Rilke
was a jerk? Dream Songs have their measure of obscurity, but I have to think
they should generally yield to pressure. The intense, sensitive young poet,
Ranier Maria Rilke, born in the Austro-Hungarian city of Prague—one of the
great, gorgeous cities of the earth—attracted accomplished and beautiful women,
with whom he had affairs, some turbulent, and one gathers from Berryman’s
allusions that Rilke broke some hearts while he lived.
Henry, here, with screwed-up lovely 23 (way too young for him, but let it go for now—she’s screwed up, apparently), can’t fathom why one would reject accomplished and beautiful women, especially with the string of luck he’s been having, the Old Beast, the old criminal.
Berryman’s
Henry doesn’t have to be likeable, and he’s not always going to be. In fact, I
find him a touch pathetic and sort of distasteful and worthy of a bit of
contempt right now. My mood should improve. But this life of ours can wound
people, which is the point, and that’s why Henry gets a pass for the moment. We
need to have the festering of his wound established before we start looking for
the whys of it and the way toward healing. But for now...
Enchanted one: How shall two chosen words
achieve the harmony of the pure rhyme
which in you like a signal comes and goes?
From your forehead the leafy lyre climbs,
and all your being moves in sure accord,
like those love lyrics whose words softly flow:
rose petals laid upon the closed eyelids
of one grown weary, who no longer reads
but shuts his eyes to see you—swiftly brought,
as though each leg were charged with leaps, but not
fired, as long as the neck holds the head
quiet to listen: as when in a green place
a bather in the woods is interrupted…
with the lake’s shine on her averted face.
When
I lived in Hungary, I got just a whiff and a glimmer or two of the noble old
Austro-Hungarian gallantry that eked its way through two massively devastating
wars and a crushed revolution, and the gray concrete of forty-four years of
Communist dominion. You see it most obviously in the wonderful architecture,
and there are traces in the language and the customs. (Kezét csókolom,
which is something only a man says to a much older woman, means “I kiss your
hand.” On a bumpy streetcar, women would sometimes lean on me for
support—baffling at first—but I’m a man, and therefore strong. During one of
the very first Hungarian classes that I took when I was at IU, my
teacher, Judit, [a lovely person with whom I became good friends], just
off the plane from Budapest, made a comment about women as flowers that the
American female grad students in class did not find remotely enchanting or
amusing. That kind of thing.) “The Gazelle” is not a modern poem, but it’s
lovely, and looks to me as if it comes from an effortlessly gallant and erotic
sensibility, from a culture that encouraged such a thing in an artist.
Rilke
rises out of Henry’s poor tormented subconscious like perfumed bubbles through
chilled champagne, and Henry is sick with jealousy over a world that is so lost
to him it might as well have had dinosaurs trundling through it. But the poems
bring back just enough, like those fragrances that always seem to come wafting
around corners in Paris. Rilke was a jerk because he didn’t appreciate the
erotic treasures that studded his life. (He died miserably in a sanitarium of
leukemia at age 51, but that’s not the point.) Rilke’s youth and beauty,
timeless now, merit the jealousy.
Do
something, Henry. Write a poem. I’m not even kidding. Go help somebody. But,
no, not yet. Whatever happened still too much just happened.
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