and try to state, with many words and muddled gestures what
they were living before. Or: I change nothing in their deepest
action and add these words myself: Here is an altar on which a
sacred flame burns. You become aware of its light radiating off
the faces of these two people.
XXV
The latter option seems to me the only artistic one. Nothing of
the essential is lost; no confusion of the simple elements can
disturb the course of events, as long as I depict the altar that
unifies these two solitaries in a way that all see and believe in
its presence. Much later, spectators will arrive instinctively to
observe the fiery column, and I won’t need to add further
explanation. But much later.
XXVI
But this story of the altar is only a parable, and a vague one at
that. What is significant here is to express on stage their
common hour, within which the two figures come to speak.
This song, which in life is confined to the thousand voices of
day or night, to the rustling of the forest or the ticking of a
clock, its hesitant tolling of the hour, this broad chorus of the
background which determines the rhythm and the tone of our
words, cannot, for the moment, be understood by such means.
XXVII
For what people call ‘atmosphere’, that hardly does itself
justice in recent plays – is really just an initial imperfect
attempt to let the landscape behind the people shimmer
through. Most are not even aware of it, and due to its gentle
intimacy it will never be possible for all to become aware.
Technical amplification of sound or lighting effects would be
absurd, for from a thousand voices only one rises to a point, so
that all action is left hanging from its edge.
XXVIII
This justice towards the broad song of the background is only
secured if it is valid in wholeness, which for the moment seems
unrealisable, not only due to the means of our stagecraft, but
equally the mistrust of the theatre going masses. Equilibrium
can only be achieved through a rigorous means of stylisation.
Namely, when you play the melody of infinity on the same
keyboard on which the hands of the scenic action are placed, it
means the great and the wordless are tuned down to the words.
XXIX
This is nothing more than the implementation of the chorus,
which unfolds calmly behind the light and glimmering
dialogues. The silence ceaselessly acting in all its amplitude
and significance makes the words in front appear like natural
complements, and we can hence envisage a global
representation of the song of life, which, otherwise, seems
impossible, since those scents and dark sensations cannot be
employed on stage.
XXX
I wish to refer to a little example:
Evening. A small room. At the central table two children
opposite each other beneath the lamp, grudgingly bent over
their books. They are both far away – far. The books conceal
their flight. From time to time, they call to each other, so they
won’t lose themselves in the vast forest of their dreams. In this
confined space, they live out fantastic colourful destinies. They
fight and they prevail. They return home and marry. Teach
their children to be heroes. Even die. I am individual enough
to swallow that as a storyline!
XXXI
But what is this scene without the singing of the old outmoded
hanging lamp, without the breathing and groaning of the
furniture, without the storm around the house. Without this
whole dark background, through which the children draw the
threads of their fables. How differently these children would
dream in the garden, differently again by the sea, differently
again on a palace terrace. It is not the same thing to embroider
on silk and on wool. People must know that on the yellow
canvas of that evening room, the pair are reproducing, vaguely,
the two clumsy lines of their meandering pattern.
XXXII
What I propose then, is to let the whole melody ring out just as
the boys hear it. A silent voice must hover over the scene and at
an invisible sign the tiny voices of the children settle and drift,
whilst the wider current roars on through the narrow evening
room, from infinity to infinity.
XXXIII
I know many such scenes, and still wider ones. Whether the
scene is an explicit, expressly stylised or more prudent allusion,
the chorus will either find its place in the scene itself and will
assert itself by a vigilant presence, or else it will be reduced to a
voice, which ascends, expanding and impersonal from the
brewing of the common hour. In each case there resides in this
voice, as in the classical chorus, a wiser knowledge; not because
it judges the events of the storyline, but because it is the
foundation from where this gentle song is released and into
whose lap it finally beautifully falls.
XXXIV
With stylised presentation, in other words, unrealistic, I see
only transition, for the art that we welcome involuntarily to the
scene, is that which resembles life and which, in this exterior
sense is ‘true’. Precisely this approach is the way which leads to
a deepening interior truth: to recognise the primitive elements
and employ them. With solemn experience we will learn to use
these fundamental motifs in a freer and less conventional
manner and at the same time draw closer again to realism, for a
limited time. But this will not be the same as what went before.
XXXV
These efforts seem necessary to me, otherwise the knowledge
of the most subtle feelings which are acquired from prolonged
and serious work, will be lost in the noise of the scene as never
before. And that would be a shame. After the scene one could,
tendentious, announce new life, that is to say communicate
equally to those who have not learned the gestures by their
own impulse or strength. Not that one can convert them due to
the scene. But at least they should experience: that this exists in
our epoch, and so close, surely that is happiness enough.
