Rilke and Yeats

Submitted by Christine on September 14, 2012 - 7:39pm
Body: 

I’ll get the poetry forum started with a couple of my favorite poems. They are both about solitude - but can you see the difference?

AUTUMN DAY - by Ranier Maria Rilke

Lord: it is time. The huge summer has gone by.

Now overlap the sundials with your shadows,

and on the meadows let the wind go free.

Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine;

grant them a few more warm transparent days,

urge them on to fulfillment then, and press

the final sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now, will never have one.

Whoever is alone will stay alone,

will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,

and wander on the boulevards, up and down,

restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.

LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE - by William Butler Yeats

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

Forum:

fab

September 15, 2012 - 1:42am

Rilke’s autumn strikes me as a time of restless waiting for death, or a warning of possible regrets too late. Yeats’ autumn is a lovely, still warm, bountiful time of promise. Maybe, Yeasts was a younger man when he wrote his poem.

Can you imagine the conversation they would have?

Yeats: When I am older I am going to have myself a beautiful house with vineyards and beehives and…..

Rilke: Now then you really must be serious. There is no time to be wasted on frivolous, youthful nonsense. You must work hard, be obedient to your parents, meet a good girl and marry her and you must save, don’t go wasting your money on useless trinkets.

Yeats: On an island where I will have plenty of time to myself….

Rilke: Yes, all your friends will desert you at the first sign of trouble, when your money runs out, when you’re sick.

Yeats: And when I meet a beautiful girl…..

Rilke: Yes, and that is when you will have children and more burdens and more catastrophes and you will be older and it will get harder….

Yeats: And then when I meet that other beautiful girl…

Rilke: And they won’t let you divorce the first or marry the second… Tell me what will I do?

You get the idea.

MsNightingale

September 15, 2012 - 1:30pm

Isle of Innisfree is my all-time favorite! The only poem I kept to memory! Thank you lovely Christine!

Rilke "On Music"
Music: the breathing of statues. Perhaps:
the silence of paintings. Language where
language ends. Time
that stands head-up in the direction
of hearts that wear out.
Feeling...for whom? Place where feeling is
transformed....into what? Into a countryside we can hear.
Music: you stranger. You feeling space, growing
away from us. The deepest thing in us, that,
rising above us, forces its way out...
a holy goodbye:
when the innermost point in us stands
outside, as amazing space, as the other
side of the air:
pure,
immense,
not for us to live in now.

Christine

September 15, 2012 - 9:03pm

Beautiful, Nightingale! I'm coming back to this discussion as soon as I'm able...

alemama

September 16, 2012 - 7:00pm

This thing you did here- I've never seen it done. But I want my kids to do it as an assignment. Oh man. That's going to be some work for me for sure- trying to find the two perfect poems (that kids 9 and under can understand and relate to).
But I'm going to do it. I'll see if I can get them to imagine the conversation between two different authors. What fun.

Christine

September 16, 2012 - 9:31pm

Finally getting back! We made our yearly mead MEAD 1 MEAD 2 today, which will be ready to bottle around the winter solstice.

Great stuff, Fab...I can see such a conversation in these poems - sort of like that Cat Stevens song, Father and Son.

The reason I love these two side by side is because what I perceive missing from Autumn Day, and fully alive in Isle of Innisfree, is a state of being awake, or conscious, and therefore at one with all of life. The Autumn Day fellow is certainly busy, but he seems to be rather mechanical and trapped in his own head. He is preoccupied with the ego-centered activity of writing letters, and his wandering along the boulevard has an absent quality about it as well. The first part of the poem makes me gasp every time I read it! The way I interpret it, *we* are the fruits swelling on the vine and it is our fulfillment that is to be pressed into the heavy wine. The poor fellow is asleep to all that and seems to be disconnected from - and even ignored by - the Winemaker. He is truly alone.

The Innisfree fellow will find his solitude, but he will be anything but alone! He is *in* life and his senses are filled with mud and straw, beanstalks, and buzzing bees. It is he that will be granted a few more warm, transparent days as all of life comes to fulfillment. These two poems have taught me more about life than almost anything else I can think of.

“On Music”
Thank you for sharing this stunning piece, Nightingale. Rilke has such a wonderful way of contacting the depths of the soul and then somehow giving words to it all...”a countryside we can hear.” This poem is synesthetic! How true that music is so profound it must be “the other side of air”.

Poetry? Alemama’s joy says it all. Thank you, dear dears!

wholewomanUK

September 18, 2012 - 7:13am

Thank you all so much for sharing your profund and profound poetry and observations. Wonderful conversations. I love the poems and the interpretations. I didn't know these poems - and you've whetted my appetite.
Here's to poetry - and being 'in' life!
xwholewomanuk

fab

September 21, 2012 - 5:20pm

If you have had no luck finding two poems so far Alemama, Insy Winsy Spider and Little Miss Muffet came immediately to mind.

Nine year olds would know them, and I don't think they would consider them too babyish considering the complex task you would be asking them to work on. We don't know the authors, so if you could juggle something like "now the author of Little Miss Muffet what is she saying about spiders?" it could be made to work.

littlerabbit

September 28, 2012 - 3:03am

It may be hard to understand this poem at first. Maybe because I'm not really into Arts and poetry. But I like how it is written. Thanks for the interpretations, then. :)

Allison4

November 6, 2012 - 8:50am

Very nice poem