Art of the Spirit

I found an amazing website: Poet Seers. It features information on & poems of many important spiritual poets.
It has a translation of the first of Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus by Howard Landman. This cycle of poems charts the link between the Divine and creativity. Rilke makes it abundantly clear throughout that it is the transformative process that causes creation. Each poem is jewel. If you haven’t read them don’t pass up the chance. My translation from the original German is by Stephan Mitchell. It’s interesting to compare the two.

Translation 1
A tree ascended there. Oh pure transcendence!
Oh Orpheus sings! Oh tall tree in the ear!
And all grew hushed. But in that very silence
a new beginning, sign and change appeared.

Quiet creatures gathered from the clear
unhurried forest, out of lair and nest;
and so it must have been, their stealthiness
was not born out of cunning or of fear,

but just from hearing. Bellow, cry, and roar
seemed tiny in their hearts. And where before
there barely stood a hut to take this in,

a hiding place of deepest darkest yens,
and with an entryway whose doorposts trembled -
you built for them an auditory temple.
–Trans. Howard Landman

Translation 2
A tree ascended there. Oh pure transcendence!
Oh Orpheus sings! Oh tall tree in the ear!
And all things hushed. Yet even in that silence
a new beginning, beckoning, change appeared.

Creatures of stillness crowded from the bright
unbound forest, out of their lairs and nests;
and it was not from any dullness, not
from fear, that they were so quiet in themselves,

but from just listening. Bellow, roar, shriek
seemed small inside their hearts. And where there had been
at most a makeshift hut to receive the music

a shelter nailed up out of their darkest longing,
with an entryway that shuddered in the wind-
you built a temple deep inside their hearing.
–Trans. Stephan Mitchell

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