Ahead of All Parting
It is natural in the grasp of dark winter to turn thoughts toward the darkness, and I have been especially thoughtful about partings and pain recently as several friends wrestle with the iron-cold fates of age and loss and face uncertain futures with a resilience that leans toward Sisyphean strength. Something reminded me of one of the passages of Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus and I began re-reading the remarkable translation by Stephen Mitchell and was staggered by Sonnet XIII which I had not remembered . . . or had simply not been moved by in earlier translations. It is the focus of this post.
Be ahead of all parting, as though it already werebehind you, like the winter that has just gone by.For among these winters there is one so endlessly winterthat only by wintering through it all will your heart survive.Be forever dead in Eurydice-more gladly ariseinto the seamless life proclaimed in your song.Here, in the realm of decline, among momentary days,be the crystal cup that shattered even as it rang.Be-and yet know the great void where all things begin,the infinite source of your own most intense vibration,so that, this once, you may give it your perfect assent.To all that is used-up, and to all the muffled and dumbcreatures in the world's full reserve, the unsayable sums,joyfully add yourself, and cancel the count.
This translation by Stephen Mitchell can be found at PoemHunter: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-sonnets-to-orpheus-book-2-xiii/
The haunting line, “Be forever dead in Eurydice” refers to the myth of Orpheus, the greatest musician in all Greece, and his beloved bride, Eurydice. Within a short time after their marriage Eurydice is bitten by a snake and dies. Orpheus in his grief sacks the walls of Hades to plead for her release. As the Bullfinch version tells us:
As he sang these tender strains, the very ghosts shed tears. Tantalus, in spite of his thirst, stopped for a moment his efforts for water, Ixion's wheel stood still, the vulture ceased to tear the giant's liver, the daughters of Danaus rested from their task of drawing water in a sieve, and Sisyphus sat on his rock to listen. Then for the first time, it is said, the cheeks of the Furies were wet with tears. Proserpine could not resist, and Pluto himself gave way. Eurydice was called. She came from among the new-arrived ghosts, limping with her wounded foot. Orpheus was permitted to take her away with him on one condition: that he should not turn round to look at her till they should have reached the upper air. Under this condition they proceeded on their way, he leading, she following, through passages dark and steep, in total silence, till they had nearly reached the outlet into the cheerful upper world, when Orpheus, in a moment of forgetfulness, to assure himself that she was still following, cast a glance behind him, when instantly she was borne away. Stretching out their arms to embrace one another they grasped only the air. Dying now a second time she yet cannot reproach her husband, for how can she blame his impatience to behold her? "Farewell," she said, "a last farewell," and was hurried away, so fast that the sound hardly reached his ears.
This moment of utmost pathos has found its way for hundreds of years into songs, paintings, dances, opera and sculpture. I had not imagined that any image could do justice to the poem that Rilke fashioned around this scene, but I stumbled upon a contemporary sculpture by Richard MacDonald and recognized a work of art on a par with Auguste Rodin for its sublime majesty of human expression.
