RAINER MARIA RILKE'S

'GEDICHTE AN DIE NACHT' AN ESSAY IN INTERPRETATION

ANGLICA GERMANICA SERIES 2

Editors:

LEONARD FORSTER, E. L. STAHL

and A.

T. HATTO

Other books in the series D. PROHASKA: RAIMUND AND VIENNA: A CRITICAL STUDY OF RAIMUND'S PLA YS IN THEIR VIENNESE SETTING D. G. MOWATT: FRIDERICH VON HUSEN: INTRODUCTION, TEXT, COMMENTARY AND GLOSSARY C. LOFMARK: RENNEWART IN WOLFRAM'S 'WILLEHALM': A STUDY OF WOLFRAM VON ESCHENBACH AND HIS SOURCES

RAINER MARIA RILKE'S 'GEDICHTE AN DIE NACHT' AN ESSAY IN INTERPRETATION

ANTHONY STEPHENS Senior Lecturer in German, University of Sydney

CAMBRIDGE A T THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1972

cambridge university press

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo, Mexico City Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 8ru, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521155564 © Cambridge University Press 1972 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1972 First paperback edition 2010 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 72-178284 isbn 978-0-521-08388-1 Hardback isbn 978-0-521-15556-4 Paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Uns aher, wo wir Eines meinen, ganr, ist schon des andern Aufwand fiihlhar.

CONTENTS page ix

Preface Abbreviations

x

Introduction PART I INTERPRETATION OF THE' GEDICHTE AN DIE NACHT' I

Die spanische Trilogie

II

2

The Encounter with the Night

33

3 The Night and the Lovers

80

4 The Night and the Angel

110

PART II DEVELOPMENTS AND CONCLUSIONS

5 The Meaning of' Nacht' 6 The Human Situation 7 The Modes of Transcendence 8 An Approach to Rilke Notes

23 0

Bibliography

244

Index

249

vii

PREFACE This study is based on a doctoral thesis submitted in the University of Sydney in August 1968. I wish to thank Professor R. B. Farrell for his great help and encouragement, Professors Ulrich Fiillebom and E. L. Stahl for their valuable suggestions and criticisms and my wife for her help and patience. The study is published with the generous assistance of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. ANTHONY STEPHENS

IX

ABBREVIATIONS In the text the following abbreviations will be used for Rilke's works and letters: SW

I,

AB

I,

SW

AB

II,

etc.

II

B. 1902-06, etc.

BM BLA-S

TF BT, 1899-1902

Rainer Maria Rilke. Samtliche Werke, 6 vols., ed. Ernst Zinn, Wiesbaden/Frankfurt am Main 1955-1966. BrieJe, 2 vals. ed. K. Altheim, Wiesbaden 195 0 • BrieJe aus den Jahren

1902-1904 etc., ed. Ruth Sieber-Rilke and C. Sieber, Leipzig

1930-1937. BrieJe aus Murot, ed. Ruth Sieber-Rilke and Carl Sieber, Leipzig 1937. R. M. Rilke, Lou Andreas-Salome - Brief wechsel, ed. E. Pfeiffer, 1 vol. Ziirich/Wiesbaden 1951. Tagehiicher aus der Friihreit, ed. Ruth SieberRilke and C. Sieber, Leipzig 1942. Briefe und Tagehiicher aus der Friihfeit, Leipzig 1931.

x

INTRODUCTION Around 1916 Rilke copied into a manuscript-book for his friend Rudolf Kassner a collection of twenty-two poems, composed between January 1913 and February 1914.1 These poems were given the title Gedickte an die Nackt. Very little is known about Rilke's intentions in preparing the collection, or what importance he may have attributed to it. The first of the poems was written in Ronda in January and February 1913 and the remainder in Paris in the year that followed. Some of the poems, such as An den Engel, Die spaniscke Trilogie and Die grojJe Nackt, are very well known; others of the collection, perhaps because they are anything but outstanding examples of Rilke's poetry, have been relatively neglected. But even if we know little about Rilke's own attitude to the collection, there is no doubt as to its place in the development of his work. The Gedickte an die Nackt are poems written during the period of the composition of the Duineser Elegien. The first two Elegies were completed early in 1912 and during 1913 Rilke continued to work on what later became the third, sixth and tenth. This period also sees the composition of Der Geist Ariel, the two Nar{ijJ-poems and Du im Voraus/ yerlorne Geliehte. The Gedichte an die Nackt show Rilke at work on ideas and motifs which are important for the Duineser Elegien and a study of them may contribute towards our understanding of this major work. Up till now there has been no detailed treatment of the Gedickte an die Nackt as a collection and it is this lack which the first part of the study seeks to remedy. A good deal of Rilke-criticism uses the technique of taking a single theme or motif and pursuing it through the work, quoting only those poems or letters which help the discussion along. This is perfectly legitimate, but sometimes results in a rather limited perspective. While the exposition of 'Figur', 'weltinnenraum' or 'verwandlung' may be quite clear and consistent, other concepts, which may be equally important and which may stand in opposition to these, often do 1