XXXVI
It is of almost religious significance, this understanding: that
once you have discovered the melody of the background, you
are no longer helpless in your words and confused in your
decisions. A serene certitude is born from the simple
conviction that you are part of a melody, that you justifiably
hold a certain place and have a particular task at the heart of a
wider work where all is of equal value, the smallest or greatest.
Not to be excessive is the prime condition for a calm and
conscious unfolding.
XXXVII
All discord and error comes when people seek to find their
element in themselves, instead of seeking it behind them, in the
light, in landscape at the beginning and in death. In so doing,
they lose themselves and ga
in nothing in return. They mingle
with each other because they cannot properly unify. They hold
fast to one another and cannot find their feet since both are
unsteady and weak; and in this desire to hold one another up,
they exhaust all their strength, to the extent that from the
outside, they cannot perceive the tangible sound of a wave.
XXXVIII
But each common element presupposes a series of distinct
solitary beings. Before them, there was a whole denuded of
relationships, existing only for itself. It was neither poor nor
rich. From the moment when certain of its parts became
alienated from the maternal unity, it entered into opposition
with them, for in distancing themselves they evolved. But it
never lets go of their hand. Even when the root is ignorant of
the fruits, it nourishes them nevertheless.
XXXIX
And like fruits we are. We hang high on strangely contorted
branches and endure many winds. What is ours is ripeness, our
sweetness and our beauty. But the strength for that runs
through the one trunk, from a root that widens to cover all.
And if we want to witness its power, we have to use it, all of us,
in the most consummate notion of solitude. The more solitary
a person is, the more serious, moving and powerful their
community.
XL
And it’s rightfully the most solitary beings who possess the
lion’s share of the community. I stated earlier, that one person
perceives more, another less, of the broad melody of life; and
correspondingly each is awarded a greater or lesser position in
the grand orchestra. Whosoever perceives the melody as a
whole will be at once the most solitary and most deeply
hears, and for this sole reason will understand in his
consummation, what the rest catch as incomplete fragments.
Appendix I:
Rilke’s Residencies in Paris 1902–25
11 rue Toullier
August – October 1902
3 rue l’Abbé-de l’Epée
October 1902 – March 1903
May – June 1903
Hôtel du Quai Voltaire
11–15 September 1905
31 May – 5 June 1907
Meudon – House of Rodin
15 September 1905 – 12 May 1906
29 rue Cassette
May – July 1906
6 June – 31 October 1907
Hôtel Biron, 77 rue de Varenne
1 September 1908 – May 1909
31 May – August 1909
September 1909
9 October 1909 – 11 January 1910
14 May 1910 – 8 July 1910
1 November–18 November 1910
6 April – July 1911
26 September – October 1911
17 rue Campagne-Première
2 May – 31 August 1908
27 February – June 1913
20 October 1913 – 25 February 1914
21 March – April 1914
26 May – July 1914
Hôtel Foyot, 33 rue Tournon
21–28 October 1920
6 January – August 1925
Appendix II
A Note on the Original Edition of Rilke in Paris
The principal publisher Maurice Betz used for his Rilke translations was Emile-Paul Frères, based at 14 rue de l’Abbaye in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, who today no longer exist. Betz had already published a number of Rilke related books with Emile-Paul, most notably Rilke Vivant: Souvenirs, lettres, entretiens in 1937, so it seemed logical that it was they who published in the summer of 1941, in a handsome collectable edition, Betz’s essay on Rilke’s relationship with Paris, which focused on the now famous Cahiers Betz himself had translated. Rilke à Paris appeared at the lowest point in the Second World War, a year into France’s occupation, and one can only wonder at its reception and who of literary note was even left in Paris to register its arrival. Betz’s book must have seemed rather out of place, like a genteel throwback to another age, which appeared, due to the depraved realities of the ongoing European catastrophe, to have been shunted even further back into history than a mere handful of decades. For Betz, Rilke à Paris was a summing up of his reflections on Rilke, both a tribute and a farewell. Betz survived the war, but died in 1946. The year preceding his death, Emile-Paul Frères published, in honour of their translator, an attractive pamphlet edition of Rilke’s Fragments sur la Guerre, mainly extracts from letters to various friends on his first impressions of the conflict, using the same book design motif as for Rilke à Paris.
