Boulez has pointed out that artists don't make the best administrators, nor do they always turn out to be the best critics. Nabokov's rueful despair over Finnegans Wake, which perhaps can only be understood as an overanalyzed evocation of the Emerald Isle, is one of the most notable examples. Elsewhere I will discuss Neruda's reputation as well as that of Borges, whose centennial was recently celebrated with new translations of his verse which I think failed to do him justice. Rilke, however, is my theme, and Beckett is no help here short of clearing away malfocused perception of a poet who is worthy of his hire (to Rodin). This is my translation:
Mirrors: no-one yet has knowing written
what you in your nature are.
You, as with mere holes of sieves
replete intervals of time.
You, still wastrels of the empty hall—
when dusk falls, wide as woods...
and the lustre like a sixteen-pointer goes
through your impassability.
Sometimes you are full of painting.
Some seem gone into you—
others you send shy away.
But the fairest will stay, till
yonder in your clenched cheeks
pierces clear unloosed Narcissus.
A lustre is a chandelier, a sixteen-pointer is "an eight-year-old stag" (C.F. MacIntyre), yonder is drüben.
[This message has been edited by Christopher Mulrooney (edited January 31, 2001).]
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