Re: Arndt ya gonna just fergit about the rhyme and meter?
citycabn (citycabn@gateway.net)
Mon, 18 Oct 1999 09:35:53 -0700
Matt,
Thanks for reply.
In reading over what you quoted of me, I realize I left off the end of my
facile statement re fluency. Should have read:
Are you fluent in Geman? Which I guess to mean something along the lines
of: while Rilke's poems are seducing you, is your mind turning over the
German into the sluttish hiss of English *or not*?
Needless to say, the fluent loved one is still hearing only *German* and
never fantasizes into the English of the poem's meaning. In fact, our
old friend Randall Jarrell, has a wonderful poem--can't recall title, don't
have book--on trying to learn German, which invokes Rilke at one point.
Something like:
It is by trust and love and reading Rilke
without ein Worterbuch [dictionary] that one learns German.
The words rain down as glistening as from
the hand of God
and means--
what does it mean?
It's in German.
Okay: who on this list is holding out, and reads Rilke as Rilke heard the
words ringing in his ear, as Rilke wrote the words down, as Rilke *himself*
read Rilke? Surely *you* (as well as the eleven-year-old lurker, gender
unknown) are out there?
Matt wrote: "that ridiculous delicate Rilke"
To quote RMR from The Notebooks of Malte L. Brigge: "Fame is the sum of
misunderstandings that gather around a new name." I suggest you have fallen
for the Hollywood version of Rilke's life. No one gets from *that*
beginning in Prague, and the incredibly facile books of the first eight or
so years, to The New Poems (trans. by Snow is best), to the *end* of Malte
Brigge (trans. by Norton is best) to the first line of the First Duino Elegy
(January 1912) and then drags himself across all of Europe for *ten* years
getting a couple of more elegies, and bits and fragments, and finally with
four years left to live, hits *Bingo!* in Muzot in February of 1922 with the
complete arrival of Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus in the space of three
weeks. What I am suggesting is: there is some pretty damn impressive
good old I-go-to-gym-everyday-and-press-x-hundred-pounds of endurance
exemplified by that strange miraculous life Rilke led.
You wrote: "I remember reading that Rilke's German was accessible at an
early level of study/reading..."
(Of course, the Arndt example is a howl.) But yes and no. Rilke's early
forgettable work--the books from 1894 through 1902--those are approachable
with, say, 2 years of college German. BUT *native* speakers of German have
trouble with the German of The New Poems (1907, 2nd volume 1908) onwards to
the end (1926). (And let's not forget the *French* RMR. The 400 plus poems
from c. 1919 to 1926 written *in* French and appreciated by Gide, Valery, et
al. (granted, they were personal friends of RMR).)
Okay, enough of *my own* posturing on this soapbox.
-----Original Message-----
From: Matt Kozusko <mkozusko@parallel.park.uga.edu>
To: bananafish@lists.nyu.edu <bananafish@lists.nyu.edu>
Date: Saturday, October 16, 1999 10:05 AM
Subject: Arndt ya gonna just fergit about the rhyme and meter?
>
>
>> Never considered Arndt one of the best. But who am I to say which are.
>> Are you fluent in German? Which I guess to mean something along the
lines
>> of: while Rilke's poems are seducing you, is your mind turning over the
>> German into the sluttish hiss of English?
>
>The churning teeth and spittle and glottal--to tell you the truth, to
>this day I can't imagine that ridiculous delicate Rilke speaking such
>an unmannerly language. German to me always sounded like someone
>trying to chew up and swallow a large bit of car fender. I studied
>only a little--just enough to reassure me that Herter Norton's Rilke
>was right, and Walter Arndt's was wrong. I have always based my
>argument on the strong resemblence in voice between her translations
>of the prose vs. her translations of the poetry. Sounds like the same
>person to me. Or maybe I jsut want it to. I do remember reading
>somewhere that Rilke's German was accessible at an early level of
>study/reading. Need one be fluent to understand that Arndt's "lose it
>/ booze it" rhyme ("Drunkard's Song") sits as undelicately in Rilke's
>mouth as, well, the native German?
>
>
>> I do think we of the west can get *a tiny
>> bit* closer to India than the far east.
>
>Undoubtedly. I am, of course, only posturing myself with all that
>French theory.
>
>
>
> --
>Matt Kozusko mkozusko@parallel.park.uga.edu
>