Rilke on Death and Other Oddities

By John Mood

Opening with a brief account of the life and work of the early 20th Century German-language poet Rainer Maria Rilke, the book then has its first major set piece, a lengthy and provocative selection from his prose writings on death, for him the most important topic of all.

This is followed by a light-hearted account of Rilkes surprising popularity in the U. S. of A., even extending to Hollywood. A short chapter on Rilkes obsession with the scientific accuracy of his poetry and another on his poetic humor, prepare the reader for the second major set piece of the book --- a revealing look at his masterwork on death, the 860-line poem Duinese Elegies. The book closes with appendices on Rilke and god, translating Rilke, and a listing of the nearly 30 English translations of Duinese Elegies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 19, 2007
• ISBN: 9781462840731

John Mood

The author moved west from Indiana to San Diego with her husband John in 1973, to start a new life. And it worked. After many heres and theres, tos and fros, in 1991 she became a full-time professor of creative writing, composition and literature at Grossmont College in El Cajon, CA, where she still teaches today.

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Rilke on Death

and Other Oddities

John Mood

Copyright © 2007 by John Mood.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Contents

1 RILKE RECONSIDERED

2 INTRODUCING RILKE’S LIFE AND WORK (1976)

3 RILKE ON LEARNING TO DIE (1976)

4 FROM CHEERS TO CHANGE—THE POP RILKE

5 FACTUAL CORRECTNESS IN RILKE’S WORK

6 LEAVING THE GRIM VISION BEHIND—HUMOR IN RILKE’S WORK

7 THE STRUCTURE AND A NEW READING OF DUINESE ELEGIES

APPENDICES

APPENDIX A RILKE ON GOD AND SPIRITUALITY

APPENDIX B TRANSLATING DUINESE ELEGIES

APPENDIX C OTHER WORKS CITED IN TEXT

Endnotes

It is odd

[ . . . ]

being dead.

[The First Elegy]

1

RILKE RECONSIDERED

I discovered Rilke’s poetry in the late ’50s. I was immediately captivated, especially by its intense concern with sexual love and with death, for me the two most important topics of all. (After all, we do not have bodies, we are bodies, which have sex and die.) The more I read of his poetry as well as his prose, the more I enjoyed and profited by it. So that, in the mid-’60s, I compiled letters and other prose by Rilke into something of a semi-essay which I entitled Rilke’s Letters on Love. I handed out literally hundreds of mimeographed copies (remember those?!) to friends, students, whoever showed the slightest interest.

Then, in the spring of 1972, in the throes of a new love who remains with me still, I took that compilation and augmented it with my translations of some of Rilke’s sexual poems, along with other poems and prose passages, creating thereby a book I entitled Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties. I brazenly sent the manuscript to W. W. Norton, then (and still) the most voluminous and prestigious publisher of Rilke in the U. S. of A. Some months later, I received notice that the book had been accepted for publication, and included in that notice was a photocopy of the veritable Mary Dows Herter Norton’s lovely report recommending the publication of my book. She who had translated a staggering amount of Rilke throughout the ’40s and ’50s, a fair amount of which is still in print today.

I was of course thrilled. I still have the photocopy of that letter. But publication was delayed due to hassles with the publishers of the German, so my book did not appear until February, 1975. But even by then, my sense of Rilke had changed, grown. In the next year, I penned a brief commemorative bio of his life and work on spec for the New York Times (which of course did not print it), and constructed another semi-essay, a long compilation of Rilke’s prose (and some poetry) on dying and death, entitled Rilke on Learning to Die. I saw it as a parallel to my previous Rilke’s Letters on Love.

I tried to convince W. W. Norton to put out a revised version of my book which would include these two new items. It did not happen, of course.

As the years—even decades—passed, my sense of Rilke’s work continued to change, to develop, to deepen. It became the dominant poetry in my reading, just as Joyce’s Ulysses did in fiction. And gradually Duinese Elegies became the dominant single poem, out-distancing all the rest. I know I said differently in Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties, but there you are.

Perhaps the biggest influence on this change was that I left academia, and thus my continuing explorations began going in various odd unexpected directions. This led finally to the realization of certain dimensions of Rilke’s poetry not touched on by the university people, a realization which has evolved into a new approach for me to Rilke. And this newer view of mine will, I think, make his poetry more accessible to the ordinary reader of serious literature.