SRG

INTRODUCTION

not appear at all with the result that the conflicts and uncertainties in Rilke's poetic thought are very much played down. The method I have chosen is to put the interpretation first and to develop the theories afterwards. So the first part of the study consists of a thematic analysis of the Gedichte an die Nacht, undertaken with as few preconceptions as possible. Thus the interpretation of Die spanische Trilogie, with which the study begins, leaves a number of questions open which can only be answered later. When dealing with Rilke's poetry, the use of parallel quotations and fragmentary poems is often the only way of establishing the meaning of a given text with any certainty, but throughout the thematic analysis I have tried to preserve a maximum of differentiation and to refrain from premature syntheses, tempting as these may be for the sake of the neatness of the argument. In the second part of the study there is not so much concentration on the period 1913-14, but rather the results of the first part are given wider application. In the period of the Gedichte an die Nacht the meaning of night often comes close to that of the angel in the Elegies, while at other times it has a quite different content or function, and the genesis of this ambivalence can be found in other poems from the period of the Stunden-Buch onward. In this way questions arise whose relevance is not confined to the period of the Gedichte an die Nacht and these are answered by a theory of Rilke's work which shows the necessity of the incomplete and sometimes contradictory nature of his poetic thought. This involves a discussion of the concepts of 'Gegenstandlichkeit' and transcendence in their application to Rilke's poetry. Considering the amount that has been written on Rilke's poetry, the debt of such a study as the present one to previous secondary literature must necessarily be large. I wish to acknowledge at the outset my debt to Professor Ulrich Fiillebom's book Das Strulcturprohlem der spiiten Lyrik Rilkes. It provided the stimulus for the study of the Gedichte an die N acht and had a considerable influence on the method pursued here. At the same time, I disagree with Professor Fiilleborn on a number of points, particularly on questions of attitude and evaluation. Fiilleborn 2

INTRODUCTION

takes Rilke to task for what he terms 'die Unverbindlichkeit' of the poetry and for the speculative quality of much of its content. In this way he arrives at conclusions which I do not share, as I think that the speculative quality of Rilke's poetry can be seen as something entirely positive. Another debt which I would like to acknowledge is to Frau Kate Hamburger's essay on Rilke in her recent book Philosophie der Dichter. Other critics, whose work I have found very helpful, are E. C. Mason, H.-E. Holthusen, E. L. Stahl and F. W. Wodtke. A major point of difference with Fiilleborn's work - and indeed with many critics since Fritz Kaufmann's Sprache als SchOpfung (1934) and E. C. Mason's Lehenshaltung und Symholik (1939) is the question of how much importance is to be given to the theme of Rilke's own artistic vocation in his poems. Fiilleborn tends to follow Mason in seeing it as a common denominator to which virtually all other themes can be reduced. It is with the exclusiveness of this attitude that I disagree. The theme of Rilke's , Kiinstlersehnsucht' is an integral part of his work and it is quite ilegtimate to discover it in poems where it is not one of the explicit themes; but to say that it is the only 'real' meaning of poems which have every appearance of being about something else is surely open to question. As it has been amply shown how this line of interpretation may be applied, very little space is devoted to it here. The aim has been rather to see how else one might interpret the poems and thus offer other possibilities of understanding. Nevertheless, where many of the familiar Rilkean 'doctrines' are concerned, my attitude is as sceptical as that of Mason or Fiilleborn. Rilke's poetry has suffered at the hands of critics who, for reasons of their own, have treated it as divine revelation, as a panacea for the ills of modern man and, above all, as if it were pure philosophy. In present day Germany, Rilke seems well on the way to becoming an untouchable; one is told by serious scholars that his work is 'suspekt'. But it is not Rilke's work which is suspect, but what has been made of it, and the predictable reaction of a generation who saw the vogue for Rilke arise and 3

