Vergers suivi d'autres poèmes français

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Ce soir mon coeur fait chanterdes anges qui se souviennent...Une voix, presque mienne,par trop de silence tentée,monte et se décideà ne plus revenir ;tendre et intrépide,à quoi va-t-elle s'unir ? "C'est le premier poème de Vergers, écrit autour du 1ᵉʳ février 1924 ; il dit, avec une espèce de joie étonnée et reconnaissante, que la poésie recommence, que l'excès du silence est rompu ; en fait, pour Rilke comme pour beaucoup d'autres poètes, que le souffle, que la vie vous sont rendus. Parce que l'on a cessé d'être enfermé en soi-même. [...]"Philippe Jaccottet.

Genres: Poetry, France

177 pages, Paperback

Published February 1, 1978

About the author

A mystic lyricism and precise imagery often marked verse of German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, whose collections profoundly influenced 20th-century German literature and include The Book of Hours (1905) and The Duino Elegies (1923).

People consider him of the greatest 20th century users of the language.

His haunting images tend to focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety — themes that tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist poets.

His two most famous sequences include the Sonnets to Orpheus , and his most famous prose works include the Letters to a Young Poet and the semi-autobiographical The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge .

He also wrote more than four hundred poems in French, dedicated to the canton of Valais in Switzerland, his homeland of choice.

Reviews

[Clément]

Même si ces poèmes n'atteignent pas la hauteur des Élégies de Duino et des Sonnets à Orphée, ils ont la fraîcheur et la lumière d'une attention renouvelée au monde.

[Beth]

Thank you Monty for a lovely poetry recommendation. (Need to give it back to you at some point)

[Katie Iaffaldano]

Though not often remembered for being one, Rilke was a great linguist. He studied around eight languages and translated works from his favorite writers consistently throughout his life, always poetry, sometimes whole novels. Toward the end of his life, he began -- during the same period of restless activity that saw the output of the 'Duino Elegies' and, immediately following their completion, his fifty-five 'Sonnets to Orpheus' -- writing poetry in French, enough to fill up a slim volume of over 150 pages. In letters to friends, among whom were numbered Valéry and Gide, he described various motivations behind the poems: to refine his language, sharpen his command of the thoughts he attempts to convey, explore possibilities for expression he found unique to French. He wrote once to Lou Andreas-Salomé that he did so because he felt that French could sustain truth-telling, the bare-laying of facts that encompassed his artistic framework of Dinggedichte ("thing-poems," or, poetry that aimed to describe objects as they are, without investing them with traits, emotions, thoughts that we have the habit of imposing on everything around us), more easily than German could. There's probably a connection to Baudelaire to be made there since Rilke was so influenced by him in the development of his poetry's framework, and also Rodin. But my hunch for why Rilke felt he could write with more exactitude in French, get closer to the ideas he wanted to express, was that writing in a foreign language forced him to be more careful with his diction, to choose words not based on their flow or rhythm or other (unobvious, personal) associations, but for how clearly they related what he wished to say. Getting too comfortable with a language has been a anxiety for more writers than Rilke; experimenting with other languages has helped them sort out their concerns too.


Overall I enjoyed the collections, though I thought some poems were more obviously technical exercises than art. Here are a couple of favorites (my translations):

"Ce soir mon coeur fait chanter
des anges qui se souviennent...
Une voix, presque mienne,
par trop de silence tentée

monte and se décide
à ne plus revenir;
tendre et intrépide,
à quoi va-t-elle s'unir?"


"Tonight my heart lets sing those angels who remember...
A voice, almost my own, too often tempted to silence,
rises and decides never to return;

soft and unshaken,
with what is it going to unite?"



'Portrait Intérieur'

"Ce ne sont pas des souvenirs
qui, en moi, t'entretiennent ;
tu n'es pas non plus mienne
par la force d'un beau désir.

Ce qui te rend présente,
c'est le détour ardent
qu'une tendresse lente
décrit dans mon propre sang.

Je suis sans besoin
de te voir apparaître ;
il m'a suffi de naître
pour te perdre un peu moins."


'Inner Portrait'

"There are no memories
which, in me, can sustain you;
no more can you be mine
through the strength of an ardent longing.

That which does make you present
is the detour that slow tenderness
makes in my blood.

I do not need you to appear;
birth alone was enough for me,
so that I could lose you a little less."




Goodreads says I've been reading him for five years, which sounds both true and hard to believe; to many more.

[Augurey]

[book 40/50 of 2024 reading challenge]

Un livre de poèmes qui a accompagné mes insomnies et tout maux physiques qui puissent affaiblir le corps et cœur par la suite.
Je me suis noyée dans la beauté de tout objet inanimé que nos yeux sont habitués a voir, sans même de rendre compte de leur existence.
C'est sans doute, un de mes poèmes favoris.

[doaa]

3,5 rilke is amazing as always but his german poems ofc are just on another level, the fact that he was able to write all these poems while french wasn’t his first language is incredible, he’s so talented

[Alain]

poesie. poemes francais. parfois obscurs souvent lumineux

[sqrt2]

sur le soupir de l'amie
toute la nuit se soulève,
une caresse brève
parcourt le ciel ébloui.

c'est comme si dans l'univers
une force élémentaire
redevenait la mère
de tout amour qui se perd.

[Dóri Petrovich]

3,5*

[Jammie]

Très agréablement surprise, je ne pensais pas autant aimer un ouvrage de poésie mais finalement ça m'a vraiment permis de la découvrir et de l'apprécier
Certains poèmes étaient très beaux, certains peut-être un peu clichés, disons, surtout les recueils publies posthume, j'ai nettement préféré les Vergers aux Roses par exemple
J'ai beaucoup aimé Portrait intérieur dans Vergers

[anna]

« Pauvre poète qui doit élire / pour dire ce que ce nom comprend, »

bien mais franchement oubliable

[Zorua64]

Je crois qu’il aurait du se contenter de l’allemand