Refiguring Death: the Poetics of Transience in the Work of Rainer Maria Rilke
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Refiguring Death: The Poetics of Transience in the Work of Rainer Maria Rilke Marielle Jane Sutherland PhD University College London July 2003 ProQuest Number: U642808 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest U642808 Published by ProQuest LLC(2016). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Abstract My thesis explores the role of the work of art in Rilke’s poetry in forging a unity between life and death which paradoxically upholds their difference. I turn to the neglected area of the relationship between death and writing, identifying language - specifically the language of poetry - as the place of relation to the difference and otherness of death. Using examples from the Neue Gedichte, and with reference to the later work, I show that the Rilkean ‘death of one’s own’ is a death created in the language of poetic figure or ‘Bild’, language that opens a recessive space, loosening the rigidity of received language which, driven by its phobia of death’s otherness, suppresses and homogenises it. I demonstrate that the ‘Other’ of the Rilkean death is encountered in the construction of the poetic figure, an excess of language beyond physical, metaphysical, logical and psychological determination. It is in this sense that the Rilkean concept of the ‘death of one’s own’ - the poetological significance of which has not yet been fully elucidated - is a self-made, written death. I argue that in Rilke’s work, death becomes one’s own if poetry can write a space for it, a language which is precisely not one’s own. Rilke’s creation of the language of death is the gestation of the imaginai death of his own in the poetic language of anonymity and excess. Crucial to this study is the poetological aspect of the frequently employed term, ‘das Schwere’. I suggest that it refers to the difficulty inherent in the orientation towards the difference of death and the parallel difficulty of the transformation into the different reality of art which does not yield a systematic reading. I carry out extensive examinations of the requiem poems of 1908 in which the difficulty of the transformation of death into poetic figure appears most clearly as the axis on which the orientation towards death as extremity, impersonality and otherness takes place. 11 Table of Contents Acknowledgements ni List of Abbreviations iv Introduction 1 Chapter 1; Death as the Summation of Life 9 Introduction 9 1.1: Integrating the Difference of Death 10 1.2: The Fruit of the ‘Death of one’s Own’ 20 1.3: The Burden of Death’s Difference 27 1.4: The Inspiration of the Outside 32 Chapter 2: The Written Work of Death 42 Introduction 42 2.1 : Rewriting the Real 43 2.2: Writing and Dying at the Limit 54 2.3: The Dead Body and the Body of the Poem 77 2.4: Die Figur’ 90 2.5: The Outside on the Inside 101 Chapter 3: Requiem fiir eine Freundin 106 Introduction 106 Rilke and Paula Modersohn-Becker 106 The Poetry of Requiem 107 3.1: The Circle as the ‘Figure’ of the ‘Death of one’s Own’ 112 3.2: Paula Modersohn-Becker’s Art 123 3.3: The Death Seed 137 3.4: ‘Klagen’ 154 Chapter 4: Requiem fiir Wolf Graf von Kalckreuth 177 Introduction 177 4.1 : The Burden of Poetry 182 4.2: ‘Nichts als Bild’: The Poetic Image 194 4.3: The Death which is not one’s Own - Committing Artistic Suicide 205 4.4: Rilke and the ‘Figure’ of Kalckreuth 211 Conclusion 222 Appendices 226 , Appendix 1 ..............................................................................................................226 Appendix 2 227 Appendix 3 228 Bibliography 229 Ill Acknowledgements I would like to thank the following organisations and people: The Arts and Humanities Research Board for a three-year Studentship, and for a travel grant which enabled me to research at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv at Marbach. The UCL Graduate School for a three-year Minor Research Scholarship. The Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst for a Short-Term Research Grant which enabled me to research at the Freie Universitat, Berlin. My supervisor, Dr. Adrian Stevens, for his insight, his dedication, and his sheer enthusiasm for this project. My secondary supervisor. Professor Martin Swales, for his unremitting support. My proofreaders: Gemma Gamer, Simon Thomas, Dr. Morwenna Symons and Florence Cason. Professor Eggert, and Professor Bennholdt-Thomsen at the Freie Universitat, Berlin for their hospitality and support. Dr. David Constantine, former tutor in German at The Queen’s College, Oxford, who introduced me to Rilke, and was always an inspiration. Mrs P. Middleton, former German teacher at Hartlepool Vlth Form College, who gave me so much. The