You Need Not Understand Life

... or Rilke and his environment in his work was the title of a lecture by Professor Sandra Richter, Director of the German Literature Archive at Marbach, in the framework of the Studium generale.

You need not understand life, 

for then it will be like a party.

And let each day happen to you

like a child walking along, letting each breeze

give it many blossoms.

To gather them and save them

does not occur to a child.

It quietly removes them from its hair,

where they were so readily caught,

and in its dear young years

holds out its hands to new ones.

Rainer Maria Rilke gave poetry a new existential depth. He is therefore considered one of the most important poets of modern German-speaking literature. He combined linguistic precision with philosophical openness, making inner experience, loneliness, love, and death his central poetic themes. Rilke's poetry seeks to recreate the world in words and to open readers' eyes to an intensified view of his existence.

Red Baron studied physics, grappled with theology and existential questions, and is not done with that yet. Why can't I be a Rilke child and just live for the day? Even at 90, I reach out for new things, but the past won't let me go and keeps me brooding. And what haven't I accumulated in my life that weighs on me in my old age?

Next, spirited Sara gave the audience insight into remarkable Rilke documents held in the Marbach Archive.

Rilke's sketch of the Council Building in Konstanz,
where, in 1417 (not 1415), a conclave elected Pope Martin V.

Rilke sketched throughout his life. His drawings are restrained and more meditative than virtuosic. They often depict landscapes, architecture, gardens, or figures in tranquil poses; they seem like visual counterparts to his poetry: focused, simplified, directed toward the essential. Drawing was important to him as a means of training his perception.

Peacock Feather

Unmatched in your delicacy,
how I loved you even as a child.
I thought you were a sign of love,
which the elves pass around
on cool nights by silver-still ponds,
when all the children are asleep.

And because my dear grandmother
often read to me from wish sticks,
I dreamed, you delicate creature,
that your fine fibers were imbued
with the clever power of the riddle stick -
and I searched for you in the summer grass.

Here is a sample of Rilke's calligraphic handwriting.

The Song of Love and Death of Cornettist Christoph Rilke
(written in 1899 and published in 1904, 1906, and 1912)

The Flamingos. Jardin des Plantes.
Autumn 1907 or Spring 1908 in Paris

In Spiegelbildern wie von Fragonard ist doch von ihrem Weiß und ihrer Röte nicht mehr gegeben, als dir einer böte, wenn er von seiner Freundin sagt: sie war noch sanft von Schlaf. Denn steigen sie ins Grüne und stehn, auf rosa Stielen leicht gedreht, beisammen, blühend, wie in einem Beet, verführen sie verführender als Phryne sich selber; bis sie ihres Auges Bleiche hinhalsend bergen in der eignen Weiche, in welcher Schwarz und Fruchtrot sich versteckt. Auf einmal kreischt ein Neid durch die Volière; sie aber haben sich erstaunt gestreckt und schreiten einzeln ins Imaginäre.

In mirror images like those of Fragonard there is no more of their whiteness and redness than one would offer you when speaking of his girlfriend: she was still gentle from sleep. For when they rise into the greenery and stand, slightly twisted on pink stems, together, blooming, as if in a flowerbed, they seduce more seductively than Phryne herself; until they hide the pallor of their eyes in their own softness, in which black and fruit red are hidden. Suddenly, envy screeches through the aviary; but they have stretched themselves in amazement and stride individually into the imaginary.

Pain and death.

Sketch of an angel. Pencil on paper, 1922

From Rilke's last notebook, XII/1926:
Come, you last one, whom I acknowledge

Komm du, du letzter, den ich anerkenne, heilloser Schmerz im leiblichen Geweb: wie ich im Geiste brannte, sieh, ich brenne in dir; das Holz hat lange widerstrebt, der Flamme, die du loderst, zuzustimmen, nun aber nähr' ich dich und brenn in dir. Mein hiesig Mildsein wird in deinem Grimmen ein Grimm der Hölle nicht von hier. Ganz rein, ganz planlosfrei von Zukunft stieg ich auf des Leidens wirren Scheiterhaufen, so sicher nirgend Künftiges zu kaufen um dieses Herz, darin der Vorrat schwieg. Bin ich es noch, der da unkenntlich brennt? Erinnerungen reiß ich nicht herein. O Leben, Leben: Draußensein. Und ich in Lohe. Niemand der mich kennt.

Come, you last one I acknowledge, hopeless pain in my flesh: as I burned in spirit, see, I burn in you; the wood has long resisted to consent to the flame that you blaze, but now I feed you and burn in you. My gentleness here becomes in your fury a fury of hell not from here. Completely pure, completely free of plans for the future, I climbed onto the confused pyre of suffering, so sure that there was no future to buy for this heart, in which the supply was silent. Is it still me who burns unrecognizable there? I do not bring in memories. O life, life: being outside. And I in flames. No one who knows me.

Rilke's gravestone in Raron in Valais

Rose, oh reiner Widerspruch, Lust, Niemandes Schlaf zu sein unter soviel Lidern.

Rose, oh pure contradiction, desire, to be no one's sleep beneath so many eyelids.

**