Lion and Little Boy
THIS book, the companion to Selected Works, Volume I: Prose, which appeared in 1954, con- sists of a complete translation by J. B. Leishman and others of the first volume of the Inset- Verlag's Ausgewiihlte Werke (second edition), plus twenty-one other poems. Aside from a few austere notes, this is a 'plain text,' exactly what is needed now for Rilke.
Its publication is an event, not despite, but because of, the sharp falling-off of interest in the poet. Though it may not impel the reviewer into some brave new commentary—and at this point in time the only comment I would offer is : read or. re-read New Poems, Sonnets to Orpheus, Duino Elegies and a selection of others—it at least provokes two considerations. Firstly, con- cerning the poet, that. the remarkable inequality of his work is still not properly recognised, partly because of the consistency of his 'manner,' partly because the more merely 'manner' it is the more opportunity it affords the interpreter. Also, that at his best he is as great as has ever been claimed, and of more enduring, more cen- tral interest than has often been made out.
It seems a pity that this volume confronts the reader at once with the whole Book of Hours, that long-drawn-out game with God which the latter (not half so refined, one suspects, as those various ladies with whom Rilke played a similar game) must surely have found both irritating and doubtfully respectful. (`You mustn't be afraid, God . . . Ah, God, don't lose your balance. . . The Book of Images shows this aspect of the European fin de siècle dying away. And New Poems is full• of genuinely new poems, lively, observant, tender, amused, broad in sympathy, sensitive, and sensitive about something. 'Leda' (the uneasy god comes to enjoy his new plumage) is a worthy companion piece to Yeats's poem. 'Birth of Venus' is a solidly created work, grow- ing from detail to detail, not an invitation to mythologise or anthropologise. 'The Merry-go- round' is a merry poem, and touching: And on the lion a little boy is going, whose small hot hands hold on with all his might, while raging lion's tongue and teeth are showing— and (the 'elephant all white' comes into view three times) it really goes round. While the Fifth Elegy doesn't merely gloss Picasso's Saltim- banques, it sets the figures cartwheeling out of the picture. Very unlike that other action paint- ing, the Tenth Elegy ('the City of Pain'), which announces itself as allegorical, then reminds us of a jazzed-up Pilgrim's Progress and (largely owing to that elder female Lament : 'We were once a great family, we Lamentations') even of Cold Comfort Farm.
The second consideration, relating to the trans- lator, is that our debt to him is, in spite of every- thing, plainly enormous. Like his subject, Mr. Leishman is very unequal. He wards off the charge of using 'un-English' phrases by quoting a letter of Rilke's concerning Princess Marie's Italian versions : 'Remember that any language- superintendant on the German side, to whom the corresponding passage in my version was sub- mitted, would certainly protest that it was im- possible, un-German, unintelligible, un- un- un-.' But Rilke displays no accentual perversions cor- responding to 'Its healing among us is steady,' where the rhythmical context imposes a stress on the first syllable of 'among.' Nor is there any- thing like Leishman's horrid comparatives : 'flamelier,"sternlier,"intimater.' More sheerly
exasperating is his device of lopping the possess- ive apostrophe 's' from its noun, in order Id secure a pure rhyme, and -hurling it to the beginning of the next line, where it twitches like the tail of some particularly laboured cracker" riddle. 'Anxiously we long to be foot-helder,/we, too youthful sometimes for the elder' is lie" English, unintelligible and unlovely; the 'dell°. tion' from 'foot-hold' emerges only on reference to the perfectly normal German, 'verlangen Kir nach einem Halle.'
No, on balance, Leishman is definitely more 'un- un- un-' than Rilke. We should note, though, that his 'un-ness' is usually associated with the search for a rhyme; and rhyme is important for Rilke. `Some mighty will stands paralytic! (rhyming with 'be') is a blot on 'The Panther. Ruth Speirs has 'there stands, stunned, a great will,' ignoring the rhyme, but reproducing the shape of the line. Leishman can lapse into disast' rous bathos, especially in the vicinity of femin* inc rhymes ('nought for . . . sought for'). He haS
Are there in all great cities livers who, had it not been for you, would already have ended themselves in the rivers.
where C. F. Maclntyre more cautiously gives Are there in all great cities ever
those who without you would have lost themselves already in the river?
But where MacIntyre limps—`almost like a ma° looking in a mirror'—Leishman gets Rilke's rhythm and an English one : 'almost like looking in a mirror's round.' Of course, his customarY gusto and boldness do often pay off richly : for instance, in 'The Merry-go-round,' stud of horses' for Bestand von Plerden, which is legit- imately brighter than the original, since trans- lators must try to make on the roundabouts what they are bound to lose on the swings. 'In spite of everything': I have mentioned more than a fair share of the 'everything' that can be said against Leishman in this present volume. His misjudgments (as they seem to me) are such as any averagely intelligent translator wpuld avoid with ease. His successes are of the kind that only a translator of genius could achieve. TO find a typical passage of Rilkean music running in one's head, eventually to put words to it, and then discover that the words are English and Mr. Leishman's—many of us must have had this ex' perience. One of the New Poems begins, I am the lute. To make my body rise
out of your words, its strips' fine curvature, speak of me as you would of some mature Upcurving fig. . . .
D. J. ENRIGHT
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