."