Sonnets to Orpheus

by Rainer Maria Rilke, Willis Barnstone (Translator)

Overview

Written during an astonishing outburst of creativity during a period of only two weeks in February 1922, Rilke's
Sonnets to Orpheus

is one of the great poetic works of the twentieth century. Willis Barnstone brings these striking poems into English with an approach honed through years of work on the philosophy of translation, about which he has written extensively. This dual-language edition allows readers to compare versions face-to-face to get a clear sense of the nuances of the translation. Also included is an extensive introduction from the translator that offers a biographical sketch of Rilke and reflects upon the ever-present tension between the poet's passion for life, romance, and adventure, and his yearning for the solitude he desperately needed to dedicate himself fully to his art.

Customer Reviews

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780834825314
Publisher:	Shambhala Publications, Inc.
Publication date:	12/07/2004
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Born in Lewiston, Maine, Willis Barnstone was educated at Bowdoin, Columbia, the Sorbonne, and Yale. He taught in Greece at the end of the civil war (1949–51), and in Buenos Aires during the Dirty War. During the Cultural Revolution he went to China where he was later a Fulbright Professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University (1984–85). Former O'Connor Professor of Greek at Colgate University, he is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature and Spanish at Indiana University.

His publications include Modern European Poetry (Bantam, 1967), The Other Bible (HarperCollins, 1984), Poetics of Translation: History, Theory, Practice (Yale, 1993), Funny Ways of Staying Alive (University Press of New England, 1993), The Secret Reader: 501 Sonnets (University Press of New England, 1996), the memoir With Borges on an Ordinary Evening in Buenos Aires (University of Illinois, 1993), Algebra of Night: Selected Poems—1949–1998 (Sheep Meadow, 1999), The Apocalypse (New Directions, 2000), Life Watch (BOA Editions, 2003), Border of a Dream: Poems of Antonio Machado (Copper Canyon, 2003), and The Gnostic Bible (Shambhala Publications, 2003).

A Guggenheim Fellow, his awards include a National Endowment for the Arts award, a National Endowment for the Humanities award, an Emily Dickinson Award of the Poetry Society of America, a W. H. Auden Award of the New York State Council on the Arts, the Midland Authors Award, three Book of the Month Selections and four Pulitzer Prize nominations for poetry. His work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Doubletake, Harper's, New York Review of Books, Poetry, Paris Review Poetry, Partisan Review, the New Yorker, and the Times Literary Supplement.

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) is widely regarded as one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. His works include Duino Elegies, The Sonnets to Orpheus, and Letters to a Young Poet.

Read an Excerpt

SILENT
FRIEND OF MANY DISTANCES

Silent friend of many distances, feel

how your breath draws apart the walls of space.

Lost in the timbers of dark belfries, peal,

let yourself toll. What feeds on you will trace

its own domain from this nourishment.

Pass though a transformation and resign

to it. What pains you most? To it assent.

If drinking is a bitterness, be wine.

Be in this night whose borders have no frame

a magic force wherein your senses cross.

Be meaning of their strange encounter. Go,

And if the earthly fades and has forgot

you,
whisper to the silent earth: I flow.

To the onrushing water say: I am.

Table of Contents

Contents

Title Page,
Copyright Notice,
Introduction,
Erster Teil / First Part,
Zweiter Teil / Second Part,
Also by Edward Snow,
About the Authors,
Copyright,

What People are Saying About This

Stanley Plumly

“An artful and sensitive translation of this most elusive of Rilke’s poetry…the thing that Rilke made is once again alive to us, all of it…Young has subtracted…the most persistent problem with other translations: he does not let the music of the form haunt the poem. There is no rhetorical ‘rounding-out,’ in either Pound’s fine phrase, emotional slither. The reader feels that Young has successfully ‘inhabited’ the form, found a correlative language.”

From the Publisher

"Willis Barnstone has been appointed a special angel to bring 'the other' to our attention, to show how it is done. He illuminates the spirit for us and he clarifies the unclarifiable. I think he does this by beating his wings."—Gerald Stern

"Willis Barnstone's versions of Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus are daring, passionate, and beautiful. The choices he makes between beauty, song, and literalness serve a cause Rilke would approve. Of all translations of the sonnets, Barnstone's songs tame the animals while serving Rilke's great art."—Stanley Moss, author of A History of Color

Editorial Reviews

With acclaimed versions of The Duino Elegies and Uncollected Poems already in print, Edward Snow's historic rendering of the Rilke oeuvre gets one step closer to completion with Sonnets to Orpheus. Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) composed the first set of 26 sonnets just before completing the monumental elegies, and the second 29 just after. Rendered here without rhyme and with German facing text, Snow makes clear why the sonnets are "Sayable only by the singer./ Audible only by the god." Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus (published 1923 in German) rank with the most distinguished works of modern poetry. Written in an extraordinary burst of inspiration, these poems reveal a vision of ``a mode of being in which all the ordinary human dichotomies (life/death, good/evil) are reconciled in an infinite wholeness.'' Stephen Mitchell's translations are masterful re-creations of the original, giving both precise renderings of Rilke's language and sensitive interpretations of his poetic intent. This fine dual-language edition is highly recommended. Ulrike S. Rettig, German Dept., Hervard Univ.

Library Journal

An undisputed masterpiece by one of the greatest modern poets translated here by a master of translation”—Voice Literary Supplement

From the Publisher

Praise for Duino/Elegies (NPP, 2000)

"[Snow's work stands the highest test that can be put to any translation: it would be a worthy poetic achivement even without the original to prop it up."
-- Brian Phillips, The New Republic

Praise for The Book of Images (NPP, 1994)

"Edward Snow, who so insightfully translated the two volumes of Rilke's New Poems, has now turned to The Book of Images, one of the poet's most startling and diverse masterworks. Snow has rendered with great skill and accuracy a work both familiar and unknown, more complicated and more immediate than many have suspected, at once grave, mysterious, and beautiful." --Edward Hirsch

Praise for New Poems (NPP, 1987):

Rilke's first great work . . . [Snow's translation] is clear, accurate, and fluent."
--Stephen Mitchell

Praise for Duino Elegies (NPP, 2000)

"I have been engrossed in English versions of Duino Elegies for years, and Snow's is by far the most radiant and, as far as I can tell, the most faithful . . . Reading this rendition provided new revelations into Rilke's symbolic landscapes of art, death, love and time."
--Frederic Koeppel, The Commercial Appeal (Memphis)

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