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You Alone Are Real to Me: Remembering Rainer Maria Rilke
When German poet Rainer Maria Rilke died in December 1926, he was regarded as one of the major poets of the 20th century in any language, as well as one of the most enigmatic of his own time -- the one-time associate of Rodin, military school drop-out, painfully detached father and husband, and author of the Duino Elegies , which stands among the most sublime works of all time.
Written the year after his death by the poet's life-long friend, traveling companion, and muse, Lou Andreas-Salomé takes us through accounts of their meetings and travels, the dam-bursts of creativity in which Rilke wrote the Sonnets to Orpheus , and the Duino Elegies , and their correspondence in which Salomé was the essential confluent soul who kept Rilke from utter despair.
Available for the first time in English and superbly translated with an introduction by Angela von der Lippe, You Alone Are Real to Me , is the work of a multi-faceted woman, a popular European novelist, friend to Nietsche and Freud, a noted writer on psychoanalysis, and a woman capable of understanding the spirit and aspirations of her "Old Rainer".
Written the year after his death by the poet's life-long friend, traveling companion, and muse, Lou Andreas-Salomé takes us through accounts of their meetings and travels, the dam-bursts of creativity in which Rilke wrote the Sonnets to Orpheus , and the Duino Elegies , and their correspondence in which Salomé was the essential confluent soul who kept Rilke from utter despair.
Available for the first time in English and superbly translated with an introduction by Angela von der Lippe, You Alone Are Real to Me , is the work of a multi-faceted woman, a popular European novelist, friend to Nietsche and Freud, a noted writer on psychoanalysis, and a woman capable of understanding the spirit and aspirations of her "Old Rainer".
157 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
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About the author
Lou Andreas-Salomé
158 books415 followersLou Andreas-Salomé (née Louise von Salomé or Luíza Gustavovna Salomé) was born in St. Petersburg, Russia to parents of French Huguenot and northern German descent. Her diverse intellectual interests led to friendships with an astounding array of luminaries, including Nietzsche, Wagner, Freud, and Rilke.
Andreas-Salomé was a prolific author, writing several plays, essays and more than a dozen novels. It was Andreas-Salome who began calling Rilke "Rainer" instead of "René." Her Hymn to Life so deeply impressed Nietzsche that he was moved to set it to music. She was one of the first female psychoanalysts (a career she maintained until a year before her death) and also one of the first women to write on female sexuality. Her book, Lebensrückblick, written toward the end of her life, is based on her memories as a liberated woman.
Andreas-Salomé was a prolific author, writing several plays, essays and more than a dozen novels. It was Andreas-Salome who began calling Rilke "Rainer" instead of "René." Her Hymn to Life so deeply impressed Nietzsche that he was moved to set it to music. She was one of the first female psychoanalysts (a career she maintained until a year before her death) and also one of the first women to write on female sexuality. Her book, Lebensrückblick, written toward the end of her life, is based on her memories as a liberated woman.
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July 22, 2016Lou Andreas-Salome's memoir of Rilke:
"Now I understand that this passion for pain, even in the torture of martyrdom, represents the haste and impatience to no longer be interrupted and disturbed by the evil that can come from this side (meaning this life)." (94)
"Art is the dark wish of all things. They want to be the images of our secrets, ... concealed and revealed at once:--Depth, unknon connections, not even fathomed by the artist. They have become so similar." (95)
We often spoke about this. At first, it appeared to be a most obvious consequence of what he had acquired during the Rodin period: an antipathy toward the "retreat from the object to the observation of the effect," through which artistic endeavor all too often became the most vain of trades. An absolute surrender to accomplishing the work at hand, "steadfastly bending over the tool," without a side-glance to superficial finesse. (98)
"And imagine one other thing in another context--I wrote, created the horse. You know, the free happy gray horse with the wooden peg in his foot that once toward evening came upon us in a gallop on the Volga meadow--What is time? When is the present?
