Cheerful, isn’t it? I’m off shortly to stand in for Annie Freud (as if it were possible!) at her poetry group at City University, and the unofficial theme for the evening seems to be portents of death. Hurrah! I’m giving them some James Merrill, and the poems I’ve chosen are funny as well as sobering. Well: one is sobering. The other is the delicious A Narrow Escape, for any of you who feel like looking it up.
Exquisite, of course. He was a very subtle man.
Signs are that I am both on the mend from whatever it is that has laid me up all week – whether “piglet flu” or “a cold” or “life” – and not quite there yet. In short, not really. I’m behind with absolutely everything and feeling quite drained. Most depressing of all was a job description sent through by some well-meaning agency this morning, in relation to the fact that my job ends in two weeks (yes, and I’m not getting paid for being sick, either), which looked both a) “desirable” and b) like a living death.
So that’s me, then.
So here’s some Rilke for you. For me, I mean. It’s the recession, though, so maybe it’s for you too.
Archaic Torso of Apollo
We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,
gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.
Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:
would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.
5 Comments
July 8, 2009 at 7:33 pm
Hang in there. You are wonderful.
July 10, 2009 at 9:02 am
Sorry to hear you’ve been unwell, Ms Barolque and hope you get better very soon (preferably immediately). Only finding out late as have not had time to cruise blogs for a while.
And thats the best translation of the Rilke. isnt it? The Stephen Mitchell. Don Paterson’s is quite gritty but less classic.
July 10, 2009 at 9:16 am
George, you’re right, I didn’t credit the translator! You can see I’m not all there… I copied it (shameful) from the Academy of American Poets, so normally I’d have linked to them as well. Ergh. Off to the GP in an hour. Anyway, nice to get this tiny note! I haven’t been reading much online either.
And I met another of your ex-students the other day, they are everywhere!
July 10, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Tough one to translate, except for the final sentence. The original is of course a sonnet, regular and formal. Who would guess how much a part of its nature that formality is from the translations, even one as good as this, which acknowledges the sonnet form without achieving it?
It gets translated again and again, but I’ve never read one which comes close. Think, for instance, about the difference between “eyes like ripening fruit” and “Augenäpfel.”
July 12, 2009 at 6:51 pm
Dear Katy
Sorry to hear you’ve been unwell. I wish you a rapid recovery. Jane Holland too has been severely under the weather and people think that being a poet is easy!
I used to suffer from a lot of ill-health myself until I sacked my doctor. Now if I feel a bit rough, I go to bed and try to think positive thoughts. I’m not saying that it would work for everyone but it certainly seems to work for me. Good luck to you and good health!
Simon R. Gladdish