Reading Rilke: Reflections On The Problems Of Translation (2000) - Plot & Excerpts
more Gass. What can I say? For a while the only thing I could think of when I heard Rilke was Igby saying "Every year some asshole gives me a copy of Rilke's Letter To A Young Poet, telling me how it will change my life" or whatever. As independent and unaffected as I like to pretend I am, that line kind of trumped Rilke for me for a while, and I don't even think I quoted it correctly. Also, don't care to. But nothing about opinions is permanent. My 93 year old grandma was in a hospice for 87 days following a (what would become fatal) fall she took on New Years Day and at the time when I went back to NY to visit her for what we both knew would be the last time, I was getting more interested in poetry that was contemplative, that really examined deeper emotions and connections. Subconsciously I checked out Rilke's Duino Elegies from the library, but didn't read it right away, mostly because I was reading William Gass's mind-blowing, though no-less melancholic prose. Rilke sat on my desk unopened. My grandmother's health grew worse, but didn't overtake her and then she stopped speaking altogether, weighing in the final weeks only 50 or so lbs. I was sad and 3000 miles away, just waiting by the phone, trying to keep $300 bucks reserved in my dwindling bank account to buy a plane ticket home, knowing that she would pass any day, even though it had been 87 days longer than any doctor predicted. All these things were feeding into my mind, and the way I was processing things I thought I was basically living a Rilke poem, but that still didn't compel me to read him, and I even forgot about him, or so I thought. When my grandmother passed away it was as calm as wind whispering through a curtain, and I'd spent so much time preparing for it that I didn't cry at the funeral. It was like you wait for it, you wait for death, you wait, you wait, and compare it to how you felt when other grandparents all died, and still waiting, preparing yourself and it happens so gently and naturally to a woman so good-natured and pragmatic and skinny that there was little for death to take except breath away. And when it was over I felt that there was not a regret, like we didn't spend enough time together, or show each other we loved and cared, but that there was a lesson to be learned, something that was sown deep inside of me that would reveal itself over time. it was a very strange time for me, that late winter period between January and march, and at some point while I was home for the funeral found myself in the Strand bookstore looking at this book: Reading Rilke, by none other than William F'n Gass. I had to get it, of course. I practically live my life by these coincidences and connections. I started it on the plane back to San Francisco and just finished it today. Remarkable study of a poet whose native tongue gets lost in most translations. The first chapter is a biography, and then Gass goes into a formal essay on the strategy and technique of translation, comparing his word choices to those of other translators (his colleagues). Finally the last 2/3 of the book are analysis of many of Rilke's poems, ending with an uninterrupted version of The Duino Elegies.Read this. Read Gass's 'Omensetter's Luck' and 'In The Heart Of The Heart Of The Country' as well
Gives a crack of light into Rilke’s DUINO ELEGIES (Gass includes his translation of the ELEGIES in this book of biography and sharp literary criticism, with a dose of philosophy); very dense but clear prose, slow going; triggers that too-familiar sense of disappointment in the Great Artist who’s (no surprise) a lousy husband who abandons his child and who prefers the rich for company and the poor for writing material, but the book triggers more than that too—this bit helps to dethrone my inner judge and helps me to see some of myself in him:“…Rilke felt himself to be a failure and a fraud except when he was writing. Then he was the writer who he wished was the man he wasn’t. Then he was the lover he hoped could—as we say now—commit. Rilke understood his shortcomings so thoroughly that his knowing was a shortcoming. But on the page, in a poem, the contradictions which were his chief affliction could be reconciled. There he could answer every question with ‘I praise.’” (170)Gass is amazing, razor-sharp; I love how he synthesizes all the research; he offers fascinating comparisons of translated lines, reminding me of Eliot Weinberger’s NINETEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT WANG WEI.Another gem: “Finally, Rilke learned what seeing is, and then he learned to see. ‘To see’ means to taste and thereby to ‘dance the orange,’ to touch and feel at one’s finger end a little eternity, to smell ourselves cloud like steam from a warm cup, to hear voices, to listen so intensely you rise straight from the ground.” (41)
What do You think about Reading Rilke: Reflections On The Problems Of Translation (2000)?
I finished reading this book yesterday, or at least the exposition. I am still reading his translation of Duino Elegies, reading each Elegy in his translation and then Poulin's. Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus the book is more than a reflection on translation; translation is embedded in an artistic biography, Rilke's development as a man, and the artistic demons and angels he wrestled with. Mr. Gass has opened Rilke; I have read poetry with the feeling that it meant something important behind the flashes of beauty that came through the translations I read, but never got what that something was. I don't get it all now, but I get more. I was always conscious of Mr. Gass telling the story; since he has a Ph.D in philosophy and Rilke's poetry is often philosophical, there is philosophy and aesthetic theory. Mr. Gass also shows a wry sense of humor: "Rust destroys, but it creates character more surely than most playwrights." I liked it.
—Don Hackett
Rilke is great writer, Gass is a great writer, naturally from a prose point of view this book is excellent. There are four main sections to the book.The first, a somewhat subjective biographic sketch of Rilke is intelligent and insightful if debatable on points. 4 starsThe second is Gass comparing his translation of specific lines to those of prior translators and explaining why they are stupid and wrong. This section was an unenjoyable flashback to many academic conferences and lecture room where scholars (usually, like Gass, old white men) did exactly the same thing. Egotism is ugly and egotism at the expense of those who aren't present to defend themselves is uglier. If you insist upon this sort of mine-is-bigger display at least have the modesty to get some friend to do it for you in a review so you don't look like a smug jerk. 2 starsThe third section is a consideration of Rilke's compositional process and the idea of "inspiration" and is focused on the Duino Elegies. 3 starsThe final segment of the book is Gass' translations. Like all later translators of oft-translated authors, Gass is faced with the problem of justifying the need for having another translation at all (not that he explicitly addresses this). Like many in his position he errs on the side of novelty over fidelity. Interesting but I would never recommend Gass as the "best" translation. 3 stars.
—Miriam
The appeal of Reading Rilke is the same appeal of many of Gass’s essays ;; looking over the shoulder of a Master Reader as he.... reads.______________A Note on the Type“This book was set in Fairfield, the first typeface from the hand of the distinguished American artist and engraver Rudolph Ruzicka (1883-1978). In its structure Fairfield displays the sober and sane qualities of the master craftsman whose talent has long been dedicated to clarity. It is the trait that accounts for the trim grace and virility, the spirited design and sensitive balance, of this original typeface.“Rudolph Ruzicka was born in Bohemia and came to America in 1894. He set up his own shop, devoted to wood engraving and printing, in New York in 1913 after a varied career working as a wood engraver, in photoengraving and bank-note printing plants, and as an art director and freelance artist. He designed and illustrated any books, and was the creator of a considerable list of individual prints--wood engravings, line engravings on copper, and aquatints.“Composed by Dix Type, Syracuse, New YorkPrinted and bound by R.R. Donneley and Sons,Harrisonburg, VirginiaDesigned by Peter A. Anderson.”
—Nathan "N.R." Gaddis