"He leapt over so many years into the wide open spaces of feeling.--Now? I know myself again. It was really like a mutilation of the heart that the elegies were not there. And now they are. They are." (105)
A unity, imparted to him in that which was born, blessedly granted to him and experienced in every fiber of his being. When that was not the case, he encountered the impossible, and no heroic effort that he summoned up, no victim that he conjured could save him; he would be extinguished instantly as a sacrificial victim and become a mere obstacle to the monstrous unity of being that he so ardently sought to grasp. Here ruination touches deeply and gently a dark rapture, in his death before the heart of the "stronger presence." (118)
. . . even if one does share Rilke's own doubt about the excavation of the great things of the past (expressed in a letter about Rome's monuments):
"... our admiration of them does them a distinct injustice, especially if we recognize a definite and describable beauty in them, for they have buried their faces in the earth and renounce all appellation and meaning. And when men discovered them, they raised themselves effortlessly above the earth and almost lost themselves among the birds. They are so much the essence of space that they preside like stars over inconstant time." (119)
And this part of man's creative potential belongs not merely to the internal estate of the healthy common man; it reaches down into the most humiliating strata, where emotional fragility and neediness threaten to drive us to distraction, ensnare us in misguided impulses, from which only the most conscious elucidation of perspective can deliver us. (125)
"Security" indicates here that he is first able to achieve it by an indirect route, through those to whom he has given it. Here there is no directed interest in the other, as expressed, for instance, in compassion, humility, ambition, or condescension. There is nothing more to this than the jubilation of that hour in which he wrote of the Elegies: "They are, they are!" There can be no stronger proof of their existence for him, who felt himself annihilated in their creation, who consequently suffered extreme self-doubts, and who had to equate them with the success of being, than that destroyed individuals find themselves restored to life through them. (126)
--
Angela von der Lippe's afterword:
Indeed, in such a saturated age of imagery as our own, words are all the proof we have of the soul and yet they are the elusive object of the art itself. (132)
Indeed, in an essay on translating Shakespeare, the Russian poet Boris Pasternak spoke to this very transcendental function of metaphorical language in negotiating the passage from life to death. "Metaphorical language is the result of the disproportion between man's short life and the immense and long-term tasks he sets himself. Because of this he needs to look at things sharply as an eagle and to convey his visions in flashes that can be immediately apprehended. This is just what poetry is. Outsize personalities use metaphor as a shorthand of the spirit." (136)
Be ahead of all parting, as if it were
behind you, like the winter that just passed by.
For beneath winters, one so endless winter stirs
that only in overcoming winter, can a heart survive.
Be always dead in Eurydice--in fuller voice climb,
in greater praise climb back to a pure relation.
Here amongst the vanishing, be, in the realm of decline,
be a ringing glass that sounds as it is breaking.
Be--and know at once the condition of annihilation
the infinite source of your inner vibration,
That you completely perfect it, just this once.
To both the used-up and consumed, the muffled and dumb
reserve of all of nature's grandeur, the unsayable sums,
now add yourself joyfully, too, and cancel the count. (138)
"Now I understand that this passion for pain, even in the torture of martyrdom, represents the haste and impatience to no longer be interrupted and disturbed by the evil that can come from this side (meaning this life)." (94)
"Art is the dark wish of all things. They want to be the images of our secrets, ... concealed and revealed at once:--Depth, unknon connections, not even fathomed by the artist. They have become so similar." (95)
We often spoke about this. At first, it appeared to be a most obvious consequence of what he had acquired during the Rodin period: an antipathy toward the "retreat from the object to the observation of the effect," through which artistic endeavor all too often became the most vain of trades. An absolute surrender to accomplishing the work at hand, "steadfastly bending over the tool," without a side-glance to superficial finesse. (98)
"And imagine one other thing in another context--I wrote, created the horse. You know, the free happy gray horse with the wooden peg in his foot that once toward evening came upon us in a gallop on the Volga meadow--What is time? When is the present?
