Throwback Thursday: One Too Many Mornings

"To love another human being is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks."
~ Rainer Maria Rilke

The most refreshing aspect of Bootleg Series, Volume 9: The Witmark Demos was its reminder of the simple beauty of Dylan's early songwriting, unencumbered by layers of production. It brought me back to those early albums and made me appreciate again the rich wealth of material that preceded Highway 61 Revisited.

"One Too Many Mornings" was not part of this particular bootleg, but is of a similar species. Three verses, another lamentation.

When you look at the Dylan catalog the number of songs about relationships is a large one, perhaps in part because relationships play such a central role in our lives. Relationships are also one of the most challenging facets of our lives. Nearly half of all marriages end in divorce, which very few people plan for when proclaiming their vows.

Perhaps it's because there are so many situations that involve negotiations, as well as the difficulties of being objective in those many situations we're immersed in: money, family, time, expectations...

For this reason "One Too Many Mornings" touches a nerve. It's a song about movement... away from a painful present toward an uncertain future. Most people have experienced painful breakups even if not the married kind. Marriage only adds additional complications to the equation.

So the song begins with an evocative description of darkness setting in. Dogs are barking out there somewhere, but even that's going to fade. Nothing happening out there, but there's plenty happening inside his head.

Christopher Ricks, who devotes fifteen pages to this song in Dylan's Visions of Sin, points out that the song begins when it's not dark yet but getting there. Silence doesn't mean absence of sound, as Paul Simon pointed out. Words are formed even when no one listens or hears.

The second verse opens with the narrator gazing out toward a desolate street scene, but he doesn't see it so much as he is only looking in that direction. There's nothing really there, and when he turns to stare back into the room, there's emptiness here as well. So he turns again, looking back to the street, sidewalks, signs, a scene devoid of people, warmth or life.

John Hinchey feels the last two verses fail to live up to the first stanza, but I think it works because once you know the song you can't shake its melancholy effect. The second verse haunts, weighted with emptiness. The third verse plays out the root of it.

The couple had shared a space in time. Now that time was past. The narrator is alone, though it's possible his love is right there in the room when he looks back to the bed where they had lain. Except even if she is present, he is alone. Perhaps that is an even greater aloneness.

This is a very different story from "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright" or "It Ain't Me, Babe." It's not all right.

To my surprise I'd already written about this song in 2012. Guess I'd forgotten that. Maybe I will write about it again sometime. Who knows? Tomorrow is such a long time...

Dylan performed the song 240 times in concert from 1966 to 2005.

One Too Many Mornings

Down the street the dogs are barkin’
And the day is a-gettin’ dark
As the night comes in a-fallin’
The dogs’ll lose their bark
An’ the silent night will shatter
From the sounds inside my mind
For I’m one too many mornings
And a thousand miles behind

From the crossroads of my doorstep
My eyes they start to fade
As I turn my head back to the room
Where my love and I have laid
An’ I gaze back to the street
The sidewalk and the sign
And I’m one too many mornings
An’ a thousand miles behind

It’s a restless hungry feeling
That don’t mean no one no good
When ev’rything I’m a-sayin’
You can say it just as good.
You’re right from your side
I’m right from mine
We’re both just one too many mornings
An’ a thousand miles behind

Copyright © 1964, 1966 by Warner Bros. Inc.; 
renewed 1992, 1994 by Special Rider Music

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED MAY 2015

Insights from Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet

Of all my books just a few are indispensable to me, and two even are always among my things wherever I am. They are about me here too: the Bible, and the books of the great Danish writer Jens Peter Jacobsen. I wonder whether you know his works.
--Rainer Maria Rilke

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a series of letters to a young officer cadet, with advice about writing, love, the embrace of passion, the shadowed realms of suffering, and the nature of advice itself. The letters were later assembled and published in a book titled "Letters to a Young Poet." Though directed to one, it is rich with wisdom and advice for all who aspire to be creative spirits, especially poets.

My first brush with this small gem took place when I downloaded it to my Kindle perhaps a dozen years ago.

When speaking of creativity and the artistic life, Rilke offered these suggestions.

1) Trust your inner voice. Focus on your own unique experience and expression, not external validation or imitation.

2) Be patient and cultivate solitude. Artistic development takes time and introspection. Avoid rushing or seeking immediate recognition.

3) Observe and connect with the world. Deeply experience life, nature, and people to enrich your creative wellspring.

4) Embrace uncertainty and doubt. Artistic creation is a journey of exploration and self-discovery, not a pursuit of definitive answers.

5) Don't compare yourself to others. Each artist has a unique path, and comparisons can be paralyzing. Trust your own trajectory.

As I read these, I can imagine a young Bob Dylan internalizing these pearls from the experienced pen of a master poet.

Rilke had much to say about other topics beyond writing, including love, relationships, life and existence. What makes these letters thought-provoking and potent is their candor. They are filled with observations drawn from experience. Here is an excerpt:

You ask whether your verses are good. You ask me. You have asked others before. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are disturbed when certain editors reject your efforts. Now (since you have allowed me to advise you) I beg you to give up all that. You are looking outward, and that above all you should not do now. Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all---ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer.

* * *

Related Links I discovered Rilke later in life via the amazing 1990 film Awakenings, starring Robert DeNiro and Robin Williams. (Better late than never.) Here is a link to that first encounter. And here is a link to another favorite Rilke poem.

* * *

Bruce Cockburn's "Pacing the Cage": I Hear Rilke Echoes

Photo by mana5280 on Unsplash

Driving home from the pharmacy last night I was listening to The North 103.3 when a song came on that compelled me to listen. Each verse ended with the line "pacing the cage." The accompaniment was haunting and, for me, it brought to mind Rilke's The Panther. As the song was ending I was just pulling into my driveway. The radio host, thankfully, shared the title of the song and its creator, Bruce Cockburn.

As soon as I got in the house I looked to see if the song were on YouTube. After finding it I listened again while looking online for the lyrics. Then I listened yet again.

* * * * *

The power of Rainer Maria Rilke's The Panther is that it becomes a metaphor that most of us can relate to. It is a poignant portrait of something magnificent that has become impotent after being caged. There are all manner of ways in which we can become caged. How that affects us may not readily be recognized. When the loss of freedom becomes the loss of hope, we are doomed.

The Panther

His vision from the passing of the bars
is grown so weary that it holds no more.
To him it seems there are a thousand bars
and behind a thousand bars no world.

The padding gait of flexibly strong strides,
that in the very smallest circle turns,
is like a dance of strength around a center
in which stupefied a great will stands.

Only sometimes the curtain of the pupil
soundless parts--. Then an image enters,
goes through the tensioned stillness of the limbs
--and in the heart ceases to be.

* * * * 

It is against this backdrop, Rilke's Panther, that I share Bruce Cockburn's poignant piece.

Pacing the Cage

Sunset is an angel weeping
Holding out a bloody sword
No matter how I squint I cannot
Make out what it's pointing toward
Sometimes you feel like you live too long
Days drip slowly on the page
You catch yourself
Pacing the cage

I've proven who I am so many times
The magnetic strip's worn thin
And each time I was someone else
And every one was taken in
Powers chatter in high places
Stir up eddies in the dust of rage
Set me to pacing the cage

I never knew what you all wanted
So I gave you everything
All that I could pillage
All the spells that I could sing
It's as if the thing were written
In the constitution of the age
Sooner or later you'll wind up
Pacing the cage

Sometimes the best map will not guide you
You can't see what's round the bend
Sometimes the road leads through dark places
Sometimes the darkness is your friend
Today these eyes scan bleached-out land
For the coming of the outbound stage
Pacing the cage
Pacing the cage

© Rotten Kiddies Music Llc, Bro N Sis Music Inc

* * * * 

Here's the song on YouTube so you can appreciate the mood it creates.

URL:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNIFFZBfewo

According to Wikipedia, Bruce Cockburn was born three days after Bob Dylan's fourth birthday, May 27, 1945. Like Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell and Neil Young, Cockburn is a Canadian-born singer/songwriter and guitarist. He's written more than 350 songs for 34 albums.

For poetry lovers, here's a web page that has assembled a variety of alternative translations for Rilke's Der Panther. Enjoy! http://www.thebeckoning.com/poetry/rilke/rilke3.html

Flashback Friday: The Nose

This is a short story I wrote in 1996. It is one of a half dozen original short stories in my second volume of short fiction titled Newmanesque. If you have a Kindle, the booklet is 99 cents. If you have KindleUnlimited it is free.

 

"The fear that I may start screaming... the fear that I might betray myself and tell everything I dread, and the fear that I might not be able to say anything, because everything is unsayable..." ~R. M. Rilke

The Nose

The sizzling energy in the crammed little bar began to unsettle him. He wondered why he ever said he would meet his friends here. 

 
Still worse, they were late and Ted's brain started running on the hyperactive groove that, once out of control, left him terrified and unsettled.

But Ted Krueger had a mind game he played to help him gain control of himself in these situations. He’d focus on an object, enabling his thoughts -- which at this point were so numerous and random that he felt overwhelmed by them -- to narrow their scope. In this way he was able to harness them and feel he had some measure of control over himself.
 
He held the view that though feelings were nebulous and impossible to direct, with a great effort of will thoughts could be managed and coerced, and that one's feelings would eventually come into alignment with the thoughts that preceded, and stirred, one's emotions. His feelings of terror were often so immense that only a more immense distraction could deliver him from being tyranized by his fears. Hence the game.
 
This mind game would lead him into a place removed from himself, a mental space where epiphanies occurred. That is, the game produced profound illuminations at critical moments in his life, which he believed to be metaphysical insights, powerful and humbling. It filled him with a sense of awe and gratitude.

He knew that he’d created the game out of necessity as a means of holding on to reality, to keep from flipping. He took no credit for it. In fact, he knew that everyone played games of some kind or another to stave off boredom or reduce the intensity of disquieting anxieties, and that this was nothing more than his own way of keeping control. In this regard he was quite self-aware and not really so odd, or so he told himself. 

May 6, 1994. A Friday night. His friends had wanted to hear a band at Mephistos, a small night club that recently opened near The Wharf. Too much was already happening in his head even before he entered the room. Ted carried an enormous amount of responsibility at the office and when he left that evening he carried it with him. There were unresolved personal conflicts as well. Mind overstimulated, he seated himself against the far wall, the only table available.
 
The band was on a break between sets. To calm himself he sought out an object for contemplation. His eye traced the the outlines of edges, spots of reflection on tables, a glint of glass, the flutter of a bow, radiation from the neon, loose change, a laughing mouth, five fingers, a shred of napkin.
 
At last his gaze fell upon a nose. It was, as he later recalled it, the plainest, most ordinary nose, with no distinctive features whatsoever. It was a universal nose, not belonging to the young woman who wore it, but representative of the archetype nose, of unknown origin, any nose. And at that precise moment it seemed as perfect an object for contemplation as any he had ever devised; unassuming and indistinct (where does a nose end and the face begin?), yet specific and focal.
 
He took hold of it in his mind, plotting coordinates for this object that he might track its movements through space and time. Sixteen inches from the tabletop, 46 inches from the floor. Six feet from the window. Moving back and forth two or three times in a slow arc, dipping downward and then swinging back up into a fixed jutting motif, the nose began to take on a life, to become an entity. And this pleased him, for he knew the game he played with himself, and it required a certain mental dexterity to create an object of contemplation toward which he could remain indifferent.
 
So he studied the nose, contemplated it generously, and reflected upon the whole meaning of noses.
 
He thought about noses in general, how they come in a wide variety of sizes and shapes, though for the most part human noses have a set of common characteristics. Chief of these are the two holes which enable humans to breathe and to smell, the raison de tete for the nose's existence. 

 
He thought, however, that a hole in the center of the face could serve this function just as well, and he wondered if the primary reason for a nose's existence was not its utility but rather its aesthetic quality. One need only glance at a naked skull to see the hideous condition noselessness evokes.
 
Noses are deceptive, too, he reasoned. They appear substantial. But this, he conceded, is illusory. The solid bridge is a cartilage that passes itself off as bone, is in fact no bone at all.
 
He recalled to mind the history of his own nose. How strange to think that at a certain point in time there was nothing there at all, and then, a tiny pinch of tissue which emerged to become the mutton of flesh that was distinctively his the rest of his days. How tiny it had been the day he was born!
 
He thought of the nosebleeds of his youth, the difficulties he endured as a compulsive nose picker, blistering sunburns, sniffles, sneezes, congested nasal passages, irritating nosehairs.
 
All the while his vision remained unwaveringly fixed on the nose across the room. For all intents, he reasoned that if the universe were infinite, that is, if space extended infinitely in all directions from any point in space, this nose could as easily be considered the center of the universe as any other point.
 
He thought about the immensity of space, and was captured by the immensity of his thought, which seemed to orbit about this very present truth, as did the fly which now seemed to hover momentarily before the woman's face.
 
She swept her hand through the air, but missed it.
 
He had forgotten his friends now. He had also forgotten his terror, had successfully calmed his soul. Though the band had reconvened, he no longer heard the music. His vision remained focused, undistracted by the movement, the shadows of bodies rising, sliding, staggering, sauntering, gliding between the tables, moving about the room which had itself become a swirl of shadow.

From a deep part of him there emerged an anticipation. Here, this very night, he would experience a new sensation, something unique. The notion came from deep within while he watched the drama of the fly. For the fly had returned and hovered briefly again before alighting, and at the instant of contact.... It was the last thing he remembered.

Awakening in the emergency room at Somerset Memorial Hospital, he heard voices, saw only light and experienced extreme anguish in the region of his face.

"What a mess. How did it happen?"
 
"Some guy flattened his face."
 
"Prepare an operating room."
 
"The cartilage has been shattered and pushed up inside his skull."
 
"He's coming to."
 
"He's lucky."
 
"He has no idea."
 
"What'd he get hit with? Looks like a flatiron."
 
"God, he's a lucky bastard."

"He had it coming they said."
 
"Nobody has this coming."
 
"He was staring at some guy's wife."
 
"Poor kid."
 
"Can you hear me, Ted? Ted? We're going to have to operate. If you can hear me nod, all right? Ted? Can you count backwards from one hundred. I'm going to count and you count, too. One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety eight..."
 
As he drifted off under the ether he recalled from somewhere fragments of a poem. "For there is a boundary to looking.... Now the work of the eyes is done." Then he began to dream.

___________________
copyright 1996 ed newman  

Flashback Friday: Rilke's Dedication

I originally shared this here on August 19, 2010.

Dedication 

A poem by Rainer Maria Rilke 

I have great faith in all things not yet spoken. 

