Duino Elegies & The Sonnets to Orpheus

Uniqlo shirt
Sezane skirt
Via Spiga heels
Celine handbag
Agape Studio necklace (c/o) (similar)
Linjer rings (c/o) (similar)
Location: Osborne Village – Winnipeg, Manitoba
Book: Duino Elegies & The Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke

I was seventeen when I picked up one of Rilke’s books for the first time. I can’t pretend to remember which one it was – I don’t have a clue. Earlier that year, I’d decided I should focus on reading classics. As years go, twelfth grade was a waste of time for me. I had no more than three classes each semester, which I went to simply for lack of anything else to do. My attendance at school was perfunctory, a social exercise, at best, rather than an educational one. So I took matters into my own hands. I spent my spare time, which was plentiful, in the library, spinning the creaky metal racks of paperbacks until I found a book that caught my eye. That’s where I stumbled upon Rilke.

(Welcome to Coco & Voltaire, a fashion blog about life and travel viewed through a literary lens. The rebrand has just begun, but if you want to know a little bit more about why I’ve decided to move on, and where we’re going after thirteen years of Coco & Vera, take a peek at the About page.)

Before my first experience of Rilke, I’d read Generals Die in Bed. And while I appreciated the sentiment, I wanted to understand the era about which it was written in a context outside of combat. I remembered reading something by the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke around Remembrance Day one year, so picking up one of this books seemed like a natural choice. There are so many funny things about life, but one of my favourites among them is that the things that are meant to find us always do. We never know what they are, we are never looking for them. Sometimes, they are a tired, dog-eared paperback, long neglected in a high school library.

That book, the title of which I can no longer recall, was the beginning of a lifetime spent reading and rereading the same poems. Poems on the most improbable subject, one in which I’d never had any interest and in which, outside of them, I still don’t: angels.

Rilke wrote about angels all his life. In the Duino Elegies & The Sonnets to Orpheus, he writes about almost nothing else. But the words, while so specific, are somehow also timeless and applicable to vast expanses of our collective experience. The thing about Rilke that I discovered when I picked up that first book of his, all those years ago, is that he said so many of the things I was thinking at seventeen, and at twenty-seven, and even now, a hundred years before those thoughts crossed my mind. While his subject matter is, in many ways, limited, the way in which he writes about it is universal, transcending both time and place.

“As when for some quick sketch, a wide background of contrast is laboriously prepared so that we can see more clearly: we never know the actual, vital contour of our own emotions – just what forms them from the outside.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke

Born in Prague, considered Austrian by nationality, Rilke was native German speaker. He traveled widely, spent time in Paris, worked for Rodin and deeply admired the work of Cezanne. He wrote in German, a language that I speak poorly, but he is consistently and faithfully translated by Stephen Mitchell. Not all translations of his work are equal. Mitchell’s, particularly his work on the Duino Elegies, are my favourite; he manages to both stay true to Rilke’s unique use of language and accurately convey the meaning of his work. Unlike some translators, who prefer to limit Rilke to moments when he was at his best, Mitchell does not edit or redact. He allows Rilke to be imperfect, flawed and thus, whole. Even if that means he sometimes comes across as less than modern, or, frankly, impatient, even petulant.

It’s because Rilke and his work are so beloved that many feel compelled to edit him. And in some ways I understand the impulse. But the Duino Elegies would not be what they are without all of the author, his best and worst moments, his fits of pique and profound grief, in them. These, not just his mastery of language, his ability to express what the rest of us cannot find words for, are what make his writing the balm that it is for so many wounded people. When we need confirmation that we are not alone in our humanity, Rilke’s words are always there, like an old friend, to remind us of that. It is precisely because he was so imperfect that so many people can see themselves in his work. That includes me, of course.

Poetry, which was considered little more than a tedious necessity required to complete school when I was growing up, has resurged in recent years. Instagram poets write three-line platitudes by the hundreds, bind them into books and sell millions of copies. And I admit that I’m glad, even if their work leaves me scratching my head. Poetry needs to reach people to be relevant. I would never deny it. But truly exceptional poetry reaches people without needing to meet them where they are – it invites them to go higher, without alienating them. Shakespeare does that. Rilke, too. The Duino Elegies in particular are often obscure, full of archaic themes and unknown worlds. And yet, anyone can understand them. The words are magnificent without ever being exclusionary.

Sometimes, it can be both. Rilke proves that. And so many other things, too.

“Her sleep was everything: the awesome trees, the distance I had felt so deeply that I could touch them, meadows in spring: all wonder that had ever seized my heart. She slept the world.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke

I reread the Duino Elegies every year. Sometimes out loud, sometimes several times in a row. Always with joy. I am forever finding something new within its pages. I was seventeen when I discovered Rilke. At that age, I needed to know more than anything that my path would not always be a solitary one. And a stranger, a man from another world and another time, was the one to prove that to me. That his books will always be there when I need that reminder is an incredible gift.

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