Archaic Torso of Apollo: Rilke Translation

Archaic Torso of Apollo by Rainer Maria Rilke loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch We cannot know the beheaded god nor his eyes' forfeited visions. But still the figure's trunk glows with the strange vitality of a lamp lit from within, while his composed will emanates dynamism. Otherwise the firmly muscled abdomen could not beguile us, nor the centering loins make us smile at the thought of their generative animus. Otherwise the stone might seem deficient, unworthy of the broad shoulders, of the groin projecting procreation's triangular spearhead upwards, unworthy of the living impulse blazing wildly within like an inchoate star—demanding our belief. You must change your life. Rainer Maria Rilke, a German poet, became a personal secretary to the French sculptor Auguste Rodin, who in turn became an influence on Rilke's work. Indeed, "Neue Gedichte" (part 2), the book of poems which contains "Archaischer Torso Apollos," was dedicated to Rodin. According to Mark Doty: "Rilke felt that his own earlier poems were airy, disembodied. He got himself a job working for the sculptor Rodin, whose very fleshy, highly physicalized forms were enormously attractive to him. He wanted to write poems with the same kind of muscularity and physical presence as Rodin's sculptures." I believe Rilke was telling himself: "You must change your life, if you want to be a real poet." Keywords/Tags: Rilke, Rodin, Art, Sculpture, Poetry, God, Apollo, Torso, Trunk, Body, Groin, Loins, Eyes, Vision, Light, Glow, Glows, Glowing, Star, Dynamic, Dynamism, Belief, Life First Elegy Excerpt by Rainer Maria Rilke loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch Who, if I objected, would hear me among the angelic orders? For if the least One pressed me intimately against its breast, I would be lost in its infinite Immensity! Because beauty, which we mortals can barely endure, is the beginning of terror; we stand awed when it benignly declines to annihilate us. Every Angel is terrifying! And so I restrain myself, swallowing the sound of my pitiful sobbing. For whom may we turn to, in our desire? Not to Angels, nor to men, and already the sentient animals are aware that we are all aliens in this metaphorical existence. Perhaps some tree still stands on a hillside, which we can study with our ordinary vision. Perhaps the commonplace street still remains amid man’s fealty to materiality— the concrete items that never destabilize. Oh, and of course there is the night: her dark currents caress our faces ... But whom, then, do we live for? That longed-for but mildly disappointing presence the lonely heart so desperately desires? Is life any less difficult for lovers? They only use each other to avoid their appointed fates! How can you fail to comprehend? Fling your arms’ emptiness into this space we occupy and inhale: may birds fill the expanded air with more intimate flying! Yes, the springtime still requires you. Perpetually a star waits for you to recognize it. A wave recedes toward you from the distant past, or as you walk beneath an open window, a violin yields virginally to your ears. All this was preordained. But how can you incorporate it? ... Weren't you always distracted by expectations, as if every event presaged some new beloved? (Where can you harbor, when all these enormous strange thoughts surging within you keep you up all night, restlessly rising and falling?) When you are full of yearning, sing of loving women, because their passions are finite; sing of forsaken women (and how you almost envy them) because they could love you more purely than the ones you left gratified. Resume the unattainable exaltation; remember: the hero survives; even his demise was merely a stepping stone toward his latest rebirth. But spent and exhausted Nature withdraws lovers back into herself, as if lacking the energy to recreate them. Have you remembered Gaspara Stampa with sufficient focus— how any abandoned girl might be inspired by her fierce example and might ask herself, "How can I be like her?" Shouldn't these ancient sufferings become fruitful for us? Shouldn’t we free ourselves from the beloved, quivering, as the arrow endures the bowstring's tension, so that in the snap of release it soars beyond itself? For there is nowhere else where we can remain. Voices! Voices! Listen, heart, as levitating saints once listened, until the elevating call soared them heavenward; and yet they continued kneeling, unaware, so complete was their concentration. Not that you could endure God's voice—far from it! But heed the wind’s voice and the ceaseless formless message of silence: It murmurs now of the martyred young. Whenever you attended a church in Naples or Rome, didn't they come quietly to address you? And didn’t an exalted inscription impress its mission upon you recently, on the plaque in Santa Maria Formosa? What they require of me is that I gently remove any appearance of injustice— which at times slightly hinders their souls from advancing. Of course, it is endlessly strange to no longer inhabit the earth; to relinquish customs one barely had the time to acquire; not to see in roses and other tokens a hopeful human future; no longer to be oneself, cradled in infinitely caring hands; to set aside even one's own name, forgotten as easily as a child’s broken plaything. How strange to no longer desire one's desires! How strange to see meanings no longer cohere, drifting off into space. Dying is difficult and requires retrieval before one can gradually decipher eternity. The living all err in believing the too-sharp distinctions they create themselves. Angels (men say) don't know whether they move among the living or the dead. The eternal current merges all ages in its maelstrom until the voices of both realms are drowned out in its thunderous roar. In the end, the early-departed no longer need us: they are weaned gently from earth's agonies and ecstasies, as children outgrow their mothers’ breasts.