The Dwarf’s Song

About a week ago I mentioned in this blog that a friend has stirred my interest in the Bohemian poet, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926). I have been reading this past week from the 1989 Vintage International edition of The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell.

Despite, or because of the beauty of Rilke’s words and images, he can be difficult. There is the feeling that what we are reading is from the greatest recesses of the poet’s heart, a crooning in our inner ear, calling us into the same deep well. A strong influence on Rilke’s work was his relationship with the sculptor, Auguste Rodin, for whom he served as an assistant, or secretary for a time before their eventual falling out. From Rodin, who Rilke revered as the greatest of all artists, he absorbed the idea of writing not about feelings, but about THINGS he had felt. He called the work growing out of this, thing-poems (Ding-Gedichte), poems about looking at people, animals, sculpture, or paintings, with the focus taken away from the speaker-poet and re-centered on the THING viewed. Examples of this newly conceived perspective produced the poems, “The Panther,” and the dazzling “Archaic Torso of Apollo.” From Rilke’s collection, The Book of Pictures is a poem called “The Dwarf’s Song.” The collection is one put together between 1902-06. It is dated June 7, 1906—Paris.

THE DWARF’S SONG

My soul itself may be straight and good;

ah, but my heart, my bent-over blood,

all the distortions that hurt me inside—

it buckles under these things.

It has no garden, it has no sun,

it hangs on my twisted skeleton

and, terrified, flaps its wings.

Nor are my hands of much use. Look here:

see how shrunken and shapeless they are:

clumsily hopping, clammy and fat,

like toads after the rain.

And everything else about me is torn,

sad and weather-beaten and worn;

why did God ever hesitate

to flush it all down the drain?

Is it because he’s angry at me

for my face with its moping lips?

It was so often ready to be

light and clear in its depths;

but nothing came so close to it

as big dogs did.

And dogs don’t have what I need.

In a letter to writer-critic Hermann Pongs years later, Rilke wrote: ‘If at any time I was able to pour out into the mold of my heart the imaginary voices of the dwarf or the beggar, the metal of this cast was not obtained from any wish that the dwarf or the beggar might have a less difficult time. On the contrary, only through a praising of their incomparable fate could the poet, with his full attention suddenly given to them, be true and fundamental….’

Angela

When I first came to this part of Florida, first started spending time here, there was a woman in one of the shops across the street, someone I came to like, whose company, however brief, I always enjoyed. Her name was Angela. Sadly, a few years back, Angela got very ill and passed away. I have missed her and often remember some random remark she tossed off, one either funny or right on target. That Angela is gone, but these day blessings come in pairs, or at least they do in this case.

Not long after returning here two months ago, I began reading to an elderly woman, blind and confined to a wheelchair. I found her a bit raspy at first and wondered if our time together was going to work out. Her name is Angela. My initial impression was shaped by the circumstances I unknowingly entered into, and I know now that I was mistaken in describing her as abrasive. I also know now that another Angela is here to take up the slack.

Compare opposites and you’ll have some idea of the two personalities. Angela 1 was water, and Angela 2 is fire, both of them great. I have a hundred good things to say about the first Angela, but this time number two gets the spotlight.

I know only a few details about the new Angela. She’s German and speaks English with an accent. She was a teenage schoolgirl during the war and came through difficulties with fear and hardship. I learned today that she worked at the library here in town for eleven years. A strict Catholic, she often has me read something from the Bible. She will occasionally stop my reading to ask questions about the text, and none of them trivial. On two or three of our mornings together she has spoken of poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, who has a special place in her heart. Not having read more than a spoonful of Rilke, I am often in the dark about Angela’s comments and occasional quotes from the original German. She wanted to lend me a volume of his poetry, but I can’t read the Germany copy that she offered. It’s very clear that this is an intelligent woman, and despite momentary lapses still sharp as a tack. As for Rilke, I’ve located some German sound files of his poetry on the Internet, and I’m hoping Angela will get a thrill listening to them on the laptop.

In her late 70s or early 80s, Angela’s age is a detail unknown to me. She is in a wheelchair whenever I visit, but something makes me think she has some mobility out of the chair. Looking at her, most would describe an elderly woman with few signs of weakness or poor health. But as I said earlier, she does have lapses when she can’t find a word, or grab onto what she wants to say. She did tell me on one visit that she had been talking with someone at the so-and-so Baptist church about me, but I have to put that down as an imagined conversation. If it is without any suffering or confusion, I’d like to think that Angela will be around for a good while yet.

In the meantime, it looks as if I’ve got some homework to do in the form of Rainer Maria Rilke. Hearing Angela speak of it, I pulled some Rilke stories off the library shelf and read some of one story there, but it was pretty dense prose and I wasn’t tempted to try the whole book. A small volume of his poems in English is what I’ll look for. Don’t want to disappoint Angela.