Rilke’s Das Marien-Leben in English

Rilke wrote Das Marien-Leben at the castle at Duino, on the Italian Adriatic coast, in late 1911 and early 1912, just before he began work on what was to become the monumental Duineser Elegien.  In the preface to his translation in 1951, Stephen Spender notes that ‘Rilke wrote of the Marien-Leben as being “a little work presented to him”.  All but two poems of the cycle were written, apparently with great rapidity, in January 1912.  But it is characteristic of Rilke at Duino—where he probably wrote the remaining dozen—that a cluster of poems should be written at great speed after a long period of silence.  It is characteristic also that the idea of the group had its inception a long time previously.  For in September 1900, the painter Heinrich Vogeler, had shown Rilke sketches of an Annunciation and a scene On the Flight, which immediately inspired the two earlier poems.  Rilke had the idea of an illustrated volume with poems by him and drawings by Vogeler: and it was Vogeler’s reminding of him of this in 1912—long after he had lost sympathy with the artist’s work—which seems to have revived the inspiration.  In The Life of the Virgin Mary the poet never forgets the idea of paintings.  It reads almost like a series of variations in words on themes by painters …’

Unlike some of Rilke’s poetry, Das Marien-Leben, which was first published in German in 1913, by the Insel Verlag in Leipzig, has received less attention from English-language translators.  (I note in passing that Rilke himself, writing from the Hôtel de Russie in Rome in April 1910 to Countess Manon zu Solms-Laubach, said that ‘poems, albeit with the best will in the world, the greatest skill, cannot be translated without losses.  I always think one should stick to the originals.’) As far as I can tell, in over a hundred years, there have been nine English translations. The last to appear in the UK was almost 75 years ago.

I first came across Rilke’s sequence about seven years ago, when I was looking for a text to set to music relating to the Wedding at Cana.  (You can listen to the resultant piece, which sets my own translation, here.  I have since translated the entire cycle of poems, setting some of them to music, e.g. on the Annunciation and the Visitation.)  Working on my translation led me to explore other English versions of the sequence; here are the fruits of that research. My thanks go to Dr Jo Catling at the University of East Anglia for helping identify some of these translations.

Würzburg, printed by Conrad Triltsch, 1921. Translated by R. G. L. [Robert Guy Lionel] Barrett (1884–1974), an Oxford English graduate who had been interned in Germany during the First World War.  Proceeds from the book went to Save the Children, which had been founded only two years before.  ‘This translation was submitted to Herrn Rainer Maria Rilke and is published with the kind permission of his publishers, the Insel-Verlag zu Leipzig.’  It seems Rilke himself was unsure of the translation, calling it ‘a little volume produced with much good taste.  I can’t make much beyond that out of it, however, as this language has—and in spite of my translation of the Browning Sonnets—remained the most insuperably alien to me’ (letter to Countess Sizzo, 6 Jan. 1922, tr. Eudo C. Mason, Rilke, Europe, and the English-speaking World, p. 46).  A more recent critic thought Barrett’s translation, which is rhymed, ‘grotesque’.

New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 1938. Translated by M. D. [Mary Dows] Herter Norton (1892–1985), co-founder of the publishers here.

Berkeley & Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1947. Translated by C. F. [Carlyle Ferren] MacIntyre (1890–1967).  ‘In this cycle of poems, Rilke resembles the painters of the Middle Ages in the human treatment with which he presents his characters …  Whether or not Rilke was an orthodox Catholic has no bearing on the effect of the series as poetry—the immediate communication and the sincerity of the impression.  And it is because the other great poets of the last hundred years, including Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Stefan George, and Paul Valéry … have ignored the Bible as a source of subject matter, Rilke’s delicate contribution to the tradition may seem especially significant and unusual.’

London, Vision Press, 1951.  It was also published in New York the same year by the Philosophical Library. Translated by Stephen Spender (1909–1995).  ‘Rilke’s very personal interpretation of the Christian story, which finds expression in some of his most beautiful poems, culminates in the cycle The Life of the Virgin Mary.  The greater part was “presented to him” in 1912, the same year which saw the birth of the first two of the Duino Elegies.  Thus it belongs to the period of Rilke’s maturity.  The Virgin Mary is the fullest incarnation of a figure which had always appealed particularly strongly to the poet’s imagination: the pure and dedicated woman.  This cycle has been strangely neglected even by Rilke’s admirers, possibly because of the unorthodox manner in which the poet approaches his theme …  At the present moment, when literature in its search for values tends to discover new meanings in old stories, Rilke’s moving re-creation of the most meaningful story of all offers us a deeply rewarding experience.’