"He leapt over so many years into the wide open spaces of feeling.--Now? I know myself again. It was really like a mutilation of the heart that the elegies were not there. And now they are. They are." (105)
A unity, imparted to him in that which was born, blessedly granted to him and experienced in every fiber of his being. When that was not the case, he encountered the impossible, and no heroic effort that he summoned up, no victim that he conjured could save him; he would be extinguished instantly as a sacrificial victim and become a mere obstacle to the monstrous unity of being that he so ardently sought to grasp. Here ruination touches deeply and gently a dark rapture, in his death before the heart of the "stronger presence." (118)
. . . even if one does share Rilke's own doubt about the excavation of the great things of the past (expressed in a letter about Rome's monuments):
"... our admiration of them does them a distinct injustice, especially if we recognize a definite and describable beauty in them, for they have buried their faces in the earth and renounce all appellation and meaning. And when men discovered them, they raised themselves effortlessly above the earth and almost lost themselves among the birds. They are so much the essence of space that they preside like stars over inconstant time." (119)
And this part of man's creative potential belongs not merely to the internal estate of the healthy common man; it reaches down into the most humiliating strata, where emotional fragility and neediness threaten to drive us to distraction, ensnare us in misguided impulses, from which only the most conscious elucidation of perspective can deliver us. (125)
"Security" indicates here that he is first able to achieve it by an indirect route, through those to whom he has given it. Here there is no directed interest in the other, as expressed, for instance, in compassion, humility, ambition, or condescension. There is nothing more to this than the jubilation of that hour in which he wrote of the Elegies: "They are, they are!" There can be no stronger proof of their existence for him, who felt himself annihilated in their creation, who consequently suffered extreme self-doubts, and who had to equate them with the success of being, than that destroyed individuals find themselves restored to life through them. (126)
--
Angela von der Lippe's afterword:
Indeed, in such a saturated age of imagery as our own, words are all the proof we have of the soul and yet they are the elusive object of the art itself. (132)
Indeed, in an essay on translating Shakespeare, the Russian poet Boris Pasternak spoke to this very transcendental function of metaphorical language in negotiating the passage from life to death. "Metaphorical language is the result of the disproportion between man's short life and the immense and long-term tasks he sets himself. Because of this he needs to look at things sharply as an eagle and to convey his visions in flashes that can be immediately apprehended. This is just what poetry is. Outsize personalities use metaphor as a shorthand of the spirit." (136)
Be ahead of all parting, as if it were
behind you, like the winter that just passed by.
For beneath winters, one so endless winter stirs
that only in overcoming winter, can a heart survive.
Be always dead in Eurydice--in fuller voice climb,
in greater praise climb back to a pure relation.
Here amongst the vanishing, be, in the realm of decline,
be a ringing glass that sounds as it is breaking.
Be--and know at once the condition of annihilation
the infinite source of your inner vibration,
That you completely perfect it, just this once.
To both the used-up and consumed, the muffled and dumb
reserve of all of nature's grandeur, the unsayable sums,
now add yourself joyfully, too, and cancel the count. (138)
July 31, 2012
An overwrought intro, an life-shaping essay from Lou herself, and a gentle, windy outro. Lou's writing is direct and metaphorical all at the same time. I found myself wanting to take notes; sometimes my vocabulary escapes me when it comes to writers such as this, but it was clear and articulated a stunning, vital rendition of Rilke, the man and his art. No idea that his body disturbed himself greatly, and reading this shed some light on his interactions with Rodin. I read the book Rilke wrote about Rodin, but did not really get his preoccupation with him, nor know how he felt the split was between himself and his art. Poetry, words, the intangible, feminine vs. Sculpture, stone, the tangible, the masculine. I am inspired to re-read the Duino Elegies, since I now have a framework to grasp the articulation of Seraphic vision.
March 3, 2012
ATTENTION ALL YOUNG POETS: "Rilke underestimated what good came to him through his social contacts. Even if they were only diversions, they served the important function of directing his energies outward, instead of damming them up within himself." (Lou Andreas-Salomé, p 74)
July 27, 2009
A biography full with love, respect and close observations.
December 23, 2023
The author is every bit as interesting as the subject. These two creative people had a decades long intense friendship. Lots of insights in Rilke, who I had not known much of previously but was known as the best poet of his time by many.
January 28, 2025
À relire
March 4, 2022
Per mia somma mancanza di conoscenza, debbo riconoscere che non ho compreso a pieno il testo.
Nonostante ciò la psiche e la poetica di Rilke, oltre allo storytelling della sua cara amica Lou Andreas-Salomé mi hanno catturato dalla prima pagina.
La quinta stella è una mia carenza, non di certo dell'opera.
Nonostante ciò la psiche e la poetica di Rilke, oltre allo storytelling della sua cara amica Lou Andreas-Salomé mi hanno catturato dalla prima pagina.
La quinta stella è una mia carenza, non di certo dell'opera.
November 22, 2012
The introduction might have been more interesting than the actual text... though all of it together does help to fill out my understanding of Rilke as a poet and a man, and really does a good job of pointing out certain themes from his work.
March 3, 2013
piece of shit.
partially-read
September 4, 2013Read the introduction by Angela von der Lippe but could not get into the right mindset to read the text. May return at some point.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews