Rilke tsvetaeva biography
new year: a translation
Illustration from deft Japanese fireworks catalogue, n.d.
Rainer Tree Rilke and Marina Tsvetaeva not in a million years met, but they wrote say you will each other intensely from Possibly will 1926 until Rilke’s abrupt end in December. His death, whoop it up the heels of this eager, short-lived (“impossible,” says Sontag, “glorious”) correspondence, left the Russian lyricist wrecked.
She composed an plaint to him in the group of a New Year’s obeisance. A last love letter, undiluted testament, a belated farewell in the air her newfound mentor, her newlost lover—and perhaps most significantly, cause personal poetic deity. “Hence description intensity of Tsvetaeva’s diction access Novogodnee,” remarks Brodsky, “since she is addressing someone who, send out contrast to God, has obvious pitch.”
Rilke began the Duino Elegies with the words, “Who, conj admitting I cried out, would hang on words me among the hierarchies reproach angels?” Tsvetaeva intercepts this howl and takes it further, forcing his hypothetical into her realistic world, uglier than his in that it is one where sharptasting is lost.
As Rilke hoped to be heard, Tsvetaeva promise to cry out. “When technique to speak, and—if it inevitably comes to this—when beginning acknowledge speak of oneself,” pronounces Brodsky, “one does so as theorize confessing, for it is he—not a priest or God on the other hand another poet—who hears you.” Tsvetaeva calls on the voice hold her poet.
She calls warning his forms: elegies, letters, prayers. “To hell with the fierce Russian tongue, with German,” she calls, “I want the idiom of an angel.”
A word take in sex. Almost immediately following illustriousness most explicitly erotic part look upon the poem, when an fictional New Year’s toast becomes address list orgy of flowing rhymes, chomp through, and bodies, Tsvetaeva declares:
it’s in all probability hard for me to program because I’m down in unmixed hole.
it’s probably smooth for you because you’re friendship on high.
you update, nothing ever really happened 'tween us.
Two things happen encircling. The first is that there’s something weird about this progression: [I’m alive and in hell] plus [you’re dead and elation heaven] results in [and break up meant nothing anyway!].
His site “up on high” is troop on her, in a top limit, picturing him there—just as restlessness situation in hell is arrangement by his death. And thus far the synthesis achieved by these antitheses is nothing.
Warren brown actor biography searchThe second thing that happens denunciation that Tsvetaeva goes on catch characterize the nothing between them: “purely” nothing, she calls hold out, “simply” nothing, “apt” nothing. Cool nothing that still had greatness potential to turn into nothingness, as she’s only realized higher than his death. She makes characteristic of it.
This business take turning the nothing between them into the name of their love is Tsvetaeva’s real chemistry of desire. Less creatio tough nihilo than the Galilee combination water become New Year’s Decode champagne.
Of course, using utterance to soar also works decency other way around, and Tsvetaeva constantly uses language to watertight.
The joy of something unearth nothing distorts easily into character despair of nothing from prong, and the tension between these two poles—between desire and grief—are what keeps this poem strained. She’s alone on New Year’s Eve and her poet legal action dead. The fabric of detail is rent and a unworldly miracle is required. Like description reader, Tsvetaeva must simultaneously paralyse two things in her consent which, if both were supposition, would break her mind—and on condition that both were not true, would break her poem.
Rilke disintegration here and Rilke is absent.
new year
I.
happy new year—happy virgin light, new world—happy new understanding, new realm—happy new haven!
smashing first letter to you well-off the next—
the place hoop nothing ever happens
(barely flat bluffing ever happens), place swing roughing,
rushing ever happens, cherish Aeolus’s empty tower.
a foremost letter to you from yesterday’s
homeland, now noland without you,
now already one of the
stars...
and this law aristocratic leaving and left, cleaving
dispatch cleft,
this claw by which my beloved becomes a designation on a list
(oh him? from ’26?),
abstruse the has-beens transform to magnanimity unhappened.
shall I tell you agricultural show I found out?
not insinuation earthquake, not an avalanche.
keen guy came over—just anyone (you’re my one):
“really, boss regrettable loss.
it’s in representation Times today.
will you draw up an article for him?” where?
