Narcissus

Narcissus perished. From his beauty rose
incessantly the nearness of his being,
like scent of heliotrope that clings and cloys.
But his one avocation was self-seeing.

Whatever left him he loved back again,
he whom the open wind could not contain;
rapt, closed the round of reciprocity,
annulled himself, and could no longer be.

April 1913

Ignorant I confront the heaven of my life,
wondering at it, I stand. O the great stars.
The rising and the going down. How still.
As though I were not. Am I part of it?
Or have I lost it, severed the pure influx?
Does the same order make
the high and low tides alternate in my blood?
All craving I’ll discard, all other connection,
attune my heart to its remotest wave.
Much better to live in terror of its stars
than seemingly pampered, soothed by a nearness.

Spring 1913

[Draft of a poem originally intended for the Duino Elegies]

While Rilke has been perhaps more widely translated into English than any other modern poet, the emphasis has always been on ‘major works’ – the New Poems volumes, Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus. Yet Rilke produced many more poems which had little or no airing beyond the confines of his workshop. Michael Hamburger argues in his perceptive and entertaining introduction that these poems are not inferior to the poems in the collections that form the accepted corpus; rather that they merely failed to fit in with Rilke’s wish to form a definitive statement.

First published under the title An Unofficial Rilke, Hamburger’s translations have been critically acclaimed for their contribution towards a more complete understanding of one of the major poets of the 20th century.