Each of these new poems stands and prevails as a marble statue, a pure form in itself, delineated on all sides and locked into its own permanent contours, as the soul is locked into its mortal body. These poems—I shall only refer to the “Panther” and the “Carousel”—are carved out of the clumsy cold stone of their daylight brightness, like clear cameos, transparent only to the eye of the mind—structures of piercing hardness unknown heretofore in the German Lyric, the victory of knowing objectivity over the mere idea, the triumph, the ultimate triumph of language turned into total plasticity. Every single object stands there in its own immovable gravity...
—Stefan Zweig, Farewell to Rilke (Friends of the Daniel Reed Library, State University College, Fredonia NY, 1975), translated by Marion Sonnenfeld.
[Rainer Maria Rilke fans should scare up a copy of this pamphlet. It’s hagiography but of the highest form. Stefan Zweig is a beautiful prose stylist, and this was his memorial oration for Rilke delivered in Munich in 1927.]
5 comments:
This shows how magnificent Rilke's work is, but also inadvertently reveals why many people might find it unbearable!
I can't go as far as Rilke into the metaphysical realm. But I'm not turned off by high romantic style either.
The recent essay by Tony Hoagland in APR, "Soul Radio," tho speaking of three women poets (Howe, Gregg & Hirshfield). gets it right about the deep things, the real pychological strains, that poetry must always be refuge for. And Rilke knows how to plumb that place in me.
Hirshfield can definitely get into a very Rilkean space!
Stefan Zweig is undoubtedly one of the acutest writers.
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