[1451] Rose, Oh Pure Contradiction, Joy

Guest poem sent in by Tim Reynolds <molad@>

Rose, oh pure contradiction, joy
of being No-one's sleep, under so
many lids.

	-- Rainer Maria Rilke

           (translation by Stephen Mitchell)

Notes: This is Rilke's self-composed epitaph; in the original German:

	Rose, oh reiner Widerspruch, Lust
	Niemandes Sclaf zu sein unter soviel
	Lidern.

The Tanith Lee poem [Poem #1366] reminded me of today's poem by Rilke.

"Lidern" could be a pun on "Lieder", songs, poems. Lips like roses is a
cliche, but lips like rose *petals*, clinically precise, a matter of texture
not color, isn't.

Tim

[Martin adds]

I find the line breaks in this poem confusing - could someone who speaks
German tell me whether they're more natural in the original?

[Links]

  Another translation, and a biography:
    http://www.geocities.com/Paris/LeftBank/4027/bio.html


__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance: Get your refund fast by filing online.
http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html

[this poem is archived, accessible and awaiting your comments at]
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1451.html
To subscribe, send a blank mail to <minstrels-subscribe@>.



Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
     http://groups.yahoo.com/group/minstrels/

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
     minstrels-unsubscribe@

     http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

From: michaelgratz@ (Michael Gratz)

The original poem really sounds good - I wouldn´t call it "natural", 
though. It´s rather refined in style, "high style", working with brash 
line breaks (enjambements) and word order. It owes much to the style of 
Hoelderlin whose late work had just been discovered at Rilke´s time. 
"joy" doesn´t match the german word "Lust", which is a combination of 
english "lust" and "joy", rather - in any case more lust than pure joy. 
Also I wouldn´t hold "Lidern" a pun on "Lieder", songs. It´s the same 
word as English "lid", only in German restricted to "eye lid", which 
would match better. It´s a complex metaphor, relating "rose" - 
considered as a pure (sheer) contradiction - to the sheer contradiction 
formed by the statement: so many (closed) eyelids and no sleep beneath. 
(German "Lust" contains an analogous contradiction - joy combined with 
pain). This for sure is a poem which is hard to translate - you can´t 
translate in the original word order or sound pattern (although 
Hoelderlin tried this in his nearly literal translations of Pindar poems 
which his contemporaries thought of as mad but in Rilke´s time it was 
hold highly poetic.
You could translate Rilke´s epitaph probably better thus:

Rose, oh sheer contradiction. Desire
to be no ones sleep under so many
eyelids

By the way - please correct the word "Sclaf" in the German text to "Schlaf"

Thanks for your impressing website which I read every day. I wish there 
was something like it for German poems!

Michael Gratz
http://www.lyrikzeitung.de

From: "Cat Pegg" <theamazingcatherine@>

I think Rilke liked roses a lot.  I remember reading, in a translation
of Sonnets to Orpheus, one about a rose.  I can't remember it word for
word, alas, but it was saying that, while a contemporary rose shared its
name with an ancient rose, they were very different flowers: before
roses were cultivated, they only had five petals.

Yet, it says, 'you are still a creature of air and fire'.

It stuck in my memory when most of the Sonnets didn't.

Why is it that poets mostly talk about Roses, not other flowers?