London Grip Poetry Review – Martyn Crucefix

 

 

Poetry review – CHANGE YOUR LIFE: Alwyn Marriage considers a new selection of Rilke’s poetry translated by Martyn Crucefix

 

Change your life: Essential Poems 
Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Martyn Crucefix
Pushkin Press Classics, 2024
ISBN 978-1-78227-858-0
256 pages.     £12.99.

In reviewing a poetry collection in translation, there is always a question as to whether one is judging the original poems or the new product that the translator has created. In the case of Rilke’s poetry, however, there is surely no need to review the original poems as history has done that perfectly adequately: Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) is well-established as Germany’s most innovative and successful 20th century poet and it is not for a 21st century reviewer to revisit that arena. In any case, as a non-German speaker myself, it would be highly impertinent for me to offer comment on the original poetry.

My task, therefore, is to consider Martyn Crucefix’s translations of Rilke’s work as poems in their own right. I am assuming that Crucefix’s knowledge of and facility with the German language are indisputable and, of course, Crucefix is, himself, a highly proficient and respected English poet with multiple publications and awards to his name.

This is a new, major selection and translation of Rilke’s poetry from 1899 through to 1926. First, Crucefix must be congratulated on the sheer size of the work he has undertaken. At 256 pages, this is a hefty collection that includes, in addition to selections from the well-known “Sonnets to Orpheus” and “Duino Elegies” a generous spread of individual poems and extracts from other collections, including The Book of Monastic Life (1899), The Book of Pilgrimage (1901), The Book of Poverty and Death (1903), The Book of Images (1902, 1906), New Poems (1907), New Poems II: The Other Part (1908), Requiem (1909), Uncollected Poems (1913 – 1922) and Last Poems (from The Valaisian Quatrains, 1923-1926).

In recent years, Crucefix has published other translations of both “Sonnets to Orpheus” and “Duino Elegies”, and it is probably these two important sequences of poems by Rilke that will define the importance of this new collection – which, incidentally, differs in some details from the earlier translations. However, the setting of these two major series of poems among some of Rilke’s other, less well-known work, adds further depth to our understanding of all the selections.

Crucefix’s stated intention in selecting the poems was three-fold:

‘this selection of Rilke’s poetry has been made with regard to three criteria: those poems a new (or more experienced) reader might reasonably expect to find in such a book, plus those poems that I felt were important to a rich and comprehensive view of Rilke’s poetic achievements, plus those individual poems that I felt especially in tune with’.

Those criteria obviously give room for a wide selection, and that is what Crucefix has given us.

Many of the poems are steeped in biblical references. as well as the mythologies that gave impetus to the two major poems. I am particularly pleased to have the translations of the “Duino Elegies” and “Sonnets to Orpheus” in this one volume, but there are treasures tucked away in many of the other poems as well. For instance, in the quite astonishing poem, “Raising Lazarus”, we read:

And so, he determined to undertake
a thing forbidden to the peace of Nature.	
					(from "Uncollected Poems")

and also in the graphic “Spanish Dancer” from “New Poems I”:

Like a match being struck in a cupped hand
flares white at first before the flame's shivering
tongue darts, penetrates – starting to dance
within the close-packed round of the audience,
she spins, suddenly bright, hot, flickering.

But for the rest of this review I shall concentrate on the two most famous sequences of poems.

It is interesting to note that the “Duino Elegies”, with which Rilke returned to the richness of his former poetic career, were written in the same year that T S Eliot wrote “The Wasteland”, 1922. However, while Eliot comments broadly on the bleak zeitgeist of early 20th century Europe and America and reveals a certain coldness in human relationships, Rilke’s elegies, albeit predominantly sad, focus more particularly on love, frequently address angels, and are for the most part warm and passionate.

those – you almost envy 
them this – forsaken, abandoned and unrequited,
who have so much more loving within them
than those who are satisfied.
				(The First Elegy)

Charming and very ordinary images bring a sparkle to many of these extracts from the Elegies:

Like a morning dew, where it rises from the grass,
so vanishes what is ours – it is like heat ascending
from uncovered dishes

and

that vague look you see pass
across the faces of pregnant women.

There are times when the more convoluted syntax of German does not transfer gracefully into English, including this passage from the third elegy:

Take a young lover – what does he,
whom she may know as yet only remotely,
what does he know of that lord of desire
who often, breaking out of his solitude,
and even before she has the chance to soothe him,
acts as if she were nothing to him – a god, ah,
raising its head, dripping, unfathomable, urgent,
turning the night over to endless uproar.

Maybe a little more punctuation might have rendered this passage less opaque.

However, such examples are less frequent than the pleasing passages, and by contrast we read, more lyrically, in the Tenth Elegy,

Only those who die young, those in their first state
of timeless serenity, still being weaned,
follow her lovingly. She waits for the girls
and befriends them, gently reveals to them
what she is wearing – her pearls of sorrow,
the fine-spun veils of patience. With young men
she walks in silence.
				

Like the “Duino Elegies”, Rilke completed the “Sonnets to Orpheus” in a flood of creativity in February 1922, which heralded his return to writing poetry after a fallow period. Not surprisingly given their title, the “Sonnets to Orpheus” follow more regular forms than the elegies, and the Petrarchan sonnet form seems to suit Rilke’s poetry particularly well. Crucefix has maintained the form, even though it was not possible, in most cases, to replicate the rhyming sequences. I agree with him that it was more important to hold onto the rhythm and style than to artificially impose rhymes.

There is nothing strange about a poet identifying to some extent with Orpheus, the musical god:

Singing is Being. For a god, this is easy.  

These sonnets are lyrical and at times sensuous in their joy in the material world, and Crucefix captures the delight Rilke expresses in his poetry.

Dance the orange. Who can forget it?
How it drowns itself in its own sweetness
while struggling against it. You possessed it.
Its transformation into you – delicious!  

However, despite the joyful aspects of the sonnets, it remains the case that in the myth Orpheus descended to the Underworld to try to recover Eurydice, and death is never very far away from these poems. Part of the joy of the sonnets comes from the fact that in general, the lyrical wins the day:

Flower-muscle that opens the anemone
in its meadow-mornings, step by step,
until the noisy polyphony
of heaven pours its light into her lap

into the rapt, quiet, star-flower's shape  

Crucefix’s final translation, of Sonnet II 29 contains lines that form a fitting conclusion to the collection:

Travel always towards transformation.
What has been your most painful experience?
If the draught tastes bitter, turn it to wine.
....
And if all that is earthly knows you no more,
declare this to the stilled world: I flow.
And say this to the rushing waters: I am.

Given the beauty and richness of this collection, I hesitate to raise a niggle with a negative point. However, given that the solecism has been replicated in reviews and comments, I feel it must be pointed out that a mistake in the Translator’s Note seems to express the opposite of what was intended. Crucefix refers to the ‘not-so-fallow years of 1910 to 1921’. In fact these years were fallow, as Rilke wrote very little during this period. I imagine that what was meant was ‘not-so-prolific’ or ‘not-so-creative’. I apologise if I have misunderstood the translator’s point here, but it may be worth checking that what he wrote is what he intended, and if not, correcting the statement in future editions.