I say this in spite of the popularity of my early book, which has been in print for more than thirty consecutive years now and still going strong. It is the second largest selling Rilke book in the entire English-speaking world. (The largest selling Rilke book in that world is his Letters to a Young Poet.) I think much of that popularity is due to the selections from Rilke’s letters on love I included in it, rather than the poetry it contains. The new emphasis of this present book includes the compilation of Rilke’s prose on death, but also has new emphases on his poetry, including corrections of what I now consider to have been some of the mistakes of interpretation or emphasis in what I did in my first little Rilke book.

I begin with my brief introduction to Rilke’s life and work, since I think readers are interested in knowing such facts. As I said, I wrote this piece early in 1976 hoping the New York Times would commemorate either the centennial in 1975 of his birth or the 50th anniversary in 1976 of his death by using it; they chose not even to mention either event! Much additional information has been learned about Rilke’s life and career since I wrote the introduction, some of which would modify a bit of what I said, but I am leaving the short essay untouched. I think it has stood the test of time well. Indeed, as I re-read it, I am amazed at how relevant it still is to the agonies of our post 9-1-1 era (that is nine-one-one, not nine-eleven).

Next comes the first set piece of this book, my compilation of Rilke’s prose on death, an essential corollary to my similar compilation of Rilke’s prose on love, which is the heart of my earlier book. I say a bit more about this in the preface to the compilation itself.

Next comes what is to my thinking Rilke’s greatest achievement, the incredible poem Duinese Elegies. But to deal with that poem adequately, several preliminary, though essential, phenomena, must be considered. First is an essay on the puzzling popularity of Rilke in the U. S. of A., with an emphasis on—of all things—pop culture. For a country not noted for its interest in serious poetry, Rilke’s popularity in America is as surprising as it is inexplicable. I delivered an early version of this description of the pop Rilke in the U. S. at a colloquium on Rilke at Amherst in 1994. That was something of a landmark for me, as I had written only one literary piece in twenty years amidst the couple hundred science articles I got published during that period of time as a freelance writer. The assignment for Amherst released a flood of more than three decades of contemplating both Rilke and Joyce. The eventual result was both my recently published book Joyce’s Ulysses for Everyone, Or How to Skip Reading It the First Time and the work in this book. Revised versions of the talk on the pop Rilke have been previously printed in Germany (1995) and in The Midwest Quarterly (Pittsburg, KS; 2002—now also, peculiarly, available online, for a price).

That chapter is followed by essays on two severely neglected aspects of Rilke’s poetic work, especially important in any consideration of Duinese Elegies. One is the unusual factual, even scientific, accuracy of his images and metaphors. The other is his droll humor. I myself had certainly neglected the latter (note the title of my own book, "Love and Other Difficulties), and I was also insufficiently appreciative of the former. A version of the essay on factual correctness was given as a talk at D. G. Wills Books in La Jolla, CA (2000). These two essays should help redress the balance of the neglect of Rilke’s humor and scientific correctness, and constitute two-thirds of my new approach" to Duinese Elegies.

All this is preparation for my essay on Duinese Elegies itself, the second set piece of this book. My interpretation of Rilke’s masterpiece incorporates the humor and the factual accuracy, both quirky aspects of the poem, and also includes what I fancy is the answer to the long-standing puzzle of the structure of that great work. Not only is all this new, but I think it makes the Elegies more approachable for the general reader of great literature. I began this interpretation, as well as the essay on humor, in 1994, and have tinkered with them both off and on since then.

The first appendix deals with Rilke’s views on God since there is a good bit of misrepresentation of such views in print, especially among so-called New Age writers, a category into which I seem to have been (mis)placed. The other appendix discusses some problems of translating Rilke and especially Duinese Elegies, then lists the surprisingly numerous English translations of Duinese Elegies in chronological order.

It is my hope that all this will assist the reader to a more enjoyable and deeper appreciation and understanding of Rilke’s remarkable poetry.

2

INTRODUCING RILKE’S

LIFE AND WORK (1976)

December, 1975, was the centennial of the birth of Rainer Maria Rilke, and December, 1976, the 50TH anniversary of his death. He has been justly acclaimed as