At the beginning of January 1922 Rilke’s friend Frau Gertrud Ouckama Knoop had sent him a journal she had kept during the long and fatal illness of her daughter Wera, who died at the age of eighteen or nineteen, and whom Rilke had seen once or twice when she was a child. This beautiful girl had been an exquisite dancer, but, just before the beginning of her fatal glandular disease, had suddenly declared that she neither could nor would dance any longer, and, during the short time that remained for her, had devoted herself first to music and then to drawing, as though (in Rilke’s words) “the dancing which had been denied were more and more gently, more and more discreetly, still issuing from her.” His thoughts about Wera, whose fullness and love of life had seemed to reach their highest intensity when life was passing into death, crystallized, as it were, around the figure of Orpheus with his lyre, of which he had recently acquired a small engraving—Orpheus the mediator, at home in the realms both of the living and of the dead; and the result was this entirely unexpected series of sonnets, of which the First Part was written shortly before and the Second Part shortly after, the completion of the Duino Elegies.
THIS IS THE CREATURE
The unicorn has ancient, in the Middle Ages continually celebrated, significations of virginity: hence it is asserted that, although non-existent for the profane, it was, as soon as it appeared, within the “silver mirror” which the virgin is holding before it (see tapestries of the fifteenth century) and “in her,” as in a no less pure, no less mysterious mirror.
[Rilke is alluding to the celebrated tapestries of La Dame à la
Licorne in the Musée de Cluny.]
POEMS 1906-26
TO MUSIC
Written after a private concert at the house of the recipient.
WHEN WILL, WHEN WILL
“Written on the evening before the Orpheus sonnets.”
FOR WITOLD HULEWICZ
Inscribed in the Duino Elegies for his Polish translator: “To that faithful and active intermediary, Witold Hulewicz (Olwid), with gratitude: Rainer Maria Rilke.”
R.M.R.
Epitaph composed by himself before 27 October 1925 and inscribed on his tombstone in the churchyard at Raron.
INDEX OF TITLES
Adam
A Feminine Destiny
A God Can Do It
A Prophet
Archaic Torso of Apollo
Autumn
Autumn Day
Buddha
Corrida
Dancer
David Sings before Saul
Death Experienced
Does It Exist?
Early Apollo
Eastern Aubade
Eros
Eve
Everything Beckons to Us
Exposed on the Heart’s Mountains
For a Friend
For Witold Hulewicz
From a Childhood
Girls
God in the Middle Ages
Going Blind
How It Thrills Us
Hymn
I Live in Expanding Rings
In the Drawing-Room
Lady before the Mirror
L’Ange du Méridien
Late Autumn in Venice
Leda
Love-Song
Mirrors
O Fountain Mouth
Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes.
Pietà
Pont du Carrousel
Praising, That’s It!
Presentiment
Quai du Rosaire
Raise No Commemorating Stone
R.M.R.
Roman Fountain
Roman Sarcophagi
Self-Portrait from the Year 1906
Spanish Dancer
The Blind Man
The Bowl of Roses
The Cathedral
The Courtesan
The Departure of the Prodigal Son
The Donor
The Eighth Elegy
The First Elegy
The Flamingos
The Fourth Elegy
The Gazelle
The Goldsmith
The Group
The Magician
The Merry-Go-Round
The Mountain
The Ninth Elegy
The Olive Garden
The Panther
The Poet’s Death
The Reader
The Rose Window
The Sap Is Mounting Back
The Steps of the Orangery
The Temptation
The Unicorn
The Voices
This Is the Creature
To Music
Turning
What Will You Do, God?
When Will, When Will
With Strokes That Ring Clear
World Was in the face of the Beloved
You Mustn’t Be Afraid, God
OTHER RAINER MARIA RILKE BOOKS
Published by New Directions
Poems from the Books of Hours
Where Silence Reigns: Selected Prose
Copyright © 1957, 1977 by New Directions Publishing Corporation
Translation © The Hogarth Press Ltd. 1960, 1964
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, or television review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.
Grateful acknowledgement is made to Professor Theodore Ziolkowski of Princeton University, who chose the current selection of poems from the various New Directions volumes of Rilke’s work translated by J. B. Leishman. Portions of this selection appear by arrangement with W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Manufactured in the United States of America
First published ctothbound and as New Directions Paperbook 436 in 1977
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Rilke, Rainer Maria, 1875–1926.
Possibility of being.
(A New Directions Book)
Includes indexes.
I. Leishman, James Blaire, 1902–1963. II. Title.
PT2635.I65A249 1977 831’.9’12 77–4656
ISBN 978-0-8112-0651-8
ISBN 978-0-8112-2497-0 (e-book)
New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin
by New Directions Publishing Corporation
80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011