The Sonnets to Orpheus

translated by Howard A. Landman

Orpheus was the legendary Greek demigod of music: the only one ever to be a priest of both Apollo and Dionysus. His playing was so beautiful that even animals would come listen to it.  When his wife Eurydice was killed by a poisonous snake on their wedding day, he went into the underworld to find her - and almost succeeded in bringing her back.  He met an untimely end, being torn apart by maenads.

Rilke wrote all 55 of these sonnets in February 1922, both before (Part I) and after (Part II) the completion of his longer Duino Elegies.  By comparison with the more serious Elegies, they are light, playful, even though dealing with many of the same topics.

Part I

1. "A tree ascended there. Oh pure transcendence!"
2. "She was a maid almost, emerging here"
3. "A god can do it. How do you expect / a man"
4. "Oh you tender ones, step now and then"
5. "Erect no monument. Just let the roses / blossom"
6. "Is he from here then? No, his extended / nature"
7. "Praise, that's it! One called to profess / praise,"
8. "Only in praise-space may Lament / pass freely,"
9. "Only one who raised / the lyre among shades,"
10. "You, who never leave my heart for long,"
11. "See the heavens. Is no constellation / called "Rider"?"
12. "Hail to the spirit, with power that connects,"
13. "Plump apple, pear, gooseberry, sleek / banana ..."
14. "We share the cycle of flower, grapeleaf, fruit."
15. "Wait ... that taste ... soon it's on the wing."
16. "You, my friend, are alone, because ..."
17. "At bottom the ancient, unknown, / root of all things"
18. "Lord, hear the new / rumbling and ringing?"
19. "Though the world changes form / quick as a cloud does,"
20. "But oh, what can I consecrate, say, / to you, lord,"
21. "Spring has come back. And the Earth is / like a child"
22. "We are the drivers."
23. "Till then, when flight no longer merely / climbs"
24. "Just because they do not know the hard / strong steel"
25. "But you, now I'll remember you, whom I / knew like a flower"
26. "But you, divine, to the last resonating"

Part II

1. "Breath, you invisible poem!"
2. "Just like the near-at-hand paper he snatches"
3. "Mirror: no one ever set into rhyme / before,"
4. "Oh this is the animal that wasn't"
5. "Flower-muscle, that opens the anemone"
6. "Rose, you sit enthroned, who in antiquity"
7. "Flowers, you finally related to arranging hands,"
8. "You few, playmates of former childhood in"
9. "Don't be proud, you judges, of the unused racks"
10. "All we've gained is threatened by the machine, for"
11. "Many calm ordered methods of death prevail,"
12. "Want transformation. Oh take inspiration from the flame,"
13. "Be ahead of all parting, as if it were / behind you"
14. "See these flowers, faithful to the earthen,"
15. "Oh wellspring-mouth, you giving orifice,"
16. "Always torn open by us again"
17. "Where, in which always blissful watered garden, on which trees,"
18. "Dancer: oh you transition"
19. "Somewhere the gold lives in a bank, pampered,"
20. "Between the stars, how far; yet, how much farther"
21. "Sing the gardens, my heart, which you know not; clear,"
22. "Oh the marvelous overflows of our existence,"
23. "Call me to this hour of yours"
24. "Oh this longing, ever new, from loosened clay!"
25. "Already, the first plough's at work, do you hear?"
26. "How we are gripped by a bird's cry ..."
27. "Is there really Time, the Reaver?"
28. "Oh come and go. Though still a child, enhance"
29. "Still friend of many distances, feel how"

If you want to see how others have translated these same poems, you can try translations by:

• J. B. Leishman (1936)
  The first, but not the best. Leishman attempted to match Rilke's rhythm and rhyme scheme exactly, but this forced him to distort the meaning rather severely in places. Still, his love for the sonnets shines through, and many seem translated in a kind of delirious rapture. Leishman's translations were also reworked some years later by Stephen Spender.

• M. D. Herter Norton (1942, mostly prose)
  Perhaps in response to Leishman's excesses, Herter Norton strove to capture Rilke's exact meaning. To do that, she often resorted to prose, completely ignoring poetic power. Still, her translations are to this day the most accurate and reliable, which made them useful to me as a cross-check of my own.

• Jesse Lemont (1945)

• C. F. Macintyre (1947)
  Macintyre's translations were the best so far, in 1947. He balanced power and meaning fairly well, and there are occasional touches of true brilliance. But his notes make it clear that he didn't even really like many of the Sonnets - he often complained about how bad Rilke's writing was. I get the sense that this attitude limited him in certain ways; he rarely seems able to achieve a real joy.

• A. Poulin (1977) translator of Rilke's French poetry
  Since Poulin's translations of Rilke's French poems are mostly prose, I wasn't expecting to find much power in his Orpheus. Oh, was I surprised. These translations are wonderful throughout. It is perhaps fortunate that I didn't read them until after completing the first revisions of my own - if I had seen them sooner, I might have been less motivated to undertake mine in the first place!

• Stephen Mitchell (1982-1985)
  I first encountered Orpheus in Mitchell's translations, and I owe him a double debt. They were both good enough to let me see there was something of value there, and also sometimes just bad enough to make me feel I could do better. Generally pretty good though. Mitchell to some degree has his own poetic axe to grind and sometimes alters Rilke to suit his own intent, but he doesn't yield to that temptation nearly as often as Robert Bly does in Bly's own flaccid renditions.

• Kenneth Pitchford (1983?)

• David Young (1987?)
  Quite good.

• Leslie Norris & Alan Keele (1989)
  An attempt at a balanced translation, but unfortunately Norris's poetic skills seem inferior to Macintyre's or Mitchell's.

• Robert Hunter (Grateful Dead lyricist)
  Hunter's recent (late 80's? The reprint edition is 1993.) translation is often loose with the meaning, but his keen poetic sensibility nevertheless catches key insights in unusual ways. Far better than Leishman.

• Cliff Crego
  An interesting on-line attempt at a literal translation. Overall, not as uniformly good as Herter-Norton, and containing a few major blunders, but also with a few inspired choices here and there.