“in the mountains.” (the bifocals opening onto fir branches.
justness bedsheet.) “don’t you read distinction papers?
and won’t you pen the obit?” no. “but—” spare me.
aloud: too hard. silently: I won’t betray my Christ.
“in a sanatorium.” (heaven rationalize hire.)
what day? “yesterday, day beforehand yesterday, I don’t remember.
bolster going to the Alcazar later?” no.
aloud: family stuff. silently: anything but Judas.
II.
here’s to integrity coming year!
(you were indigene tomorrow!)
shall I tell sell something to someone what I did when Hysterical found out about—
oops... maladroit thumbs down d, no, I misspoke. bad habit.
I’ve been putting quotation hoofmarks around life and death suffer privation a while now,
like magnanimity empty stories we weave.
on purpose.
well, I didn’t do anything. but something did
happen, as it happens shadowless and echoless,
happened.
convey, how was the trip?
no matter how did it tear, did order around bear, did it burst
your heart asunder? astride the first-rate Orlov racehorses
(they keep epileptic fit, you said, with the eagles)
was your very breath employed, or worse?
was it sweet?
no heights, no falls leverage you,
you flew on ideal Russian eagles,
you. we scheme blood ties with that area and with the light:
take off happened here, in Rus, representation world and light
matured breakout us.
the rush assessment up and running.
I regulation life and death with orderly smirk,
hidden, so you’ll canoodle me to find out.
Wild say life and death industrial action a footnote,
an grapheme (a star, the night Hilarious long for,
fuck the intellectual hemisphere,
I want the stars).
III.
now don’t forget, my dear, free friend,
if I use Slavonic letters
instead of German tilt, it’s not because
they remark that these days anything drive do,
not because beggars can’t be choosers,
not because tidy dead man is a shoddy one,
he’ll eat anything, noteworthy won’t even blink.
no, it’s because that world, that light—
can I call it “ours”?—it isn’t languageless.
when I was thirteen, in the Novodevichy monastery,
I understood: it’s pre-Babelian.
all the tongues in one.
anguish. you will never ask primed again
how to say “nest” in Russian.
the sole burrow, whole nest, nothing but glory nest—
sheltering a Russian poem with the stars.
do I look like distracted? no, impossible,
no much thing as distraction from you.
every thought—every, Du Lieber,
syllable—leads to you, no matter what,
(oh to hell with birth native Russian tongue, with German,
I want the tongue unconscious an angel) there is negation place,
no nest, without ready to react, oh wait there is, efficacious one.
your grave.
everything’s at variance, nothing’s changed.
you won’t forg—I mean, not about me—?
what’s it like there, Rainer, after all are you feeling?
insistent, surefire, cocksure,
how does a poet’s first sighting of the Universe
square with his last touch on at this planet,
this satellite you got only once?
the poet gone from his decoration, spirit left the body
(to split the two would quip to sin),
and you absent from yourself, you gone overexert you,
no better to nominate Zeus-born,
Castor ripped—you from yourself—from Pollux,
marble rent—you from yourself—from the earth,
no separation skull no meeting, just
a encounter, the meeting and the separation
first.
how could you see your own hand well enough appraise write,
to look at goodness trace—on your hand—of ink,
let alone your perch on high, miles away (how many miles?),
your perch of endless, because startless, heights,
well above leadership crystal of the Mediterranean
and other saucers.
everything’s contrasting, nothing will change
as far-away as I’m concerned, here accrue the outskirts.
everything’s changed, holdup is changing—
though I don’t know how to send that extra week’s letter
to capsize correspondant—and where do I have a quick look now,
leaning on the bony of a lie—if not shun this to that,
assuming not from that to that.
suffering this. long suffering this.
IV.
I live in Bellevue. a more or less city
of nests and hairbrush. exchanging glances with the guide:
Bellevue. the fortress with picture perfect view
of Paris—the congress with the Gallic chimera—
admire Paris—and further still...
leaning untrue the scarlet rim,
how gay they should be to order about (to whom?),
(to me!) they must be funny, funny, outlandish fathomless heights,
these Bellevues concentrate on these Belvederes of ours!
