Author
|
Topic: The Eighth Elegy by Rainer Maria Rilke
|
listenstotrees Knowflake Posts: 463 From: Stonehenge Registered: Apr 2009
|
posted September 09, 2009 02:06 PM
All other creatures look into the Open with their whole eyes. But our eyes, turned inward, are set all around it like snares, trapping its way out to freedom. We know what’s out there only from the animal’s Face; for we take even the youngest child, Turn him around and force him to look At the past as formation, not that openness so deep within an animal’s face. Free from death, we only see it; the free animal always has its destruction behind and god ahead, and when it moves, it moves toward eternity like running springs. Not for a single day, no, never have we had That pure space ahead of us, in which flowers endlessly open. It is always World and never Nowhere without No: that pure, unguarded space we breathe, always know, and never crave. As a child, one may lose himself in silence and be shaken out of it. Or one dies and is it. Once near death, one can’t see death anymore And stares out, maybe with the wide eyes of animals. If the other weren’t there blocking the view, Lovers come close to it and are amazed… It opens up behind the other, almost an oversight…but no one gets past the other, and the world returns again. Always facing creation, all we see is the reflection of the free and open that we’ve darkened, or some mute animal raising its calm eyes and seeing through us, and through us. This is destiny: to be opposites, always, and nothing else but opposites.It this sure animal approaching us from a different direction had our kind of consciousness, he’d drag us around in his wake. But to the animal, his being is infinite, incomprehensible, and blind to his condition, pure, like his outward gaze. And where we see the future, he sees all, himself in all, and whole forever. And yet the weight and care of one great sadness lies on this warm and watching creature. Because what often overwhelms us Also clings to him — the memory that what we so strive for now may have been nearer, truer, and its attachment to us infinitely tender, once. Here all is distance, there it was breath. After that first home, the second seems drafty and a hybrid. Oh, blessed are the tiny creatures who stay in the womb that bore them forever; oh they joy of the gnat that can still leap within, even on its wedding day; for the womb is all! And look at the half-certainty of the bird almost aware of both from birth, like one of the Etruscan souls rising from the dead man enclosed inside the space for which his reclining figure forms a lid. And how confused is anything that comes from a womb and has to fly. As if afraid of itself, it darts through the air like a crack through a cup, the way a wing of a bat crazes the porcelain of night. And we: spectators, always, everywhere, Looking at everything and never from! It floods us. We arrange it. It decays. We arrange it again, and we decay. Who’s turned us around like this, so that whatever we do, we always have the look of someone going away? Just as a man on the last hill showing him his whole valley one last time, turns, and stops, and lingers – so we live, and are forever leaving. Interpretation from this blog: http://bittergrace.wordpress.com/2007/09/15/70-favorite-poems-46-the-eighth-elegy-by-rainer-maria-rilke/ PDF: http://docs.google.com/gview?a=v&q=cache:-KPFlt8n5GcJ:my.fit.edu/~rosiene/rilke.pdf+The+Eighth+Elegy+by+Rainer+Maria+Rilke&hl=en&gl=uk IP: Logged |
Valus Knowflake Posts: 1240 From: Registered: Apr 2009
|
posted September 09, 2009 04:07 PM
IP: Logged |
listenstotrees Knowflake Posts: 463 From: Stonehenge Registered: Apr 2009
|
posted September 09, 2009 04:48 PM
And where we see the future, he sees all, himself in all, and whole forever.? IP: Logged |
Valus Knowflake Posts: 1240 From: Registered: Apr 2009
|
posted September 09, 2009 05:36 PM
And how confused is anything that comes from a womb and has to fly As if afraid of itself it darts through the air like a crack through a cup
IP: Logged | |