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
8 - “Der alte Invalid”
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
Rilke's terrified outcry of 19 February 1919 (B 14–21, 235) to Insel's Dr. Hünich concerned his very first book, Leben und Lieder (1894). Looking at Insel's Die Frühen Gedichte (1909) and Erste Gedichte (1913), he found “beschämend viele Spuren jener kindischen Unredlichkeit” (shamefully many traces of that childish dishonesty) of which he had been guilty in those far-off days before the turn of the century, but now Dr. Hünich proposed resuscitating “jenes, in aller Weise verunglückte Heftchen, ‘Leben und Lieder,’ aus seiner heilen Vergessenheit” (that booklet, “Life and Songs,” a failure in every respect, from its blessed oblivion). If Dr. Hünich forged ahead, he would have to confront the poet's “unwillkürlichsten Widerständen” (most unconditional oppositions), put for emphasis into the plural. Rilke's wish or threat was respected; Leben und Lieder was not reprinted until volume 3 of the Sämtliche Werke (1959).
However dreadful, it contains verses of some semi-biographical interest: for example, “Der alte Invalid” (“Invalid” means disabled veteran, unfit for further service). Formally “Der alte Invalid” resembles other longish narrative poems in the collection: “Bis die Sonne wieder scheint” (Until the Sun Shines Again), which begins with a mother at a sick child's bedside; “Lorbeeren (Ein Künstlerschicksal)” (Laurels, An Artist's Fate), in which an old woman, once a feted actress, lies dying as she fingers a withered laurel wreath; and “Der Schauspieler” (The Actor), twenty-eight quatrains long: the actor has to leave his mortally ill wife (the show must go on), and, returning from the theater, finds her “tot und fahl” (dead and sallow), a hysteron proteron occasioned by the need for a rhyme with “des Mondes Strahl” (the moon's beam).
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- Information
- Young Rilke and his Time , pp. 237 - 248Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2008