Rose, Oh Pure Contradiction, Joy
Rose, oh pure contradiction, joy
of being No-one's sleep, under so
many lids.
Commentary
(translation by Stephen Mitchell)
Notes: This is Rilke’s self-composed epitaph; in the original German:
Rose, oh reiner Widerspruch, Lust
Niemandes Sclaf zu sein unter soviel
Lidern.
The Tanith Lee poem [Poem #1366] reminded me of today’s poem by Rilke.
“Lidern” could be a pun on “Lieder”, songs, poems. Lips like roses is a cliche, but lips like rose petals, clinically precise, a matter of texture not color, isn’t.
— Tim
Martin adds
I find the line breaks in this poem confusing - could someone who speaks German tell me whether they’re more natural in the original?
Links
Another translation, and a biography:
[broken link] http://www.geocities.com/Paris/LeftBank/4027/bio.html
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From the Wondering Minstrels mailing list, 1999–2008.
Cat Pegg · 12 February 2004
I think Rilke liked roses a lot. I remember reading, in a translation of Sonnets to Orpheus, one about a rose. I can’t remember it word for word, alas, but it was saying that, while a contemporary rose shared its name with an ancient rose, they were very different flowers: before roses were cultivated, they only had five petals.
Yet, it says, ‘you are still a creature of air and fire’.
It stuck in my memory when most of the Sonnets didn’t.
Why is it that poets mostly talk about Roses, not other flowers?
John B. Lambert · 12 April 2007
If German “lust” means joy and pain, couldn’t the contradiction of the rose be its thorns (pain) underneath its lids/petals (joy)?
matsumoto-kzo · 18 April 2008
<<“Lidern” could be a pun on “Lieder”, songs, poems. » Lidern is simply a plural form of Lid (eyelid in English), no relation to “Lied.”
In this poem, rose should be a “bud “. Rilke likened petals of a bud to eyelids of men.
Though there are so many people are sleeping in a rose bud, we can not know whether they are alive or not. They look like men who are going to be born, but also look like men who have been dead. So he called such situation is pure contradiction. Because bud is not contaminated yet. So it is pure.
If we can not classify the alive from the dead, we need not have a fear for the death. This is the Joy he wrote.
This poem is the most beautiful and deepest that I have ever read. RUBY/Japan