Rilke's French Rose Poems in Translation: XIX and XX

Pilgrim in the Garden, or The Heart of the Rose - Edward Burne-Jones 


Here are my two latest Rilke 'Rose' poem translations from French. Only seven to go in the sequence... I can do this.

The French originals are below the translations.


THE ROSES (Rainer Maria Rilke, translated from French by Clarissa Aykroyd)

XIX

Do you offer your own example?

Can we be sated like the roses,

increasing our subtle substance

just to let time go as it goes?

Because you might say it’s no trouble

to be a rose.

God, while looking out the window,

cares for the house.

XX

Tell me, rose, from whence comes

that which you enclose,

your slow essence imposing

on this space of prose

all these airy transports?

How many times does this air

act as though it’s cut,

or, with a pout,

look bitterly about.

Meanwhile, around your flower,

it plays ring-a-rose.

LES ROSES

XIX

Est-ce en exemple que tu te proposes?

Peut-on se remplire comme les roses,

en multipliant sa subtile matière

qu’on avait faite pour ne rien faire?

Car ce n’est pas travailler que d’être

une rose, dirait-on.

Dieu, en regardant par la fenêtre,

fait la maison.

XX

Dis-moi, rose, d’où vient

qu’en toi-même enclose,

ta lente essence impose

à cet espace en prose

tous ces transports aériens?

Combien de fois cet air

prétend que les choses le trouent,

ou, avec une moue,

il se montre amer.

Tandis qu’autour de ta chair,

rose, il fait la roue.

 Translations  © Clarissa Aykroyd, 2017

In memory of Derek Walcott, 1930-2017

Derek Walcott, poet and playwright of Saint Lucia, died on 17 March at the age of 87.

I think I recall my first Derek Walcott poem. It was 'The Season of Phantasmal Peace' and I encountered it in a literary criticism class at university. I would have been 18 or 19. I don't remember what we said about this poem, or which angle we approached it from, but I do remember how it looked in my mind and I have some recollection of the sensation. It was a vision of a murmuration of starlings - those strange, almost supernatural flock movements - and the poem came with a sensation of power and lift-off that I found unusual and exhilarating.

I've read Derek Walcott on and off since then. I was at the 2010 TS Eliot Prize readings when he won for White Egrets, but sadly he wasn't present to read (Seamus Heaney was there to read from his own nominated collection, though. How amazing would it have been to see them on the same stage...). I correctly picked him as the winner out of an especially strong field, though. Amongst 20th century poetry, his work just might be the most outstanding example of how to unite far-flung influences. Walcott was mixed-race and as with his background, his writing brought together Caribbean culture, classical literary influences, and the various legacies of colonialism. I think of his poems as being like Rembrandt's paintings, or a seemingly effortless and flawless work of architecture. The craftsmanship is almost too good to be grasped. You just experience something of exceptional depth, beauty and clarity - which also stands up to extremely close analysis, if you want to go there.

Walcott was every bit as good as TS Eliot or Elizabeth Bishop or Seamus Heaney; often better, I think. He is the poet who reminds us that constant attention to craft and openness to the world's variety are powerful things.

Here are a handful of poems to start with, or to go back to.

THE SEA IS HISTORY
THE FIST
SEA CANES
SEA GRAPES


Photo: Derek Walcott, VIII Festival Internacional, 1992. By Jorge Mejia Peralta. Used under Creative Commons license

Poems for International Women's Day

Anna Akhmatova, portrait by Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. 1922


People are writing all sorts of interesting things for International Women's Day. I thought, belatedly, that I would simply share a few poems that seem appropriate.

I COULD NOT TELL (Sharon Olds)

LADY LAZARUS (Sylvia Plath)

WILLOW (Anna Akhmatova, translated from Russian by Jennifer Reeser)