I want my deepest pious feelings freed. 

What no one yet has dared to risk and warrant 

will be for me a challenge I must meet. 

If this presumptuous seems, God, may I be forgiven. 

For what I want to say to you is this: 

my efforts shall be like a driving force, 

quite without anger, without timidness 

as little children show their love for you. 

With these outflowing, river-like, with deltas 

that spread like arms to reach the open sea, 

with the recurrent tides that never cease 

will I acknowledge you, will I proclaim you 

as no one ever has before. 

 

And if this should be arrogance, 

so let me arrogant be to justify my prayer 

that stands so serious and so alone 

before your forehead, circled by the clouds.

For more poems by Rainer Maria Rilke and others visit PoemHunter.com

Rainer Maria Rilke: Exquisite Beauty from the Pen of a Mere Mortal

Nearly everyone who reads and appreciates poetry is familiar with Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926). Some of the most beautiful lines in the English language were written by him. (Just kidding. He wrote in German and French.) Fortunately, the beauty of his ideas has not been lost in translation.

Just as I discovered the Wiki Quotes page on Picasso this past week, so have I been exploring others, with Rilke one of the first I looked up.

It is my pleasure here to share a few poems and lines from Rainer Maria Rilke.

* * * *

A Walk 
My eyes already touch the sunny hill,
going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has its inner light, even from a distance—
and changes us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it, we already are;
a gesture waves us on, answering our own wave . . .
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.

* * * *

"Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything." 

* * * *
Autumn Day
Lord: it is time. The summer was immense.
Let thine shadows upon the sundials fall,
and unleash the winds upon the open fields.

* * * *

As I read a passage like this next one I am conscious that it is written by someone whose life and being has been so utterly foreign to the fast-paced mad rush rat race so many Americans have accepted as a normal life. Success is achieved by hustling. But what happens to the soul?

from The Book of Hours
I am too alone in the world, and yet not alone enough
to make every hour holy.
I am too small in the world, and yet not tiny enough
just to stand before you like a thing,
dark and shrewd.
I want my will, and I want to be with my will
as it moves towards deed;
and in those quiet, somehow hesitating times,
when something is approaching,
I want to be with those who are wise
or else alone.

*
This next one I have taped on the wall of my office perhaps 20 years ago and it still inspires me, speaks to me in a way that is deeper than words. 

I Live My Life In Growing Orbits
I live my life in growing orbits
which move out over the things of the world.
Perhaps I can never achieve the last,
but that will be my attempt.

I am circling around God,
around the ancient tower,
and I have been circling for a thousand years,
and I still don’t know
if I am a falcon, or a storm,
or a great song.

* * * *

The following is a section from a small volume called Letters to a Young Poet, which I downloaded to my Kindle several years ago. It stands in stark contrast to the loud, busy world we live in today where the radio or television are always on and the myriad ways we bury ourselves in diversions to escape from ourselves.

from Letter Seven
It must be immense, this silence, in which sounds and movements have room. And if one thinks that along with all this the presence of the distant sea also resounds, perhaps as the innermost note in this prehistoric harmony, then one can only wish that you are trustingly and patiently letting the magnificent solitude work upon you, this solitude which can no longer be erased from your life; which, in everything that is in store for you to experience and to do, will act as an anonymous influence, continuously and gently decisive, rather as the blood of our ancestors incessantly moves in us and combines with our own to form the unique, unrepeatable being that we are at every turning of our life.

* * * *

Just as photographers are skilled at capturing the natural world, likewise great poets and writers have fine tuned their lenses to capture our inner landscapes.

Related Link
The Panther
Rilke Wikiquote Page

Poetry Notes and a Call for Submissions

"A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician..."
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Duluth Poet Laureate Project seeks poems from regional writers for a poetry/dance collaborative event to take place in May 2018. Send a poem on any theme and the dancers will choose a poem and create a dance in response. The poets who inspired the dance will be invited to read at the event and will receive a $50 honorarium. Send ONE poem and contact information to: elliesch@cpinternet.com or to Ellie Schoenfeld, 530 E. Skyline Parkway, Duluth, MN 55805 by January 10th, 2018.

* * * * 

An appreciation for poetry is not something tacked onto my life like hand-scrawled announcements on a bulletin board. I come by it honestly; it is in my blood. My grandmother wrote poetry, influenced in that direction by her uncle John S. Hall. John Hall, the youngest of five boys, was left blind after the Civil War, whereupon he pursued a life of writing, founding two newspapers, the St. Mary's Observer and the Oracle, before retiring to private life. His book of poems, Musings of a Quiet Hour, was published in 1907. I have been told that through this lineage flows the blood of Robert Burns, the famed Scot Highlander and literary luminary.

None of this means that the poems I have written are any good, or will have historical merit. It is simply an acknowledgement of my roots.

