XIII

The Sonnets to Orpheus XIII, by Ranier Maria Rilke

Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were
behind you, like the winter that has just gone by.
For among those winters there is one so endlessly winter
that only by wintering through it will your heart survive.

Be forever dead in Eurydice - more gladly arise
into the seamless life proclaimed in your song.
Here in the realm of decline, among momentary days,
be the crystal cup that shattered even as it rang.

Be - and yet know the great void where all things begin,
the infinite source of your own most intense vibration,
so that, this once, you may give it your perfect assent.

To all that is used-up, and to all the muffled and dumb
creatures in the world's full reserve, the unsayable sums,
joyfully add yourself, and cancel the count.



I pulled my Stephen Mitchell translations of Rilke's work off the shelf today, because I'd been thinking about this poem. I re-read this one and Eurydice tonight. He loves that story, ol Rilke. I think he liked the idea of being one's same self, yet irrecoverably altered.Orpheus sees the woman he loves in the woman he tries to save, but she cannot come back to him. Death has changed who she is in a fundamental way. She is "forever dead"; she can both "be - and yet know" because of what death has wraught in her.

I love this poem. Sometimes I think this poem saved my life. The first stanza perfectly captures what it feels like to be locked in your own emotion, with only empty and white on all sides. To not be able to see the end of your internal winter.  And then to have the poem turn around the way it does and suddenly become a celebration of self? A broken and weeping and joyous acknowledgement that even though you are so fucking fucked up, you are also so perfect that you, by yourself, can "cancel the count" of "all the muffled and dumb creatures in the world's full reserve."

When I am at my bottom rung, I have a few things I say to myself to rally.
When life is hard, I remember Shirley Keeldar from Charlotte Bronte's Shirley and how she faced the world with a man's determination and summoned her strength by the name, "Captain Keeldar."
When life is nearly impossible, I lay on my bed and try to remember to "be the crystal cup that shattered even as it rang."