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Thanks Candice. The translations will be published by Salt/Folio sometime next year, once I've scratched out all the howlers - and I hope they give some idea in English of what I found so astounding in his language. They've tried to be faithful, rather than unfaithful, which is perhaps a little old fashioned of me. But more than anything, I've tried to translate the _poetry_. Which, take it from me, is a good way to go mad. One of the best comments I've read on Rilke is by the translator Franz Wright (whose translations are, I think, very fine), who begins by quoting Rene Char on Rimbaud: "Rimbaud, Char points out, was neither a prophet, or a seer, or a god: he was a poet, and _that is enough_. I think the same might be said of Rilke, who surely shares with Rimbaud the power to attract mythologising admirers." He then makes short shrift of the two major lines of myth - that Rilke was a kind of chaste and solitary high priest of art, or that he was a kept man who flitted about between rich women. Did you note the Rilke in Prynne? Early Prynne, I confess, rather than later. Best Alison > Nice to know that somebody who recognizes and responds to Rilke's >technical virtuosity has been translating the Elegies! He's so often >vaunted and revered for what I can't help but think of as "the softer >side of poetry" (the visionary, the grand or sublime, the sheer beauty >of the language), which is all very well, but Rilke's tremendous >intelligence with words, sounds, pages need not be overlooked for the >sake of those high-poetic qualities. He doesn't get enough credit for >being a sort of _physicist_, I've always thought, and what you said, >Alison, about his attention to the "direction of energies" captures >it--the care, the fine-motor-skilled precision, the _interest_ in >such forces and trajectories that his poetry manifests--very well. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%