Edinburgh & London, Oliver & Boyd, 1952. Translated by N. K. [Norah Kelsall] Cruickshank (1909–1996).  ‘There is about these poems a singing quality, a simplicity and freshness, which justifies the poet’s description of them as songs, and seems to call for musical accompaniment.  Their broadcast to Hindemith’s setting during the course of the 1951 Edinburgh Festival aroused much interest.’

Philadelphia, Middle Earth Books, 1977. Translated by Franz Wright (1953–2015).  Printed in only 300 copies and dedicated to M. D. Herter Norton.

Vancouver, The Capilano Review, No. 26, 1983. Translated by Dora FitzGerald (b.1934).  ‘Here is a slender volume of poems of which Rilke writes, “It is a little book that was presented to me, quite above and beyond myself, by a peaceful generous spirit, and I shall always get on well with it, just as I did when I was writing it.”  This harmonious event took place at Duino in January 1912, yet this was hardly a characteristic mood for Rilke at this time in his life.  The preceding month he had written to the proprietress of the Duino Castle that he was creeping around in the thickets of his life, “shouting like mad and clapping my hands …  I howl at the moon with all my heart and put the blame on the dogs.”

‘Later that year, Rilke began work on the Duino Elegies as a voice in the wind carried these words to him: “Wer, wenn ich schrie, hörte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen?” (Who, if I cried out, would hear me then among the angelic order?)  Of course the angelic orders had already been engaged in dialogue with the cast of characters in Das Marienleben, at times in homely simplicity, at others, in dazzling magnificence.  Rilke’s very real angels interact with both the living and the dead, personifying, if you will, his profound belief in the affirmation of life and death.’

Dublin, The Dedalus Press, 2003. Translated by Christine McNeill (b.1953).  350 copies printed.  ‘Rilke began work on The Life of the Virgin Mary in 1900 … At that time his intention was to publish a cycle of poems togethers with drawings by his old friend, the painter Heinrich Vogeler.  However, he did not complete the sequence until 1911.  By then, influenced by his association with Rodin and his knowledge of Cézanne’s work, he felt Vogeler had not sufficiently progressed in his artistic development and he withdrew from the collaboration …

‘From this small episode it can be seen that Rilke in his life and work was concerned with artistic progress.  He pushed poetic barriers to their limits and tapped into psychological ideas well ahead of his time.  He travelled a great deal and made the first of his two journeys to Russia in 1899.  Fascinated by the Russian concept of God which, very different from Western Christianity, centred on the notion of a God in the process of becoming, he began work on The Book of Hours which explores the spiritual journey of a medieval monk.  He wrote the first three poems of The Life of the Virgin Mary while engaged on The Book of Hours, and the impulse for it may have come from his memory of Russian icons depicting the Mother of God.  Unlike The Book of Hours this work has the framework of a biblical narrative and charts the unfolding of the divine drama, culminating in Mary’s assumption into heaven.

‘A feeling of reverence pervades the sequence.  Although Rilke did not hold any orthodox beliefs, as a poet he was of the firm conviction that his work was dictated from “above” …  Mary, chosen as the pure vessel for the birth of God, is shown in Rilke’s verse as also being a vessel for the divine drama – the play of opposites within, to which each mortal is subject, and which she consciously bore.  Rilke himself experienced his creativity as a power that poured into him as into a vessel, and one can read in the wonder and mystery conveyed in the portrayal of the key episodes in Mary’s life and in the guidance of the angel through the divine drama on earth that Rilke believed in the presence of a transpersonal wisdom to which every man has access, and which mediates between the ego and the Higher Self.’

Livonia, Michigan, First Page Publications, 2005. Translated by Annemarie S. Kidder (b.1959).  ‘Much of [Rilke’s] poetry is marked by innovative and evocative imagery “painted” and conveyed through an economy of words that flow with rhythm and melody, while a frequent theme is the human heart’s insatiable longing for the transcendent, the divine …  [Das Marien-Leben] is a series of thirteen poems describing the life of the Virgin Mary, based on the Gospel accounts and Christian legend.  The poems mark a midpoint between Rilke’s publication of the second part of New Poems in 1908 and the final and sudden “appearance” of the rest of the Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus in 1923 at Muzot, Switzerland, prior to his death in 1926.  It is said that the intense labor on the prose work The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, begun in 1904 and finished in 1910, had exhausted Rilke to such a degree he found himself directionless until his final creative output in 1923.  As a result, the years from 1910 through 1922 have often been portrayed as Rilke’s crisis years, so that generally little attention has been afforded to his literary output during that time.  This is especially true for The Life of the Virgin Mary …’