Robert Vilain

The Cambridge companion to Rilke

Chronology Introduction Karen Leeder and Robert Vilain Part I. Life: 1. Rilke: a biographical exploration Rudiger Gorner 2. The status of the correspondence in Rilkes work Ulrich Baer Part II. Works: 3. Early poems Charlie Louth 4. The new poems William Waters 5. The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge Andreas Huyssen 6. The Duino Elegies Kathleen L. Komar 7. The Sonnets to Orpheus Thomas Martinec Part III. Cultural Contexts, Influences, Reception: 8. Rilke and modernism Andreas Kramer 9. Rilke as reader Robert Vilain 10. Rilke and the visual arts Helen Bridge 11. Rilke: thought and mysticism Paul Bishop 12. Rilke and his philosophical critics Anthony Phelan 13. Rilkes legacy in the English-speaking world Karen Leeder Appendix: poem titles Guide to further reading Index Index to Rilkes works.

Faust, Part One and France: Stapfer’s Translation, Delacroix’s Lithographs, Goethe’s Responses

Abstract The first French translation of Goethe’s Faust, Part One, by Albert Stapfer, was published in January 1823, and a new edition with magnificent lithographs by Eugène Delacroix appeared in February 1828. Clarifying details of the publication history and the identities of Goethe’s earliest French translators, and then revisiting the nature of Delacroix’s inspiration and thus the relationship of text and image in his volume, this article explores the literary and political context in which the French translation emerged and Goethe’s engagement with the development of Romanticism in France as mediated in Le Globe. His responses to the translation and the illustrations emerge as much more ambivalent than is usually assumed, a stance that matches the late Goethe’s attitude to the work itself.

“Wer lügt, macht schlechte Metaphern” Hofmannsthal’s “Manche freilich…” and Walter Pater

Abstract“Manche freilich…” is a reflection on the problems of adequate and original artistic representation. Hofmannsthal faces the alarming disintegrative implications of Pater’s Renaissance for both self and literary text, and the threat to their uniqueness. The success of his defence lies in how he exploits the symbolic capacity of the images in the last line.Zusammenfassung“Manche freilich…” behandelt Originalitätsprobleme der Dichtung und ihre Fähigkeit, die Welt un verzerrt darzustellen. Paters Renaissance konfrontiert Hofmannsthal mit der erschreckenden Gefahr einer Zersetzung des Ich und des literarischen Textes. Er vermag dieser Drohung zu widerstehen, indem er die symbolische Kraft der Flamme und der Leier ausnutzt.

A POEM, A DANCER, AND A PAINTING: RAINER MARIA RILKE'S ‘SPANISCHE TÄNZERIN’

After a reading of Rilkes ‘Spanische Tanzerin’ that unpicks the three main layers of imagery and explores how they interact, this article investigates Rilkes relationship with the Spanish painter Ignacio Zuloaga in order to dispel confusions about an event and a painting that are often felt to have inspired the poem. A fourth, poetological interpretative layer is exposed, and via the trope of the poet-as-magus, echoes (perhaps conscious) of the 1906 text in poems from the 1920s, and links with Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge are suggested. Nach einer Deutung von Rilkes Gedicht ‘Spanische Tanzerin’, welche das Zusammenwirken der drei Hauptschichten der Bildsprache interpretiert, untersucht dieser Aufsatz Rilkes Verhaltnis zum spanischen Maler Ignacio Zuloaga, um Fehlinterpretationen der Bedeutung einer Veranstaltung und eines Gemaldes zu beseitigen, die das Gedicht vermeintlich inspirierten. Eine vierte, poetologische Interpretationsschicht wird zutage gebracht, und schlieslich wird durch den Tropus des Dichters-als-Magus auf (moglicherweise absichtliche) Anklange an das 1906 entstandene Gedicht in Texten der 1920er Jahre und auf Beziehungen zu den Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge hingedeutet.

THE DEATH OF EXPRESSIONISM: YVAN GOLL (1891–1950)

Abstract Yvan Goll briefly joined the Expressionist circles in Berlin in 1914 before moving to Switzerland during the war. Early Expressionist poetry (beginning with ‘Films’ in 1914 and including contributions to ‘Menschheitsdämmerung’) reflects the fragmented state of modern life and nostalgia for a more certain and harmonious past. ‘Der Torso’ (1918) conveys his ambivalent attitude to Expressionism, showing some Nietzschean influence and an almost Romantic attachment to nature. Other poems express Goll’s pacifism and a social conscience, especially the ‘underclass’ in ‘Die Unterwelt’ (1919). Associated programmatic essays, ending with the proclamation of its death in 1921, highlight a strong underlying scepticism about the Expressionist project.