Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- Chronology
- I Prague
- II Diaries
- III Rilke as Literary Critic
- IV Poems
- 8 “Der alte Invalid”
- 9 “Auswandrerschiff”
- 10 “An den Grafen von Platen”
- 11 “Die Liese wird heute just sechzehn Jahr”
- 12 “Venedig”
- 13 “Weißes Glück”
- 14 “Aus einem Bauernsommer” and “Vom Tode”
- 15 “Intérieur”
- 16 “In der Certosa”
- 17 “Die Heiligen Drei Könige”
- 18 “Aus dem hohen Jubelklanggedränge” and “Im Musiksaal”
- 19 “Karl der Zwölfte von Schweden reitet in der Ukraine”
- 20 “Sturm”
- Select Bibliography
- Index
13 - “Weißes Glück”
from IV - Poems
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- Chronology
- I Prague
- II Diaries
- III Rilke as Literary Critic
- IV Poems
- 8 “Der alte Invalid”
- 9 “Auswandrerschiff”
- 10 “An den Grafen von Platen”
- 11 “Die Liese wird heute just sechzehn Jahr”
- 12 “Venedig”
- 13 “Weißes Glück”
- 14 “Aus einem Bauernsommer” and “Vom Tode”
- 15 “Intérieur”
- 16 “In der Certosa”
- 17 “Die Heiligen Drei Könige”
- 18 “Aus dem hohen Jubelklanggedränge” and “Im Musiksaal”
- 19 “Karl der Zwölfte von Schweden reitet in der Ukraine”
- 20 “Sturm”
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The Czech journalModerní revue pro literaturu, umĕní a život published in 1898 (4.7:173) a Rilke poem, “Bílé štĕstí” (Weißes Glück), translated by Arnošt Procházka. The previous year, Moderní revue had brought out two Rilke poems in German, “Der Kirchhof” (The Churchyard), taken into Advent as “Tenno” (SW 1:119), and “Der schwarze Tod” (The Black Death), next published in 1959 (SW 3:444). The journal's editor, Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic (1871–1951), was not a fanatic in the language question and, as a programmatic decadent, had a fondness for the morbid and the perverse. (Among Karásek's own poems in the journal were the sonnets “Sodoma” and “Venus masculinus”; the same year as Rilke's “Bílé štĕstí,” Karásek printed an excerpt, translated into Czech, from Epipsychidion, written in German by the Polish arch-decadent, Stanisław Przybyszewski.) Interviewing Karásek before his death, Clara Mágr learned, to her evident satisfaction, that young Rilke had spoken Czech very well; from Karásek, she proceeded to the archive of the bibliophile Emanuel Lešerad (1877–1955) and there came across the German text of “Bíléštĕstí,” dated 8 February 1898, that had been submitted to Karásek's journal. But a still earlier version of the poem, written in Munich, without the title “Weißes Glück,” was also extant, dated 12 June 1897.
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- Information
- Young Rilke and his Time , pp. 294 - 302Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2008