jeder engel ist schrecklich

 

i read David Young’s translation of Rilke’s second Duino elegy this evening. i can’t get WordPress to reproduce the spacing, but it opens roughly so:

–

Every angel is terrible.

And still, alas

knowing all that

I serenade you

you almost deadly

birds of the soul.

–

Jeder Engel ist schrecklich. Und dennoch, weh mir,

ansing ich euch, fast tödliche Vögel der Seele,

wissend um euch.

–

At times i felt how much had been lost in translation, and could only suppose it works in German. But much of it is very good. i haven’t intensively read poetry in about 3 years, since i began temping – it requires not just time but an undisturbed energy that i rarely have after work.

i was surprised when, reading quietly aloud, my voice became deeper and more vibrant; more than just a slight alteration, it was an abrupt and weird transformation. i could recognise it as my voice but it was very strange to me, forceful and unhesitating, vatic, whereas i usually read poetry a little tentatively at first, feeling my way into the text. A force seemed to take control of me as i read. But i didn’t want to stop. i’m not sure i could have stopped. The huge, sweeping energy i felt wasn’t just in the voice, i felt it in my whole body, in my breathing and my sense of the room. The words seemed to have a tangible physical force. The overwhelming sense was of power. It was like being caught up in a whirlwind, a whirlwind which i spoke.

The poem ended and i carefully lowered the book. i felt high – not as in drugs or booze (i’ve never taken drugs, so wouldn’t know), but as if saturated with energy, so i almost but not quite was energy. i occasionally have this ‘high’ after doing chi kung, maybe once every few weeks. But this was different, it was like the force had taken possession of me as soon as i spoke ‘every angel is terrible’. i still feel shaken, as if a wind had come into a room and blown everything apart, then put it back together, the cup exactly so, the chair just at that angle, the pen on the page. Everything as it was, but everything a little miraculous, and insecure. ‘Miraculous’ isn’t quite the right word – it’s too Santa Clausy a word – this is more than a little ’schrecklich’, terrible, but welcomed. Perhaps it would be imprudent not to welcome that sudden transformation, that it is only truly terrible if resisted.