Refinement of Passion Letters to Merline, 1919-i922. By Rainer Maria
Rilke. Translated
by Violet M. Macdonald. introduction by J. B. Leishman. (Methuen. los. 6d.) by Violet M. Macdonald. introduction by J. B. Leishman. (Methuen. los. 6d.)
How uniform in character is the vast mass of Rilke's correspon- dence ! Mr. Leishman, in an introduction to the Letters to Merline which, in spite of occasional extravagances, is of great help in giving
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the reader his bearings, offers a pithy variant of the general verdict in describing the immense outpouring as a whole as the waste-paper basket of Rilke's emotions. Never was a poet more worshipful of his poet's.vocation or more deliberate as a letter-writer in stoking the fires of his poetry. The mood and the sentiment of Rilke's correspondence, above all the correspondence with the women of his amours or amorous inclinations, bear all the marks of inward cultivation, of rapt pursuit of his " obligation " to art. It is not so much that the temper of his letters is unvaryingly poetical, though often in a cloudy and high-flown way, as that they so plainly serve his self-dedication to poetry.
The special interest of the Letters to Merline is that they belong to the final and richest period of Rilke's poetry—more exactly, perhaps, to the preparatory phase of this period—after he had taken leave of Germany for the last time and gone to Switzerland. They are written for the most part from the Schloss Berg, but the last half-dozen or so are dated from the small thirteenth-century tower in the Valais, the Château de Muzot, where Rilke passed the last five years of his life and where, early in 1922, just before this correspondence ends, " the distant Angels " at last drew near and he completed, in a blaze of creation, the Duino Elegies and wrote the whole of the Sonnets to Orpheus.
The " inwardness " of the affair illustrated by the Letters to Merline is of much the same kind as that associated with " Ben- venuta " and the others. All that can be learnt of Merline from the letters is that she painted, was possibly married, and in the end suffered. Written almost entirely in French, Rilke's letters to her breathe an intellectual refinement of passion, sincere affection—and a most prodigal egotism. Between intervals of seeing her he revelled in the freedom and solitude in which his spirit laboured to bring the Angel nearer to him and, since she was unhappy, protested that she was experiencing a nobler love, a higher destiny, in reconciling herself to his absence. If, while he gathered his whole self together around his work, thus assuring himself of the means to his most abiding happiness, she found life encumbered with " half-petrified duties "—" don't let this discourage you, Dearest ; you may be sure that all this will change. The-transfigura- tion of your heart will itself enable you to influence, little by little, the obstinate facts of reality ; all that seems impenetrable to you now will be rendered transparent by your burning heart." Rilke's was that kind of fascination. The translation of the letters has evidently been made with complete sympathy. R. D. CHARQUES..
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