As already mentioned, Rilke uses meter flexibly. Here he begins an otherwise dactylic poem with three stresses together in a command: In Schon, horch, hörst du die ersten Harken (II:25) (“Come! Listen! Already you’re hearing the first of the rakes”). Sonnet II:11 uses both metrical variation and enjambment for emphasis: Leise liess man dich ein, als wärst du ein Zeichen / Frieden zu feiern. Doch dann: rang dich am Rande der Knecht. (“Gently they lowered you; you seemed a signal to celebrate / peace. But then the hired man shook your edge.”) Rilke emphasizes Frieden (peace) by beginning a new line with the word. Doch dann (“but then”), two jolting stresses together in mid-line, introduce the pivotal statement that not peace, but killing is intended.
The sonnets in this much-loved cycle stand out in sonnet history for their formal variety, and might for this reason seem unaccustomed to those expecting only iambic pentameter, the standard English sonnet meter since before Shakespeare. Only eight of the Sonnets to Orpheus use this meter, including, however, four of the first five, which introduce the cycle—I:1,2,3, and 5—as well as I:14, II:4, II:14, and II:27. Though all the sonnets consist of two quatrains and two tercets, Sonnets I:9, 17, 18, 22, and 23 have only two or three beats per line, following the short-line sonnet form popular in France at the time, which Rilke admired in the work of Gide, Valery, and others. A few sonnets like II:10, 17, and 19, on the other hand, are written in hexameter lines; occasionally there will even be a seven or eight-beat line, usually used to build up tension or suspense. Irregular dactylic meter predominates throughout. Trochaic meter is less used, though still eight times—in Sonnets I:8, 11, 12, and 13, and in II:5, 16, 23, 29. The important final sonnet uses this somewhat solemn meter. Two particularly exuberant sonnets—I:20 and II:12, about a runaway horse and the power of transformation—are lifted and carried by dactylic meter. In II: 11 and 19, Rilke shortens the final lines of two poems in hexameter by half, to bring them to a close gradually and add additional weight to the final words. These are just a few examples of the ways in which Rilke puts meter to work for him, given because, at a time when some readers have become less conscious of the possibilities of meter, or consider it dated, I have chosen to duplicate the original meter. The meter is integral to these thoroughly modern poems—a part of their “message”—and Rilke’s natural way of composing.
My enthusiasm for the vision behind these sonnets helped me decisively in trying to render the life and beauty of the originals. Rilke’s visions simply ring true to me. As he explained to his Polish translator, he wrote both the Sonnets and the Elegies out of a growing belief in a great, unified wider world or “circulation,” a belief that had finally enabled him to re-affirm his life, envision a future, and begin composing anew after the devastating years of World War I. That breakthrough, which came along with the unexpected sonnets, was real and vivid to me. Rilke became convinced that
We who are alive here today are not satisfied with the temporal world—not for one moment. We are continually merging with those who came before us and those who appear to be coming after us…. In that greatest, that “open” world, all exist—we cannot say “at the same time,” since it’s just because there is no time that they may all be there together…. The temporal, the transitory, plunges everywhere into deep being.7
In the Second Duino Elegy, Rilke writes that in this timeless realm angels do not even distinguish between the living and the dead: “Angels (they say) often don’t know if they’re walking / with the living or dead. The eternal current / sweeps through both realms all ages / ever along with it, its song drowning out theirs.” (Engel (sagt man) wüssten oft nicht, ob sie unter / Lebenden gehn oder Toten. Die ewige Strömung / reisst durch beide Bereiche alle Alter / immer mit sich und übertönt sie in beiden.) Rilke’s response to the slaughter of the war was to begin to see death not as the opposite of life, or complete annihilation, but simply as “the side of life that’s turned away from and un-illuminated by us.”8 We must try our hardest to illuminate it with our consciousness, he stressed, which will remove our fear of it and help us to see that we are constantly nourished by both life and death together. Even in his twenties, Rilke had already held a positive view of death: “For we are only rind and leaf. / The great death which each life contains—/ that death’s the fruit, around which all else turns.” (Denn wir sind nur die Schale und das Blatt. / Der grosse Tod, den jeder in sich hat, / das ist die Frucht, um die sich alles dreht.)9
Death, to Rilke, was truly just life in another, non-physical state. One of two convictions, then, that decisively influenced the creation of the Sonnets was that the barriers between the states of life and death should be removed. The other was that love must find new roles within this wider whole that no longer simply excludes death as “the other.”10 Love enters the Sonnets in the form of praise and joyful affirmation of everything they touch—gardens, dancers, flowers, flavors, unicorns, the sense of hearing—whatever it might be. Even Rilke’s machine sonnets (I:18, 22, 24 and II:10) are beautiful and show mechanization—of which he was deeply suspicious—as an opportunity for growth: we must remain the masters of the machines we have created. The most striking example of the power of love is found in Sonnet II:4, in which the mythical unicorn is “loved” into reality by those who believe in it.
The world of the sonnets is that of Orpheus himself, to whom they are addressed, in which song, beauty, and harmony reign eternally; his music charms even wild beasts. These are examples of a few of the many references to this ideal, ageless world in the Sonnets:
• Orpheus, the supreme poet and singer, dies many times, yet remains alive and present among us (I:5).
• We must keep in mind a lasting, crucial image—arguably the memory of this ideal world—even though it may be blurred from day to day (I:16).
• We are nourished by the lives of those who came before us (I:14).
• What is of lasting value comes from the elements of our world not subject to time (I:22)
• Orpheus, the ultimate poet/singer, survives physical destruction (I:26).
• Love is the power that creates lasting reality (II:4).
• Flavor, fragrance, and music transcend everyday reality (I:15, II:6, II:10).
• Blissful, unblemished gardens exist in an ideal realm, but for us to claim as our own (II:17, 21).
• There is a place where even mute creatures, like fishes, have their language (II:20).
For Rilke, this ideal world is not isolated up above, but found all throughout our beautiful earth, which the Ninth Duino Elegy urges us to love with all our might just as it is—and thus lift up and transform. It is a unified world Rilke is envisioning, without the dualities of life and death, heaven and earth, good and evil, body and spirit; in fact, he moved away from traditional Christianity largely because it tends to emphasize these dualities. He tells us that the angels of the Elegies are not Christian angels, but more like Islamic ones, and of course Orpheus is a pre-Christian figure.11
In order to unite dualities—to bring light and dark, earth and heaven, good and bad, body and soul together—the poet praises. He simply praises everything. That is his calling. A few months before the sonnets came to him, Rilke wrote a poetic dedication for a friend into the pages of his novel Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge (The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge) which began, “Oh,