"Poetry is the mother tongue of mankind."
--J.G.Hamann, 1762

I have a number of favorite poets whom I return to from time to time for inspiration, among these Rilke, Pessoa, Dylan and Billy Collins, whose poem Introduction To Poetry always brings a smile and a lift.

Introduction to Poetry
by Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light

like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem

and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room

and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski

across the surface of a poem

waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do

is tie the poem to a chair with rope

and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose

to find out what it really means.

* * * *

If you be a poet, write on. If a reader only... Thank You.

Robert Hunter's Translations of Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. ...live in the question.” 
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

* * * *

Saturday, when I wrote about Robert Hunter's collaborations with Dylan, my original intent had not been to write about Together Through Life. Rather, I had discovered Hunter's translations of some of the writings of Rainer Maria Rilke and began by laying a foundation, introducing readers to Hunter the poet/songwriter. I got a little carried away, ultimately snipping it it for a blog post of its own.

* * * *
It's often been remarked how the Internet is like a giant labyrinth, with each explorer ending up in different places based on choices one makes, following links, or as Robert Frost in his poem "The Road Not Taken" suggests, "way leads on to way" so that we sometimes know not how we arrived in these various places and spaces within this seemingly infinite hypercard deck.

* * * *
All this is a rather circuitous route to Robert Hunter's Rilke translations. Hunter was such an integral part of the Grateful Dead magic that when the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, Hunter was included with the band, even though he'd never actually performed with them. Hunter was the first, and maybe only, non-performer inducted in this manner.

As a lyricist Hunter's interests stretched beyond the bounds of contemporary songwriting so that quite by accident I discovered his translations of poetry by Rainer Maria Rilke, specifically his Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus, which features some of my own favorite Rilke verses. It's intriguing how Rilke resurrected Orpheus, a character from Greek mythology endowed with superhuman musical skills, to become a symbol in the modern world.

According to the Brittanica, "Orpheus was the son of a Muse, (probably Calliope, the patron of epic poetry) and Oeagrus, a king of Thrace (though some sources cite Apollo). According to some legends, Apollo gave Orpheus his first lyre. Orpheus’s singing and playing were so beautiful that animals and even trees and rocks moved about him in dance."

This was Jerry Garcia's mandate. "Boogie." If they -- the fans, including the rocks and trees sometimes no doubt -- then the Grateful Dead were not doing their job.

* * * *

I myself first discovered Rilke through his first and only novel, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. The vivid, haunting imagery moved me deeply. Then I discovered his poems. "The Panther" is probably his most famous, only because it was popularized in the film Awakenings (Robert DeNiro, Robin Williams). In 2008 I learned that the poem has been translated more than two dozen times from the original German, which I shared here at that time.

What each translator strives for is to find an approach to the work that is consistent and authentic. Translation work is fraught with challenges, as literal word-for-word translation can sometimes be stiff, or miss the meaning behind the words. Robert Hunter's aim, he states, was to "approximate the original rhythm and rhyme of The Sonnets to Orpheus."

Here I have reproduced two of the early sonnets as translated by Hunter. A link to the complete translation can be found at the end of the second passage.

THE SONNETS TO ORPHEUS

-1-

Tree arising! O pure ascendance!
Orpheus Sings! Towering tree within the ear!
Everywhere stillness, yet in this abeyance:
seeds of change and new beginnings near.

Creatures of silence emerged from the clear
unfettered forest, from dens, from lairs.
Not from shyness, this silence of theirs;
nor from any hint of fear,

simply from listening. Brutal shriek and roar
dwindled in their hearts. Where stood a mere
hut to house the passions of the ear,

constructed of longing darkly drear,
haphazardly wrought from front to rear,
you built them a temple at listening's core.

-2 -

Something akin to a maiden strayed
from this marriage of song and string,
glowing radiant through veils of spring;
inside my ear a bed she laid.

And there she slept. Her dream was my domain:
the trees which enchanted me; vistas vast
and nearly touchable; meadows of a vernal cast
and every wondrous joy my heart could claim.

She dreamed the world. Singing God, how made
you that primordial repose so sound she never
felt a need to waken? Upon arising she fell straight to dream.

Where is her death? O, will you yet discover her theme
before your song is eclipsed forever? --
Abandoning me, where does she go?--something akin to a maid-

* * * *
You will find the rest of the sonnets here.

Learn more about Orpheus in the Britannica.

When I built my first website in 1995 I also created a Labyrinth, akin to the hypercard concept I'd been introduced to several years earlier when I got my second Mac. The Labyrinth starts here, and if you make a wrong turn you might run into a Rilke poem, or a page with prose by Jorge Luis Borges.

Meantime, life goes on all around you... Listen to the music.

How Important Is Inspiration?

Rilke spent a segment of his life developing an external poetic form that enabled him to write without being "dependent on inspiration." He developed the concept through friendship with the sculptor Rodin.
Journal note, April 10, 1997

If you do a Google search of "How Important Is Inspiration" you will all kinds of links to articles and blog expressions regarding the importance of inspiration. At the top of my search is a Harvard Business Review article on "Why Inspiration Matters." Next is a blog entry at The Meaning Experiment on "The Importance of Inspiration." And it goes on from there.

