Perhaps this is a commonplace but the first Duino Elegy reminds me irresistibly of Tomas Transtr\u00f6mer\u2019s \u201cRomanesque Arches\u201d.<\/p>\n
You can find Robin Fulton’s translation of \u201cRomanesque Arches\u201d at http:\/\/www.ellenlindquist.com\/ellen\/?p=520<\/a> . Countless sites give the first Duino elegy as a whole, among them http:\/\/homestar.org\/bryannan\/duino.html<\/a> (using Stephen Mitchell\u2019s translation).<\/p>\n The most obvious link is the embrace by the angel. Behind that there\u2018s the contrast between the human and angelic orders of being, and the sense of the human condition as inherently one of incompleteness.<\/p>\n But the two poems work in vastly different ways. Rilke\u2019s eloquence is splendid and overwhelming. Line after line chants itself in the head or demands to be chanted out loud. It\u2019s all tremendously exciting and memorable, and yet (at least for me) it\u2019s also somehow all too much and as a result of that somehow all too little too. Perhaps that\u2019s because I don\u2019t know the poem well enough, haven\u2019t sufficiently absorbed it emotionally and imaginatively or come properly to grips with the philosophical ideas behind it, or perhaps I\u2019m just not sufficiently in sympathy with the cast of Rilke\u2019s mind. Whatever the reason, the more the eloquent, sweeping assertions, questions and speculations pile up, the more self-involved they seem to me to become, and the less they seem to connect with anything outside themselves. I don\u2019t doubt the sincerity, accuracy and urgency with which Rilke is actively exploring his own feelings so perhaps it\u2019s unfair to say that his cries come to seem more and more purely rhetorical, but they do come to feel hollow in the way rhetoric might. I haven\u2019t got beyond the point of finding something absurd in the level of solipsism implied by a statement like \u201cYes \u2013 the springtimes needed you. Often a star was waiting for you to notice it\u201d, and something grotesque and inhuman about the idea that \u201csoaring, objectless love\u201d might be a condition to aspire to.<\/p>\n How different \u201cRomanesque Arches\u201d is. It\u2019s almost violently moving in the way it plugs straight into intense, incoherent and inarticulate feelings. It\u2019s not afraid of direct emotional expression, but it couldn\u2019t be less self-regarding. I think that\u2019s part of its greatness. Instead of interposing himself and his own feelings between idea and reader, Transtr\u00f6mer channels the intrinsic power of the angel\u2019s message with the minimum of interference and leaves his readers to react for themselves. The poem is great partly because it is so spare and concentrated and seems to make so little artistic fuss.<\/p>\n Lack of artistic fuss certainly doesn\u2019t mean lack of art. The writing is packed, brilliantly dramatic, brilliantly physical, and Transtr\u00f6mer creates tremendous tension and suspense out of the sheer narrative momentum and uncertain direction of the first five lines. First we\u2019re thinking, what\u2019s about to happen? Then, what did the angel whisper? When we know, all the questioning energy that\u2019s been built up within us is released on the angel\u2019s message. Transtr\u00f6mer doesn\u2019t tell us what to think but he ensures that we will react intensely, both by this build-up of tension and by the physical intensity of the effect on him. Returning to the story, we\u2019re left with our own reactions to the idea resonating within us. And with the multiple resonances of such stunning images as that of \u201can angel with no face embraced me\u201d. In terms of language and presentation, of artistic means<\/em>,\u00a0 this is simple, stark and direct in contrast with Rilke\u2019s eloquent elaborations, but in a deeper sense, in terms of what lies behind the language, in terms of artistic meaning, Transtr\u00f6mer\u2019s genius shows itself in the crowded, barely lit but endlessly opening vaults and vistas of suggestion that appear at every point in the poem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Perhaps this is a commonplace but the first Duino Elegy reminds me irresistibly of Tomas Transtr\u00f6mer\u2019s \u201cRomanesque Arches\u201d. You can find Robin Fulton’s translation of \u201cRomanesque Arches\u201d at http:\/\/www.ellenlindquist.com\/ellen\/?p=520 . Countless sites give the first Duino elegy as a whole, among them http:\/\/homestar.org\/bryannan\/duino.html (using Stephen Mitchell\u2019s translation). The most obvious link is the embrace by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64,62,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rilke","category-tomas-transtromer","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=561"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1388,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561\/revisions\/1388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}