The spiritual pursuit you’ll encounter here is that of a poet – a vocation
derived from the Greek word for “maker” (poiētēs). This poetic persona is
on a quest for the transcendent, and his search tools are those of the lyric
art he makes. Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), most celebrated German-
speaking poet of modern times, wants to relate to the universe in depth as
to a person, heart singing to heart. Emulating the work of the Unnamable
Creator in his own human way, he has the feeling amazon book reviews by readers that art is singing to art.
The singing, in both perspectives, can only be felt as mutual. Rilke, in this
public domain work, seeks meaning in a “radical” way, a word derived
from Latin radix, “root.” He wants to get to the root of meaning in personal
and cosmic life, in the dialogue of one imaginer with another Imaginer,
in the self and in the deeply person-like world-making Energy we sense
around us. That is the imaginative purpose of The Book of Hours (Leipzig,
1905).
The universe and the poet sing to each other; they summon each other in
the realm of Ultimate Being through their respective means of art-creation.
Taken together, the sacred World and the devout Poet are in dialogue. And
together they summoned me, the translator, to accompany my translation
of the German text with an interpretive “reply” poem in response to every
dialogic lyric of Rilke’s that I translate. Rilke’s dialogue with the world
urges me to join the conversation as a third party. Result: the present book
is a VTI or Verse Translation Interview, quite likely a new literary genre.
Rilke’s already-dialogic book has a revealing metaphoric title. A
“book of hours” (German Stundenbuch) means a breviary, a systematic
arrangement of church prayers indicating the times when they are to be
said or sung. Rilke’s book doesn’t promulgate the teaching of a specific
religion, but he wants to indicate centrally the religious inspirations of his
imaginative life. He learns from Sufi mystics, among others.
Part I is “The Book of the Monastic Life.” The poet begins by assuming the
persona of an apprentice in icon-painting as in the Russian tradition. But he
moves gradually away from this mise-en-scène, seeking more space-time
for his own and the Unnamable’s exploring.
Part II, “The Book of the Pilgrimage,” signals the originality and individual
uniqueness of the thought-wanderer. Quester and World-Person share
imaginative freedom and power in a continuing journey, dialogic and
illuminating.
Part III, “The Book of Poverty and Death,” opens most deeply the world of
inwardness and solitude. These blend together with a spiritual “Poverty”
(mystical Sufi word for being humble or “poor in spirit”) considered as
Openness or Unencumbered-ness, a refreshing, liberated mindset turning
a poet’s life into what Walt Whitman called a “Song of the Open Road.”
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