Rilke as Lodestar: The Poetry of Denise Levertov

"Rilke was a jerk", the American poet John Berryman wrote in his third Dream Song.  But no other German poet has had such a profound influence on the course of modern American poetry - ironic, since Rilke despised everything American.  Rilke was greatly admired by Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams - polar opposites in poetic sensibilities.  Rilke is notoriously difficult to translate, but that didn't prevent poets such as Randall Jarrell and Robert Bly from attempting to do so.  Robert Lowell, whose command of German was shaky, at best, wrote one 0f his best poems - Pigeons (for Hannah Arendt) - as an Imitation of Rilke's Taube, die draußen blieb.

But no American poet was as "loyal" to Rilke as Denise Levertov (I categorize Levertov as an American poet, even though she was born in Wales.  Most of her important work was written in America).  Throughout her long career as a poet, Levertov was open to many influences - the poetry of T.S.Eliot, William Carlos Williams, Robert Duncan, the art of Cezanne and Anselm Kiefer.  But Rilke - his poems, his letters, his novel Malte Laurids Brigge - was a source of constant inspiration to the very end of her life.

In her essay Rilke as Mentor (1981) Levertov writes about how reading Malte and Letters to a Young Poet at a young age gave her "permission" to be a poet - even though she never studied formally (Levertov was an autodidact):

"Rilke's works reinforced by assumption that I did not have to undertake special (academic) studies to develop my poetry, but need only continue to read and write, and to be open to whatever might befall me; the rest must depend on my native abilities and the degree of intensity and persistence that I was prepared to devote to the service of the art."

Levertov also was far from fluent in German, although she picked up some Kuchendeutsch as a child from her polyglot father and also knew Old English quite well.  In Rilke as Mentor she freely admits that her love of Rilke was based initially on translation of his prose works. But while teaching at Stanford in the 1980s she enlisted the help of a graduate student in German Studies to help her read Rilke's lyric poet in the original. The student (Barbara Hyams) wisely chose the early Stunden-Buch poem cycle as a place to start (see "Reading Rilke with Denise Levertov").  The tutoring sessions paid off handsomely when Levertov wrote two Variations on a Theme by Rilke based on two poems from Das Stunden-Buch which later served as bookends to her 1987 collection Breathing the Water. 

But it was not so much individual poems or poetic technique that drew Denise Levertov back to Rilke over and over again, but rather his example of how to live as a poet in the world:

"Rilke presents to any young poet an example of basic attitude that can remain relevant throughout a lifetime because it is reverent, passionate, and comprehensive. His reverence for "the savor of creation," as he calls it in a diary excerpt, leads him to concrete and sensuous images.  His passion for "inseeing" leads him to delight, terror, transformation, and the internalization (or absorption) of experience.  And his comprehensiveness, which makes no distinction between meeting art and meeting life, shows the poet a way to bridge the gap between the conduct of living and the conduct of art. Because he articulated a view of the poet's role that has not lost significance as I have read and reread Rilke's prose for almost four decades, he remains a mentor for me now as he was when I was a young girl."  (Denise Levertov, Rilke as Mentor) 

In his essay Über den Dichter, Rilke describes a dream which serves as a parable for the poet's mission.  He dreamed he was on a large boat that is moving upstream off the island of Philae. The oarsmen are struggling against the current, their attention focused entirely on the mechanics of rowing. A man is standing at the bow, singing, his focus is on the unseen destination.  His singing, not entirely coherent, seems to empower the the oarsmen to propel the vessel forward:

Das Schiff bewältigte den Wider stand; er aber, der Zauberer, verwandelte Das, was nicht zu bewältigen war, in eine Folge langer schwebender Töne, die weder hierhin noch dorthin gehörten, und die jeder für sich in Anspruch nahm. Während seine Umgebung sich immer wieder mit dem greifbaren Nächsten einließ und es überwand, unterhielt seine Stimme die Beziehung zum Weitesten, knüpfte uns daran an, bis es uns zog.

Levertov used this dream as the basis for a beautiful homage to her lifelong mentor:

                To Rilke

Once, in dream,

                                the boat

pushed off from shore.

You at the prow were the man—

all voice, though silent – who bound

rowers and voyagers to the needful journey,

the veiled distance, imperative mystery.

All the couched effort,

                creak of oarlocks, odor of sweat

                sound of waters

                running against us

was transcended: your gaze

held as we crossed. Its dragonfly blue

restored to us

                                a shimmering destination.

I had not read yet of your Nile journey,

the enabling voice

drawing that boat upstream in your parable,

Strange that I knew

your silence was just such a song.

(from Denise Levertov, A Door in the Hive (1989))

Comments

[myessayslab]

Rilke is a famous poet. But as for Levertov... I haven't heard about Denise Levertov yet. I think I'll include her poetry to my reading list.