Original by Ranier Maria Rilke - Translated by Lore Confino
The Sixth Elegy
The flowers of the fig tree are concealed within its fleshy body. They do not normally ripen into fruit until late summer of the following year, seeming almost to skip their flowering. Man chooses to hold on and delight in his flowering, thereby delaying the true purpose of his allotted days in artificial pursuits. The single minded hero, in contrast, does not succumb to temptation. His rising is being. He sets forth into his chosen world of danger, rushing onwards towards destined self-destruction to enter his new life. The poet hides in his longing from boyhood days when he reads about Samson and wishes to be the hero.
The Seventh Elegy
The Seventh Elegy is a poem of celebration and affirmation, in contrast to the Fourth Elegy, which is one of regret and bitterness, and the Sixth, which praises the hero. In his Elegies, Rilke asks, pleads and wooes not only the Angel, but the lovers and those who died young and might have answers to human purpose and destiny. In the Seventh Elegy, the poet sternly orders 'no more wooing only immediately to exalt the unfolding beauty and joys of Spring. The poet calls to his dead mistress and his call reaches girls who died young and are not yet reconciled to their fate. Rilke consoles that it is not the length of life that matters, but the experience of living, if only briefly. The poet lived during times of change, when the modern world of mechanisation and technology replaces the old and honoured things which were close to his heart, and must be upheld and safeguarded. All is not lost and our great achievements are there for the Angel to see and praise: our architecture, music and love, secure in our transient existence. With pride the poet challenges the Angel. His outstretched arm and hand, ready to be grasped, remains open in defiance and warning before the Ungraspable.
The Eighth Elegy
The Eighth Elegy is dedicated to Rudolf Kastner, a friend and mystagogue, by whom Rilke was profoundly influenced. The Elegy has no encounter with the Angel. It contrasts man and animal, each inhabiting their own world. Man sees death as his destiny whilst the free animal passes life in tranquillity, looking into the 'open', which remains out of reach to man. he cannot escape his fate and fails in all his efforts. The Elegy concludes with the poet's lament of man having to take leave of everything, of life itself.
The Ninth Elegy
The Ninth Elegy opens with the question why we might not live as laurel? Why cannot we accept life as we find it and constantly search for other ways and choose to interfere with Destiny itself? The experience of mortal life is indisputable and our place unique and necessary to the whole. We cling to life, unwilling to part with any one thing but unsure of what, if anything, we can take with us into that 'other realm'. The poet knows human experience would have no voice there. Here is the time of the utterable, to name and give awareness to things which we, the most transient, have created as part of our experience and have given hope that in us, in our hearts, they can be transformed and saved. Even Earth seems to carry the secret wish to be invisible in us and in his ecstatic adoration, for a brief moment, the poet takes on the Angel's mantle of permanence.
The Tenth Elegy
The first verses of the first Elegy and of the tenth Elegy were written already in 1912 in Duino. They comprise the complete work of the years until 1922. The Elegy opens in the firm hope and expectation that at the end of life, the Angels will hear and respond to the poet and he can sing out to them in praise and jubilation. Man has finally to understand the purpose of suffering which he has found the hardest to accept. In the allegorical City of Mourning, Rilke brilliantly exposes our love of sham pleasure at the expense of true values, and he carries this further with irony and rarely used humour into the fairground at the outskirts of the City. The poetic magic of Rilke's vision transfers to the Land of the Griefs and a contrast is prepared for the newness and strangeness, which spreads out before the dead young man. Here he continues to 'live' in a tranquil elegiac atmosphere under new constellations, guided and instructed by an older Grief. Yet he cannot stay and must move on until they reach the fountainhead of the River of Joy. Here they have to part company and the young man continues alone into the Mountains of earliest Grief. No footstep is heard as he disappears from sight. Might the dead leave us a sign in the visible which throws some light on their destiny? The poet does not know, but he can point to the catkins on the leafless hazel or at the rain of early spring as it falls on the earth, and wonder at hope of renewal.