In reading these various articles one becomes aware of a certain kind of inspiration that is perhaps more related to passion. The kind of inspiration I'd like to briefly digress upon has to do with the notion of the Muse.

Nearly all of us who are artists or writers, or have participated in other creative endeavors, have had the delightful experience where it seems The Muse has alighted upon our shoulders and showered us with a moment of gilded creative light. Some artists, writers and poets can find themselves so enamored by this experience that any results that fail to come from their Muse feel slightly less significant and a mere exercise of technique. Hence, we can be deceived into feeling the only way to accomplish anything is to wait... wait for inspiration to magically draw near.

But poet Rainer Maria Rilke felt it an achievement to have been liberated from this dependency on something seemingly random and beyond our control.

Dorothea Brande, in her book Becoming a Writer, says the same. We cannot be dependent on a Muse. This kind of attitude toward the creative results in an imprisoning mindset of passive waiting. The posture is not one of initiative, but of passivity. From whence does the creative urge emerge? If within our power, then we must learn the processes that stir it, that stimulate, that revive its power.

To some extent it is not about what we do, but rather the energy with which we do it. On command. The energy resides within us. We do not have to wait for circumstances and stars to align. We can choose to pour ourselves out, on demand.

We have no control over the things that lie outside us. But we can control our thoughts and actions. Learn how to prime your pump, how to take charge of your creative powers. The world will be there to absorb the streams of creative life you bring.

Dedication

Dedication
A poem by Rainer Maria Rilke

I have great faith in all things not yet spoken.
I want my deepest pious feelings freed.
What no one yet has dared to risk and warrant
will be for me a challenge I must meet.

If this presumptuous seems, God, may I be forgiven.
For what I want to say to you is this:
my efforts shall be like a driving force,
quite without anger, without timidness
as little children show their love for you.

With these outflowing, river-like, with deltas
that spread like arms to reach the open sea,
with the recurrent tides that never cease
will I acknowledge you, will I proclaim you
as no one ever has before.

And if this should be arrogance, so let me
arrogant be to justify my prayer
that stands so serious and so alone
before your forehead, circled by the clouds.

For more poems by Rainer Maria Rilke and others visit PoemHunter.com.

I Live My Life In Growing Orbits

Are people into poetry less than they used to be? Or has poetry always been something only for the few? Since I never lived in a previous age, and am uncertain whether there is any research data on this, I will assume nothing except to note that somehow poetry, like opera or abstract painting perhaps, is something a lot of people don't get into.

As for me, I enjoy poetry. And one of my favorite poets is Rainer Maria Rilke. Here is what Wikipedia has to say about Rilke, followed by one of my favorite poems of his.

Rainer Maria Rilke (also Rainer Maria von Rilke) (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926) is considered one of the German language's greatest 20th-century poets. His haunting images 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.

He wrote in both verse and a highly lyrical prose. His two most famous verse sequences are the Sonnets to Orpheus and the Duino Elegies; his two most famous prose works are the Letters to a Young Poet and the semi-autobiographical The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. He also wrote more than 400 poems in French, dedicated to his homeland of choice, the canton of Valais in Switzerland.

I Live My Life In Growing Orbits

I live my life in growing orbits,
which move out over the things of this world.
Perhaps I can never achieve the last,
but that will be my attempt.

I am circling around God,
around the ancient tower,
and I have been circling for a thousand years.
And I still do not know
if I am a Falcon,
or a storm,
or a great song.

~ R. M. Rilke

Short Story Monday: The Nose

"The fear that I may start screaming... the fear that I might betray myself and tell everything I dread, and the fear that I might not be able to say anything, because everything is unsayable..." ~~R. M. Rilke

The Nose

The sizzling energy in the crammed little bar began to unsettle him. He wondered why he ever said he would meet his friends here.

Still worse, they were late and Ted's brain started running on the hyperactive groove that, once out of control, left him terrified and unsettled.

But Ted Krueger had a mind game he played to help him gain control of himself in these situations. He’d focus on an object, enabling his thoughts -- which at this point were so numerous and random that he felt overwhelmed by them -- to narrow their scope. In this way he was able to harness them and feel he had some measure of control over himself.

He held the view that though feelings were nebulous and impossible to direct, with a great effort of will thoughts could be managed and coerced, and that one's feelings would eventually come into alignment with the thoughts that preceded, and stirred, one's emotions. His feelings of terror were often so immense that only a more immense distraction could deliver him from being tyranized by his fears. Hence the game.

This mind game would lead him into a place removed from himself, a mental space where epiphanies occurred. That is, the game produced profound illuminations at critical moments in his life, which he believed to be metaphysical insights, powerful and humbling. It filled him with a sense of awe and gratitude.

