Rough Draft. Posted 6/22. To be updated/completed shortly.
I’ve wanted to read Rilke’s Elegies ever since I read about the major role/influence they play in Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow. I read The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell, which I understand is a powerful translation from the original German (which is printed on the even pages, while the English is on the right).
The introduction of the book introduces some fascinating ideas. The notion of being so repulsed by the imperfections of the body, and so in love with perfection that you fall in love with death of a way of preserving certain states… well, it’s not without a certain allure, in a high-school drama manner (soundtrack by the Smiths, The Cure, or their Emo descendents). But then you read the poems themselves and they move you with their futility and powerful depictions of hopeless sordid longing (which Rilke believes underpins all human interactions and colors them so much/disturbs them so much that true relations are impossible). He believes that it’s impossible to really see anyone, because you’re always looking for a mirror – looking for yourself in the other.
This notion of only being able to see yourself in the Other was depicted brilliantly in Stanislaw Lem’s novel Solaris (and, no, watching the Cloony/Soderberg film is not at all the same thing; either read the book or dig up Andrei Tarkovsky’s movie, instead), where a group of scientists in a huge space station are trying to understand/communicate with Solaris. Solaris is literally a living planet. The closest they get to a real connection are these phantasms/clones/??? Of traumatic people that Solaris creates for them; in Kris Kelvin’s case, this is Rheya, a woman who he loved yet did not treat right. The drama arises because there is no way for the two of them to really connect, because their contexts are wildly different and mankind looks for a mirror – looking for something that will tell him something of himself, not this neutral cipher that is indifferent to man’s existence, much less at his attempts of communication. Look at Solaris as similar to Rilke’s Angel – supremely indifferent, “serenely distains to annihilate us…” (1st Elegy).
Rilke talks about this “mirror” in the second section of his first elegy: “All this was mission. But could you accomplish it? Weren’t you always distracted by expectation, as if every event announced a beloved? (Where can you find a place to keep her, with all the huge strange thoughts inside you going and going and often staying all night).”
… think I’ve got a handle on Rilke’s death-wish; it’s more of a perfectionism. One sees or experiences something sublime and wants to keep that beautiful feeling, that lofty, purposeful sensation, going forever: “The angel [the sensation] is desire, if it were not desire, if it were pure being. Lived close to long enough, it turns every experience into desolation, because beauty is not what we want at those moments, death is what we want, an end to limit, an end to time. And death doesn’t even want us; it doesn’t want us or not want us.” p. XXXX.
“absolute fulfillment if it existed, without any diminishment of intensity, completely outside us.” P. XXXV.
I would add that the desolation arises from the inability to achieve the death one wants – a “going out on top” that retains the glory of the peak but also the knowledge of the world – but also that, after falling, one returns to sordid, everyday life, to the laundry and dirty dishes and mundane work and it all seems flat and tasteless when compared to the lofty idea (ideals) that you just experienced. In terms of GR, this is the tail end of the rainbow, when gravity – sordid reality – reasserts its dominance/tyranny, reminding you of your pretiteration.
Some react to this let down by turning to drugs or drink. Others try furiously to re-attain the heights (that…). Others simply slip into decadence, for what is the use of proprieties or morals in a world that denies you constant salvation?
What’s interesting in all this is the lack of religion: Rilke, of course, writes about the Angel but I don’t see it as a particularly Christian angel: see the 10th Elegy’s “Oh how completely an angel would stamp out their market of solace, bounded by the church with its ready-made consolations: clean and disenchanted and shut as a post-office on Sunday.” No, Rilke’s Angel is more a symbol for perfection/desire – the peak. God isn’t in GR at all (TRUE?) and so you’re denied what I see as religion’s main purpose: to justify the continued sordidity of existence with the notion that you must “earn” your salvation, or that salvation is being put off for reasons only known to the divine (and, since from the godhead, implicitly correct, despite how inscrutable or how many broken prophecies exist).
As E.M. Cioran puts it: “If it is true that by death we once more become what we were before being, would it not have been better to abide by that pure possibility, not to stir from it? What use was this detour, when we might have remained forever in an unrealized plentitude?” There’s a lot lying on that IF. It’s all speculation, and no one will know the truth until death overtakes them. And despite how attractive cynicism can be, and how alluring the denial of the corrupt world can be, there’s still enough decency and goodness that makes life worth while: the sensation of skiing downhill on an empty slope overlooking a forested valley. Walking through the rain in the middle of a rural forest. The unconditioned love of a dog. The feeling of your lover lying by your side. The sensation of a warm, fresh spring breeze on your face. The first dive into cool water on a hot day. Good lemonade. The laugh of a child. A toasty sandwich on a cold day. I could go on and on. These good things are fleeting, yes, but, absent the knowledge of anything better or more meaningful, (with out faith in something bigger), I wouldn’t give them up.
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