The first edition of Rilke à Paris was limited to a hundred numbered copies and appeared on 14 July 1941. The book was reborn some sixty years later in truncated form, when modern French publisher Obsidiane reissued a facsimile copy of the original in the year 2000. However this edition lacked the impact and imposing aesthetic of the original, and appeared something of a rushed job by a clearly cash-strapped publisher. The original photographs were intact but were poorly reproduced. There was no new introduction putting the work in context, and interesting supplementary texts in the original had strangely been omitted, from the facsimile, including the important list of Rilke’s Paris addresses. One of the things the original edition included as examples of letters, now well known, that Rilke had written to various persons, but principally to his wife Clara, giving those first visceral impressions of Paris. Betz presented these with the equivalent sections of the Notebooks, in order to show how close the letters were to the final draft of the prose work. I include one of these excerpts at the beginning of the English translation. ‘Ah, the achievement of a young moon…’ Anyone who has access to Rilke’s letters can see that this and other sections of the Notebooks are culled almost verbatim from letters written at the time, mostly to Clara. For Rilke his letters were often prose works in their own right, either prefiguring a work to come or allowing their author to set out in writing his most pressing thoughts before they dispersed, and either to encourage a response from a recipient or just to leave a record. It is evident when reading Rilke’s letters that often they lose track completely of the person they are addressed to and one senses time and again that these letters are mere springboards for an articulation of some sensory development, which is best served by the undemanding non prescriptive structure of a letter. Betz also included a fascinating list of Rilke’s addresses during the course of his various sojourns in the French capital, which I have reproduced here. Many of these buildings are still intact and the streets little changed, at least in their physical dimensions. At 29 rue Cassette for example, the wall opposite his apartment separating rue Cassette from the church, which Rilke mentions in the Notebooks, and which Betz highlights in an excerpt, is still there.
Rilke’s residences are located at various positions close to the Luxembourg Gardens, like so many satellites revolving around that most cherished space for contemplation. It seems Rilke never departed from the Left Bank, even the Hotel Quai Voltaire overlooking the Louvre across the Seine, was at its very limit. The most relevant to Betz’s essay are Rilke’s first lodgings in rue Toullier in the 5th and rue Cassette in the 6th arrondissements. But the most frequented of the addresses and the only place where Rilke really felt a semblance of repose and settlement, was the then under-appreciated romantically faded Hôtel Biron, which sheltered him in the period 1909–1911. The other long-standing abode was at 17 rue Campagne-Première in Montparnasse, where he was still residing at the outbreak of the First World War and from which he was forced to flee in the summer of 1914, as once fluid national borders began abruptly to solidify.
16. Original Emile-Paul Frères edition of Rilke à Pa
ris, 1941
17. Rilke, Paris 1925 from the original Emile-Paul Frères edition of Rilke à Paris, 1941.
18. Rodin, Paris 1904 from the original Emile-Paul Frères edition of Rilke à Paris, 1941
Appendix III
A Note on Photographs
It was decided to incorporate photographs into the text of Rilke in Paris in order to echo the spirit of the original. The French edition displayed a famous photograph of Rodin dating from 1904, an often-reproduced portrait of Rilke from 1925, a facsimile of the text of the Notebooks and a period picture of the Hôtel Biron. These images are clearly visible in the photographs of the Rilke à Paris original edition reproduced here. For the first English edition there will be new black and white photographs by my own hand, certain of which will echo the original images and others which will, I trust, be sympathetic, even though they were not originally present. These images have been created expressly for this publication and are designed to evoke in some modest way at least the physical remains of the Paris that Rilke was closest to and moved in. My aim throughout has been not only to translate Betz’s book to the best of my ability, but to honour its style and aesthetic judgments as best I can, given the unsympathetic modern cultural parameters in which we are obliged to operate.
Acknowledgements
Support from certain literary and translation institutions in France have been instrumental in the outcome of this first English translation of Rilke à Paris. I wish to express my gratitude to the following, whose support for the Rilke in Paris project enabled me to undertake the translation in an intellectually relevant environment and congenial atmosphere, without the blight of domestic interference. Firstly my thanks to the Collège International des Traducteurs Littéraires (CITL) in Arles, who provided me with a residence to undertake the translations, and secondly the Centre National du Livre (CNL) in Paris, whose patronage enabled me to spend time in France to execute the translation work, carry out relevant research and to gather photographic material ‘on location’, so to speak. I should also like to give special thanks to the following individuals whose encouragement and counsel have been important throughout the process of navigating Rilke in Paris to English shores: my heartfelt gratitude goes to Emma Mountcastle in Devon for her general support and willingness to apply herself to the trials of proofreading and to Anette van de Wiele in Bruges for her ever productive research labours.