He knew that he’d created the game out of necessity as a means of holding on to reality, to keep from flipping. He took no credit for it. In fact, he knew that everyone played games of some kind or another to stave off boredom or reduce the intensity of disquieting anxieties, and that this was nothing more than his own way of keeping control. In this regard he was quite self-aware and not really so odd, or so he told himself.

May 6, 1994. A Friday night. His friends had wanted to hear a band at Mephistos, a small night club that recently opened near The Wharf. Too much was already happening in his head even before he entered the room. Ted carried an enormous amount of responsibility at the office and when he left that evening he carried it with him. There were unresolved personal conflicts as well. Mind overstimulated, he seated himself against the far wall, the only table available.

The band was on a break between sets. To calm himself he sought out an object for contemplation. His eye traced the the outlines of edges, spots of reflection on tables, a glint of glass, the flutter of a bow, radiation from the neon, loose change, a laughing mouth, five fingers, a shred of napkin.

At last his gaze fell upon a nose. It was, as he later recalled it, the plainest, most ordinary nose, with no distinctive features whatsoever. It was a universal nose, not belonging to the young woman who wore it, but representative of the archtype nose, of unknown origin, any nose. And at that precise moment it seemed as perfect an object for contemplation as any he had ever devised; uncarved, unassuming and indistinct (where does a nose end and the face begin?), yet specific and focal.

He took hold of it in his mind, plotting coordinates for this object that he might track its movements through space and time. Sixteen inches from the tabletop, 46 inches from the floor. Six feet from the window. Moving back and forth two or three times in a slow arc, dipping downward and then swinging back up into a fixed jutting motif, the nose began to take on a life, to become an entity. And this pleased him, for he knew the game he played with himself, and it required a certain mental dexterity to create an object of contemplation toward which he could remain indifferent.

So he studied the nose, contemplated it generously, and reflected upon the whole meaning of noses.

He thought about noses in general, how they come in a wide variety of sizes and shapes, though for the most part human noses have a set of common characteristics. Chief of these are the two holes which enable humans to breathe and to smell, the raison de tete for the nose's existence.

He thought, however, that a hole in the center of the face could serve this function just as well, and he wondered if the primary reason for a nose's existence was not its utility but rather its aesthetic quality. One need only glance at a naked skull to see the hideous condition noselessness evokes.

Noses are deceptive, too, he reasoned. They appear substantial. But this, he conceded, is illusory. The solid bridge is a cartiledge that passes itself off as bone, is in fact no bone at all.

He recalled to mind the history of his own nose. How strange to think that at a certain point in time there was nothing there at all, and then, a tiny pinch of tissue which emerged to become the mutton of flesh that was distinctively his the rest of his days. How tiny it had been the day he was born!

He thought of the nosebleeds of his youth, the difficulties he endured as a compulsive nose picker, blistering sunburns, sniffles, sneezes, congested nasal passages, irritating nosehairs.

All the while his vision remained unwaveringly fixed on the nose across the room.

For all intents, he reasoned that if the universe were infinite, that is, if space extended infinitely in all directions from any point in space, this nose could as easily be considered the center of the universe as any other point.

He thought about the immensity of space, and was captured by the immensity of his thought, which seemed to orbit about this very present truth, as did the fly which now seemed to hover momentarily before the woman's face.

She swept her hand through the air, but missed it.

He had forgotten his friends now. He had also forgotten his terror, had successfully calmed his soul. Though the band had reconvened, he no longer heard the music. His vision remained focused, undistracted by the movement, the shadows of bodies rising, sliding, staggering, sauntering, gliding between the tables, moving about the room which had itself become a swirl of shadow.

From a deep part of him there emerged an anticipation. Here, this very night, he would experience a new sensation, something unique. The notion came from deep within while he watched the drama of the fly. For the fly had returned and hovered briefly again before alighting, and at the instant of contact....

It was the last thing he remembered. Awakening in the emergency room at Somerset Memorial Hospital, he heard voices, saw only light and experienced extreme anguish in the region of his face.

"What a mess. How did it happen?"

"Some guy flattened his face."

"Prepare an operating room."

"The cartilege has been shattered and pushed up inside his skull."

"He's coming to."

"He's lucky."

"He has no idea."

"What'd he get hit with? Looks like a flatiron."

"God, he's a lucky bastard."

"He had it coming they said."

"Nobody has this coming."

"He was staring at some guy's wife."

"Poor kid."

"Can you hear me, Ted? Ted? We're going to have to operate. If you can hear me nod, all right? Ted? Can you count backwards from one hundred. I'm going to count and you count, too. One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety eight..."

As he drifted off under the ether he recalled from somewhere fragments of a poem. "For there is a boundary to looking.... Now the work of the eyes is done." Then he began to dream.

________________________________________
copyright 1996 ed newman
PERMISSION TO REPRINT GRANTED if attribution is cited.
Could you send me a note telling where you shared it?

Of Masks & Men

Yesterday the kiln was opened after this week's firing. My kids had been home the past couple weeks and something we all did was make masks. Our walls are slowly filling up with them.

