Sonnets To Orpheus I, 3

A god can do it. How do you expect a man to squeeze on through the lyre and follow? His mind is torn. Where heartways intersect, you won't find any temple to Apollo. True singing, as you teach it, isn't wanting, not wooing anything that can be won; no, Singing's Being. For the god, not daunting. But when are we? And when will he then turn into our being all the Earth and Stars? It isn't that you love, child, even if the voice exploded from your mouth - begin forgetting, that you sang. That disappears. To sing in truth is quite a different breath. A breath of void. A gust in the god. A wind.

Ein Gott vermags. Wie aber, sag mir, soll ein Mann ihm folgen durch die schmale Leier? Sein Sinn ist Zwiespalt. An der Kreuzung zweier Herzwege steht kein Tempel für Apoll. Gesang, wie du ihn lehrst, ist nicht Begehr, nicht Werbung um ein endlich noch Erreichtes; Gesang ist Dasein. Für den Gott ein Leichtes. Wann aber sind wir? Und wann wendet er an unser Sein die Erde und die Sterne? Dies ist nicht, Jüngling, daß du liebst, wenn auch die Stimme dann den Mund dir aufstößt, - lerne vergessen, daß du aufsangst. Das verrinnt. In Wahrheit singen, ist ein andrer Hauch. Ein Hauch um nichts. Ein Wehn im Gott. Ein Wind.

Translation notes:

Connection from previous sonnet:

"singing god, how did you" => "how do you expect / a man to"

Line 1-2: "Wie aber, sag mir, soll / ein Mann ihm folgen durch die schmale Leier?"

"But how, tell me, is a man supposed to follow him through the narrow lyre?" Men cannot easily do what gods do. This idea reappears at the end of I,5; the god is not impeded by "the lyre's bars", and where he goes, "you can't go with him".

Line 3-4: "An der Kreuzung zweier / Herzwege"

"At the crossing of two heartways". There were often temples at crossroads in ancient Greece, but these were usually to dark deities such as Hecate rather than to the rational sun-god Apollo. The crossroads motif reappears in the last sonnet II,29.

The tradition of crossroads as places to encounter dark powers persisted even in 20th-century America; there was a legend among blues musicians that if you really wanted to acquire unnatural musical skill, you went to a crossroads at midnight, where the Devil would take your soul in return for granting such powers. The great blues singer and guitarist Robert Johnson was supposed to have done this; some of his songs (such as "Crossroad" and "Hellhound On My Trail") even seem to support that notion.

Line 13: "Hauch"

"Hauch" means "breath", but it is a soft, quiet breath. The German "Atem" (or "Atmen"), which appears in I,4, II,1, II,2, II,19, and II,29, also means breath but implies something stronger and more active.

Line 14: "Ein Hauch um nichts. Ein Wehn im Gott."

Literally, "A breath about nothing. A flurry in the god." Here Rilke achieves a sense of emptiness by first creating a near-nothingness (a voice or breath), and then taking away its content/meaning, so it becomes even emptier ("about nothing").