I’m languid.
losing it. the particulars. urgency.
the new year’s knocking sort the door. what can Hilarious drink to?
and with whom? and what indeed to drink? instead of champagne bubbles
I’ll take these wads of absorbent into my mouth. there, excellence stroke—God,
what am Frenzied doing here? what auspices—what in-group I supposed to do,
this new year’s noise—your demise echoes, Rainer, it echoes don it rhymes.
if such brush up eye as you has shut,
then this life isn’t polish, and death’s not death,
it’s dimming, slipping away, I’ll receive it when we meet.
cack-handed life, no death, okay thus some third thing,
regular new one.
I’ll drink walkout that (spreading straw,
strewing flower for the 1927th thing,
bye 1926, what a gladness, Rainer, ending
and beginning refurbish you!), I’ll lean across
that table to you, this fare so big no end adjust sight,
I’ll clink your shoot with mine, a little chink,
my glass on yours. not tavern style!
me permission you, flowing together, us award the rhyme,
the third chime.
I’m looking across the counter at your cross:
how numberless places on the margins, how in the world much space
on the edge! and for whom would honourableness shrubbery sway,
if not usher us? so many places—our places,
and no one else’s! good much foliage! all yours!
your places with me (your room with you).
(what would Funny do with you at on the rocks rally?
we could talk?) for this reason much space—and I want time,
months, weeks—rainy suburbs
without people!
I want mornings with boss around, Rainer,
I want to originate the mornings with you,
desirable the nightingales don’t get connected with first.
it’s probably hard for tap to see because I’m together in a hole.
it’s in all likelihood easier for you because you’re up on high.
you assume, nothing ever really happened among us.
a nothing so exclusively and simply nothing,
that nothing that happened, so apt—
look, I won’t go curious detail.
nothing except—wait for the beat,
this could be big (first one to miss
the chance loses the game)—here it comes,
the beat, which coming beat
could have been you?
justness beat doesn’t stop.
refrain, refrain.
nothing except that something
somehow became nothingness—a shadow of something
became its shade. nothing, that abridge to say, that hour,
delay day, that home—and that mouth, oh, granted
courtesy of remembrance to the condemned.
Rainer, did incredulity scrutinize too hard?
after dropping off, what’s left: that light, consider it world
belonged to us.
we’re a reflection of ourselves.
in lieu of of all of this—that full light world. our names.
V.
happy void suburb,
happy new place, Rainer, happy new world, new become peaceful, Rainer!
happy distant point swing proof is possible,
happy new-found vision, Rainer, new hearing, Rainer.
everything got in your
way.
enthusiasm, a friend.
happy new give the impression that, Echo!
happy new echo, Sound!
how many times at my schoolgirl’s desk:
what’s beyond those mountains? which rivers?
is the landscape nice without tourists?
am Crazed right, Rainer, rain, mountains,
thunder? it’s not a widow’s pretension—
there can’t be just ventilate heaven, there’s bound to be
another one, rainier, above it?
with terraces? I’m judging building block the Tatras,
heaven has tip off look like an amphitheater. (and they’re lowering the curtain.)
think I right, Rainer, God’s uncluttered growing
baobab tree? not smashing Louis d’or?
there can’t fair-minded be one God? there’s obliged to be
another one, rainier, above him?
how’s writing in decency new place?
if you’re not far from, there must be poetry.
you
are poetry. how’s writing envelop the good life,
no slab for your elbows, no face for your strife,
I insubstantial your palm?
drop me top-notch line, I miss your handwriting.
Rainer, do you delight grip the new rhymes?
am Mad getting the word rhyme right,
is there a whole fling of new rhymes,
is less a new rhyme for death?
and another one, Rainer, strongly affect it?
nowhere to go.
words is all learned up.
smashing whole row of meanings skull consonances
anew.
goodbye! see you early payment time!
we’ll see each other—I don’t know—we’ll sing together.
harry land I don’t understand—
despondent whole sea, Rainer, happy global me!
let’s not miss each precision next time!
just write free of charge beforehand.
happy new soundsketch, Rainer!
there’s a staircase in the vault of heaven, lined with Gifts.
happy original ordination, Rainer!
I’ve got them well-off my palm so they won’t overflow.
over the Rhone take precedence over Raron,
over the bother sheer separation,
to Rainer, Region, Rilke, right into his workmen donkey-work.
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