Masks have been a long part of human history. Witch doctors and warriors wear masks. Actors in Greek tragedies wore masks. It seems like there are several Woody Allen films incorporating Greek tragedians absurdly placed into a modern context, something like Michael Palin's Spanish Inquisition interlopers.

I recall a scene in R. M. Rilke's Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge involving a mask. The story was Rilke's single novel, somewhat of a lament on the significance of life, death and the quest for authentic individuality. The writing is often impressionistic. The scene I recall, somewhat hazily, is of the main character trying to decide which face to put on in the morning, as if faces themselves are masks. His real face, if I remember accurately, had a hole in it.

We all know something of masks, which can be used to both reveal and conceal identities. When there is a great pain in our hearts, a cheerful mask is convenient lest too many people get too nosy, asking too many questions and picking at the scabs which you hope will soon heal. Clowns put on faces to project an impression that may be at great odds with the clown within.

"I heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley," Dylan sang in Hard Rain's Gonna Fall.

Masks are all the rage at masquerade balls, as well. I remember a Halloween party in Athens when I was in college in which my face was concealed neath a white sheet with the eyes cut out, more like the scarecrow on Wizard of Oz than a KKK style of hood. As the evening wore on, many people wondered who I was. The clue was a piece of curved rib in my hand, which I later used while beating percussions during the music we made late into the night. Only Netty connected the clue to my identity, with an eye twinkle that indicated she was not going to spoil it by telling the others where that guy in the mask had gone.

What I remember from the experience are several things. First, when we wear masks that conceal our identity, it makes people curious. Who are you? It becomes a game. In the Batman story, one ongoing theme was the perpetual curiosity regarding his true identity. Second, this concealment also gave the masked person power. Self-revelation was the masked one's perogative. Third, and also important, the mask left me alienated as well. I wanted to show people who I was. I wanted to reveal myself... and the mask left me separated. Our own masks do the same when we project something other than who we are.

Perhaps this is one of the problems with masks. And the more our mask-face it at odds with our real selves, the more alone and alienated we feel. The mask might bring us momentary attention, but there is no heart communion. To kiss, to touch, to embrace... masks and robes must be discarded.

TO BEST ENJOY THE MASKS, CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE

The Panther

It was during the heart-wrenching 1990 film Awakenings that this absolutely remarkable poem was popularized. In the film, the Robert DeNiro character, who is trapped within himself, makes a connection with Robin Williams, who as the doctor Oliver Sacks had been treating these special situation patients. Using a Ouija board, DeNiro successfully leads his doctor to this poem, which expresses his situation.

Because the poet Rilke wrote in German, I eventually discovered that there are a range of translations, some inferior to others. This here is my favorite version of the poem, but I have included a link below to a website which has numerous additional translations.... each more or less successful in its own way. In the end, the tragic idea the DeNiro sought to communicate through in the poem should be sadly clear.

The Panther

His vision from the passing of the bars
is grown so weary that it holds no more.
To him it seems there are a thousand bars
and behind a thousand bars no world.

The padding gait of flexibly strong strides,
that in the very smallest circle turns,
is like a dance of strength around a center
in which stupefied a great will stands.

Only sometimes the curtain of the pupil
soundless parts--. Then an image enters,
goes through the tensioned stillness of the limbs
--and in the heart ceases to be.

Alternate versions of The Panther

The Panther

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars, and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tense, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.

~Rainer Maria Rilke

An Hour of Poetry for People Who Are Not Into It

A few years ago I was thinking of offering to do a poetry reading at Barnes and Noble called "An Hour of Poetry for People Who Are Not Into It" with the aim of sharing poems that connect, in the hopes of introducing people to some fun, thought provoking material which they are not familiar with because it is labelled "Poetry" and a lot of people simply think they do not LIKE poetry.
So, I made a list of my selections for that hour of entertainment and placed it in a folder on my desktop. Having come across it this morning, it seemed worth sharing. If you can find some of these, they will reward you. Or, if you be patient, I will share some of them on this blog over the next short space of days.

Billy Collins
(selections from Sailing Alone Around the Room)
Aristotle p. 132
Another Reason I Don't Keep a Gun in the House p. 3
Some Days p. 97

Hilaire Belloc
Matilda Who Told Lies and Was Burned

Rilke
(from The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke)
first sentence, page 91
The Panther p. 25
Autumn Day p 11 two versions
Sonnets to Orpheus 1.3 and II. 13

Dorothy Parker
Bric-A-Brac

Robert Browning
How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Blackberries

Robert Frost
Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Eve

Ed Newman
Wisconsin Misty Morning
Bad Break
Hitchhiking Across Antarctica
High Upon the Wire

Cervantes
Poem from Don Quixote

Dale Wasserman
Lyrics of To Dream the Impossible Dream

Bob Dylan
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall
It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleedin’)

One reason for sharing a night of poetry would be to share a few of my own poems with a wider audience. If you have interest, here is a link to a few of my early favorites which I have produced. http://www.enewman.biz/p-favos.html