0004000800’s Reviews > Duino Elegies > Status Update

This was my second Rilke, it definitely won’t be my last.

I’m appalled by the fact that it took me two moths to read this book but thinking about it now, I believe it was for the better. Poems are meant to be read slowly (not that I took my time with them with this hell going on in my life but I tried)

“May I strike my heart’s keys clearly, and may none fail
Because of slack, uncertain, or fraying strings.
May the tears that stream down my face
make more radiant: may my hidden weeping bloom.
How I will cherish you then, you grief-torn nights!”

“But because life here compels us, and because
everything here
seems to need us, all this fleetingness
that strangely entreats us. Us, the most fleeting…
Once for each thing, only once. Once and no
more. And we, too,
only once. Never again. But to have been
once, even though only once:
this having been earthly seems lasting, beyond
repeal.”

I think the ninth elegy is my favorite. If the tenth is even better then I give up. L

“Who had turned us around like this, so that
always, no matter what we do, we’re in the stance
of someone just departing? As he,
on the last hill that shows him all his valley
one last time, turns, stops, lingers—,
We live our lives, forever taking leave”.

“And we: Spectators, always everywhere,
looking at, never out of, everything!
It overfills us. We arrange it. It falls apart.
We rearrange it, and fall apart ourselves.”

I loved the eighth elegy! I think it’s my favorite.