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Perhaps no cycle of poems in any European language has made so profound and lasting an impact on an English-speaking readership as Rilke's Duino Elegies. These luminous new translations by Martyn Crucefix, facing the original German texts, make it marvellously clear how the poem is committed to the real world observed with acute and visionary intensity. Completed in 1922, the same year as the publication of Eliot's The Waste Land, the Elegies constitute a magnificent godless poem in their rejection of the transcendent and their passionate celebration of the here and now. Troubled by our insecure place in this world and our fractured relationship with death, the Elegies are nevertheless populated by a throng of vivid and affecting figures: acrobats, lovers, angels, mothers, fathers, statues, salesmen, actors and children. This bilingual edition offers twenty-first century readers a new opportunity to experience the power of Rilke's enduring masterpiece. Book jacket.… (more)
This is among the three most beautiful books I know. With every reading, the poems grow larger, magnificent. No other translation compares to this one. Gary Miranda''s fusión of music and meaning transforma Rilke's Elegies into living beings in English." Jan Freeman, Author of Hiena and director of Paris Press.
Not a penultimate favorite, but this kind of poetry definitely sucks you deep inside the marrow of the bones of its message. It's a very flowing format and the words wrap around you slowly like ribbons to take into every sensation of it.
I almost devoured the whole thing in one sitting. ( )
Rilke's masterpiece (I think it's his masterpiece) had moments where I had to rest on the page and contemplate questions of eternity, like an existential stop-sign. Being real, I did feel like most of the time I was reading it to read it and so I appreciated the moments where I had my attention fixed, less on angels and more on the focus on human struggles.
Exactamente lo que dice la imagen, aunque tengo mis sospechas de que tanto la traducción como la distribución del texto en la edición que leí pudieron ir en detrimento del disfrute de esta obra. De todas formas, hubo pasajes que resonaron de manera en extremo notable en mi cabeza, sobretodo las elegías primera y última. Trataré de releerlo en el futuro. Sumamente recomendado para quienes gusten de la poesía, en especial si pueden conseguir otra versión. ( )
Aus dem Besitz der Furstin Marie von Thurn und Taxis-Hohenlohe. The Property of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis-Hohenlohe
This translation dedicated to Rodney Kent Albin (1940-1985) "To have been as one, though but the once, with this world, never can be undone."
First words
Who, though I cry aloud, would hear me in the angel orders?
[Translator's Preface] How reframe the silhouettes of angels, snipped from fog, stuck starlike on a concave cloudscape where Rilke rides with silent spurs in a black bandana, disguised as night?
Quotations
Last words
Then we, who have known joy only as it escapes us, rising to the sky, would receive the overwhelming benediction of happiness descending.
Perhaps no cycle of poems in any European language has made so profound and lasting an impact on an English-speaking readership as Rilke's Duino Elegies. These luminous new translations by Martyn Crucefix, facing the original German texts, make it marvellously clear how the poem is committed to the real world observed with acute and visionary intensity. Completed in 1922, the same year as the publication of Eliot's The Waste Land, the Elegies constitute a magnificent godless poem in their rejection of the transcendent and their passionate celebration of the here and now. Troubled by our insecure place in this world and our fractured relationship with death, the Elegies are nevertheless populated by a throng of vivid and affecting figures: acrobats, lovers, angels, mothers, fathers, statues, salesmen, actors and children. This bilingual edition offers twenty-first century readers a new opportunity to experience the power of Rilke's enduring masterpiece. Book jacket.
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Rainer Maria Rilke
Wikipedia in English (3)
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