Ich liebe dich...

Ich liebe dich, du sanftestes Gesetz

Rainer Maria Rilke, 26.9.1899, Berlin-Schmargendorf

Translation by the author of this blog, 3.3.2022

Ich liebe dich, du sanftestes Gesetz, an dem wir reiften, da wir mit ihm rangen; du großes Heimweh, das wir nicht bezwangen, du Wald, aus dem wir nie hinausgegangen, du Lied, das wir mit jedem Schweigen sangen, du dunkles Netz, darin sich flüchtend die Gefühle fangen. Du hast dich so unendlich groß begonnen an jenem Tage, da du uns begannst, - und wir sind so gereift in deinen Sonnen, so breit geworden und so tief gepflanzt, dass du in Menschen, Engeln und Madonnen dich ruhend jetzt vollenden kannst. Lass deine Hand am Hang der Himmel ruhn und dulde stumm, was wir dir dunkel tun.

--

I love you, you gentlest of laws,

through whom we ripen, as we wrestle with you here;

you great homesickness, which we cannot conquer,

you forest, out of which we cannot escape,

you song, that with everyone we silently sing,

you dark web,

in which we escape the feeling of entrapment.

You yourself have infinitely great beginnings

and on that day, the day here on which we began -

as we ripened in your sun,

we became strong and deeply planted,

so that in your men, angels, and Madonnas

you quietly came to be accomplished.

Let your hand now rest gently on the slope of the sky

as you endure silently, those acts which we in our darkness perform.

*This is a first draft of a translation made on 3 March 2022; further revisions will be made. As far as I know, there is not an English translation of this poem. Rilke is an incredible poet, intense and classically Teutonic in mood. In this piece, you see both the afterglow of German Romanticism and the foreshadow of European Modernism. It's a beautiful piece in which his personal brand of mysticism shines strong, though his theology does not reflect my own.

**The above is a late-19th-Century engraving by an unknown artist, which first appeared in the book L'atmosphère: Météorologie Populaire by Camille Flammarion.