When I Go

Selected French Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke, Susanne Petermann

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781532603334
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Rilke's French poetry appears here for the first time in readable, musical versions. Largely unknown and rarely collected, these poems were written during the euphoria Rilke felt after having completed his greatest German works, the Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus. At the same time, Rilke was growing increasingly ill with a rare, undiagnosed form of leukemia. He died just four short years into the production of these poems, and death appears in them as "a kindly, unfamiliar figure" to be faced with courage and surrender. Five series of poems are featured: Roses, Windows, Affectionate Tribute to France, Valaisian Quatrains, and Orchards.

1

Roses

Still—in a way—nobody sees a flower—really—it is so small—we haven’t time—and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.1

One of the myths that circle around Rilke concerns the cause of his death. In cutting roses from his garden at Muzot for his newest love interest, he was pricked by a thorn, which turned into a nasty infection.

Biographer Ralph Freedman writes: “For ten days both hands were unusable, after which he caught an intestinal flu with a high fever. It is unlikely that the thorn itself caused Rilke’s death, as is romantically assumed, but it may well have triggered attacks from which, in the end, he did not recover.”2

Rilke harbored distrust of doctors and hospitals, and suffered unnecessarily before a rare form of leukemia took his life in December 1926. He is buried in the village church at Raron, in Valais.

Whatever part roses may have played in Rilke’s demise, it is especially poignant that, in this series of twenty-seven poems, Rilke expresses a passion to live the creative life. At the time of their writing, death was not yet sitting on his shoulder. Death remains a theme, an abstraction.

The Roses orbit around beauty and life-force like perfumed petals around a stamen, making me a bit dizzy with ecstasy and optimism whenever I read them. I feel like the “Round Rose”: “Doesn’t it make you dizzy. . . /to spin and spin upon your stem . . . ?”

The images are often overtly erotic, speaking fearlessly of “inner caresses,” “the ultimate mouth,” “Narcissus’ fulfillment,” “the bud that is you,” the flower that “between two lovers expires.” Like arms encircling the beloved, Rilke’s roses bring together physical desire ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Roses
• Chapter 2: Windows
• Chapter 3: Affectionate Tribute to France
• Chapter 4: Valaisian Quatrains
• Chapter 5: Orchards