staff of UCL German Department for their help and encouragement, particularly Dr. Fred Wagner. Bill Abbey, Librarian at the Institute of Germanic Studies. My family, host families and friends for their patience. IV List of Abbreviations Literary works by Rilke KA Rainer Maria Rilke. Werke. Kommentierte Ausgabe, 4 vols, ed. by Manfred Engel, Ulrich Fiillebom, Horst Nalewski, August Stahl (Frankfurt a.M. and Leipzig: Insel, 1996) SW Rainer Maria Rilke. Samtliche Werke, ed. by the Rilke- Archiv and Ruth Sieber-Rilke, 6 vols (Frankfurt a. M.: Insel, 1966) SB Das Stunden-Buch, SW I, 249-366 BE Das Buck derBilder, 2 parts, SW^I, 367-478 NG Neue Gedichte, 2 parts, SW 1,479-642 Requiem F Requiem fur eine Freundin, 5WI, 645-56 Requiem K Requiem fiir Wolf Graf von Kalckreuth, SWI, 657-64 DE Die Duineser Elegien, SW I, 683-726 SO Die Sonette an Orpheus, 2 parts, SWI, 727-73 Malte Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge, SW VI, 709-946 Essays by Rilke Rodin Auguste Rodin, 2 parts, SW V, 135-242 Worpswede Worpswede, SW V, 7-134 Über Kunst Über Kunst, SW V, 426-434 Über den jungen Über den jungen Dichter, SW V, 1046-55 Dichter Landschaft Von der Landschaft, SW V, 516-22 Testament Rainer Maria Rilke. Das Testament (Frankfurt a.M. Suhrkamp, 1975) Rilke’s Letters Briefe 1902-06 Rainer Maria Rilke. Briefe aus den Jahren 1902 bis 1906, ed. by Ruth Sieber-Rilke and Carl Sieber (Leipzig: Insel, 1930) Briefe 1906-07 Rainer Maria Rilke. Briefe aus den Jahren 1906 bis 1907, ed. by Ruth Sieber-Rilke and Carl Sieber (Leipzig: Insel, 1930) Briefe 1907-14 Rainer Maria Rilke. Briefe aus den Jahren 1907 bis 1914, ed. by Ruth Sieber Rilke and Carl Sieber (Leipzig: Insel, 1933) Briefe 1914-21 Rainer Maria Rilke. Briefe aus den Jahren 1914 bis 1921, ed. by Ruth Sieber-Rilke and Carl Sieber (Leipzig: Insel, 1938) Muzot Rainer Maria Rilke. Briefe aus Muzot 1921- 1926, ed. by Ruth Sieber-Rilke and Carl Sieber (Leipzig: Insel, 1937) Briefe Rainer Maria Rilke. Briefe , 2 vols, ed. by Rilke-Archiv in association with Ruth Sieber-Rilke (Wiesbaden: Insel, 1950) Cézanne Rainer Maria Rilke. Briefe über Cézanne, ed. by Clara Rilke (Frankfurt a. M.: Insel, 1962) LAS Rainer Maria Rilke. Lou Andreas-Salomé. Briefwechsel, ed. by Ernst Pfeiffer (Frankfurt a. M.: Insel, 1975) Merline Rainer Maria Rilke et Merline. Correspondance 1920- 1926, ed. by Dieter Bassermann (Zürich: Max Niehans Verlag, 1954) Sizzo Rainer Maria Rilke. Die Briefe an Grafin Sizzo 1921- 1926, ed. by Ingeborg Schnack (Franfurt a. M.: Insel, 1977) Nâdhemy Rainer Maria Rilke. Briefe an Sidonie Nâdhemy von Borutin, ed. by Bernhard Blume (Frankfurt a. M.: Insel, 1973) Volkart Rainer Maria Rilke. Briefe an Nanny Wunderly-Volkart, 2 vols (Frankfurt a.M.: Insel, 1977) B.a.e.j.D. Briefe an einen jungen Dichter (Leipzig: Insel, 1929) MTT Rainer Maria Rilke und Marie von Thum und Taxis. Briefwechsel, 2 vols (Zurich: Niehans & Rokintansky Verlag and Insel Verlag, 1951) Verleger Rainer Maria Rilke. Briefe an seinen Verleger 1906 bis 1926, 2 vols, (Wiesbaden: Insel, 1949) Heydt Rilke. Briefe an Karl und Elisabeth von der Heydt 1905- 1922, ed. by Ingebog Schnack and Renate Scharffenberg (Frankfurt a. M.: Insel, 1986) Mitterer Rainer Maria Rilke. Correspondence in Verse with Erika Mitterer. The German Text with an English translation by N. K. Cruickshank (London: Hogarth Press, 1953) Amitié La Dernière Amitié de Rainer Maria Rilke, ed. by Madame Floui Bey (Dijon: Robert Laffont, 1949) Junghanns Rainer Maria Rilke. Inga Junghanns. Briefwechsel, ed. by Wolfgang Herwig (Wiesbaden: Insel, 1959) Letters Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, 2 vols, trans. by Jane Bannard Greene and M.D: Herter Norton (New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Inc., 1945) Berliner Tageblatt, no. ‘Fin Brief von Rilke’, Berliner Tageblatt, no. 563, 29 563, 29 November 1929 November 1929 VI Rilke’s Journals TF Tagebiicher aus der FrUhzeit, ed. by Carl Sieber and Ruth Sieber-Rilke (FranJrfurt a. M.: Insel, 1973) FTB ‘Das FlorenzerTagebuch’ (1898), TF, 13-120 STB ‘Das SchmargendorferTagebuch’ (1898/1899/1900), TF, 121-256 WTB ‘Das WorpswederTagebuch’ (1900), TF, 257-358 BTF Rainer Maria Rilke. Briefe und Tagebiicher aus der FrUhzeit 1899-1902, ed. by Ruth Sieber-Rilke and Carl Sieber (Leipzig: Insel, 1933) Other Paula Paula Modersohn-Becker in Briefen und Tagebiichem, ed. by Giinter Busch and Liselotte von Reinken (Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer, 1979) Space Maurice Blanchot, The Space of Literature, transi, by Ann Smock (Lincoln, London: University of Nebraska, 1982) Contingency Rorty, Richard, Contingency, Irony, Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) Additional Notes I include the first relevant line number in references to Rilke’s long poems only.