Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share Rilke: Love and Conflict | Episode 03
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
Rilke: Love and Conflict | Episode 03
PODCAST #3: RILKE: LOVE AND CONFLICT | be the scripture you sing
by
Martin Bidney
Rainer Maria Rilke, greatest 20th century poet writing in German, enters the imaginal worlds of Buddhism, Islam, and the ancient Greeks in a be-loving way, seeking to embody the traditions he sings of. When I “interview” him in my book Rilke’s Melodic and Metrical Art Vol I, I seek to create a word music of empathy in “replying” to Rilke as my mentor, friend, teacher, and dialogue partner.
In dialogue 178 where we discuss the concluding poem in Rilke’s two-volume work New Poems (1907-8), I respond to his transcendent vision of Buddha with a simpler reaction from my own experience of viewing Buddha statues like the one Rilke described. Turning to the sonnet “Muhammad’s Calling,” I respond in dialogue 172 to the Prophet’s terrifying encounter with Angel Gabriel by telling, in my sonnet, of the parentally loving protections the Qur’an reciter would receive.
The dramatic contrast between these two Islam-related poems will only intensify in what we speak of next. In dialogue 75, Rilke portrays “Cretan Artemis” as formidably complex in combining the compassion of a midwife with the prowess of an archer-warrior. My reply, contrastingly, focuses on the way Artemis applied her obstetric skills the minute after she was born by helping twin brother Apollo issue from their mother’s body. Then, to develop more fully the idea of a pervading conflict in cultural history – and in human psychology – between the impulses to Love and War, I open our three ambitious final dialogues.
Dialogue 72 centers on Rilke’s “The Birth of Venus,” where the violence that concludes the poet’s presentation of this marvelous episode dramatizes the intimate linkage of love and war. Replying, I focus on Rilke’s image of the bloodied dolphin to begin an overview of love-and-war myths beginning with the leading of sailor-explorers by amiable, human-like dolphins to what would become the site of the powerfully enigmatic – and dolphin-named – Oracle at Delphi.
Why does Rilke’s “The Vase of Roses” in dialogue 73 begin with the image of two men clasped together in a perilous wrestling match? Clearly to ensure we never forget the linkage of the deities of Love and War, who extramaritally begot the harmless-looking Cupid, with his, at times, lethal darts. Responding, I focus rather on the flowers themselves, viewing them, for a complementary perspective, from the standpoint of mystical Sufi Persian love poets.
Finally, in dialogue 70, I react to Rilke’s profoundly empathetic neo-Grecian poem “Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes” by answering him with a lyric I translated from Russian which proves the strong affinity of Anna Akhmatova’s outlook with Rilke’s own. In “Lot’s Wife,” too, we come to see the need to look back, and we clearly comprehend the futility of prohibitions that would try to stop us!
View all episodes
By Martin Bidney
5
11 ratings
PODCAST #3: RILKE: LOVE AND CONFLICT | be the scripture you sing
by
Martin Bidney
Rainer Maria Rilke, greatest 20th century poet writing in German, enters the imaginal worlds of Buddhism, Islam, and the ancient Greeks in a be-loving way, seeking to embody the traditions he sings of. When I “interview” him in my book Rilke’s Melodic and Metrical Art Vol I, I seek to create a word music of empathy in “replying” to Rilke as my mentor, friend, teacher, and dialogue partner.
In dialogue 178 where we discuss the concluding poem in Rilke’s two-volume work New Poems (1907-8), I respond to his transcendent vision of Buddha with a simpler reaction from my own experience of viewing Buddha statues like the one Rilke described. Turning to the sonnet “Muhammad’s Calling,” I respond in dialogue 172 to the Prophet’s terrifying encounter with Angel Gabriel by telling, in my sonnet, of the parentally loving protections the Qur’an reciter would receive.
The dramatic contrast between these two Islam-related poems will only intensify in what we speak of next. In dialogue 75, Rilke portrays “Cretan Artemis” as formidably complex in combining the compassion of a midwife with the prowess of an archer-warrior. My reply, contrastingly, focuses on the way Artemis applied her obstetric skills the minute after she was born by helping twin brother Apollo issue from their mother’s body. Then, to develop more fully the idea of a pervading conflict in cultural history – and in human psychology – between the impulses to Love and War, I open our three ambitious final dialogues.
Dialogue 72 centers on Rilke’s “The Birth of Venus,” where the violence that concludes the poet’s presentation of this marvelous episode dramatizes the intimate linkage of love and war. Replying, I focus on Rilke’s image of the bloodied dolphin to begin an overview of love-and-war myths beginning with the leading of sailor-explorers by amiable, human-like dolphins to what would become the site of the powerfully enigmatic – and dolphin-named – Oracle at Delphi.
Why does Rilke’s “The Vase of Roses” in dialogue 73 begin with the image of two men clasped together in a perilous wrestling match? Clearly to ensure we never forget the linkage of the deities of Love and War, who extramaritally begot the harmless-looking Cupid, with his, at times, lethal darts. Responding, I focus rather on the flowers themselves, viewing them, for a complementary perspective, from the standpoint of mystical Sufi Persian love poets.
Finally, in dialogue 70, I react to Rilke’s profoundly empathetic neo-Grecian poem “Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes” by answering him with a lyric I translated from Russian which proves the strong affinity of Anna Akhmatova’s outlook with Rilke’s own. In “Lot’s Wife,” too, we come to see the need to look back, and we clearly comprehend the futility of prohibitions that would try to stop us!