1-2

INTRODUCTION

decline is now firmly entrenched. That Rilke, particularly in his letters, did nothing to stop the formation of exaggerated views of his work and that parts of it invite one to treat them like philosophical doctrines, is quite undeniable. On the other hand, his poetic thought is, by a number of criteria, unsatisfactory as philosophy. In Rilke's case one is, as Frau Hamburger says, dealing with the case of 'eine Lyrik statt einer Philosophie' and this distinction is very important for the present study.2 Often it is where the work leaves most to be desired, if one demands philosophical consistency from it, that it is most interesting as poetry. The question of the responsibilities which poetry may incur - whether it must also be a valid religious or social document and be committed to propagating doctrines or attitudes - is answered differently by each phase of each cultural tradition and I see no point in being dogmatic here. Another point of controversy in Rilke-criticism is the question of what is 'subjective' and what is 'objective' in his poetry. Particularly in the hands of German critics, these two adjectives can acquire such a weight of emotive connotations that Rilke is condemned when something appears to be 'subjektiv', or still worse' subjektiv-unverbindlich', and rewarded with approbation when the critic finds something he can call 'objektiv' in the work. 3 That the word' objektiv' usually conceals more emotional prejudices than one finds in a straight-out piece of personal evaluation, has resulted in a fair amount of confusion in Rilkecriticism. While the problem of the subjectivity of experience occurs as a theme in Rilke's work from about 1903 onwards, it is very doubtful whether the poetry itself has any objectivity, other than the very relative sort imparted to it by its place in a given literary tradition. In the present study, Rilke's poetry has none of the metaphysical connotations of 'absolute Dichtung' or , Seinsdichtung'. 4 The poems will be interpreted largely with the aim of showing the nature and transformations of 'das lyrische Ich'. Here the emphasis will lie mainly on themes and structure. There is much to be said for approaching Rilke purely from his language and 4

INTRODUCTION

poetic techniques and this has been done in a number of valuable studies. s However, I doubt whether it is wise to approach the later Rilke from the point of view of form alone before the content has been thoroughly understood, and the position of the Gedichte an die Nacht in the period of composition of the Elegies makes their themes the most immediately interesting aspect. The night has a relatively minor place in the thematic field of the Elegies, but in 1913 Rilke completes the development of this motif in ways which point back to the period of Malte Laurids Brigge and Das Stunden-Buch and which are closely related to his treatment of the angel. The period in Rilke's life is one of crisis. His journey through Spain in late 1912 had at first seemed to offer him the necessary confidence and inspiration to complete the Elegies. However, for reasons which remain obscure, there was a sudden reversal and in the poems which he writes in Ronda in January 1913 his disorientation and despair show through clearly. The same is true of his letters of the period and in the year which follows he writes a number of confessional poems, to be found in the 'Entwiirfe' in the second volume of the Samtliche Werke, which are as desolate as anything in Malte Laurids Brigge. Most of the Gedichte an die Nacht are written in Paris, but the city itself does not figure in the poems. Rather, it becomes a place of isolation, a kind of no-man's-land in which the relation of self to world is explored without the rich allusiveness and decor of the Elegies and Sonnets. There is the' Ich', the night, the angel, the' Geliebte' and very little else. Die grojJe Nacht does invoke specific surroundings, but from its original title Nacht in der Fremde and from its similarity with the first poem of Die spanische Trilogie it seems likely that this too was a memory of Spain. The period of the Gedichte an die Nacht ends with Rilke's meeting with Magda von Hattingberg early in 1914. In the poems to Benvenuta he consciously renounces what he has been trying to do in the poetry of the year before, but the essay Puppen written earlier in February 1914 draws the negative conclusions of the Gedichte an die Nacht most compellingly. In June of the same year Rilke writes the

5

ISBN 978-0-521-15556-4