Rating: 
Summary: Too splendid for words ...
Review: "You are not my favorite poet. That implies comparison. You are poetry itself." in a letter from Marina Tseteyeva to Rilke.Since I do not speak German, I can speak neither to the accuracy of translation nor interpretation (realizing that they are separate concepts). But I can tell you that this keeps me coming back for more (so much so I have 2 copies, plus a hardback, which differs slightly in content). It's the sort of book that if I loan it, I'm astonished to get it back. And don't really mind. Mitchell has included in his notes excerpts from diaries and letters which I otherwise would never have had the joy of knowing, nor insght into not only the heart of the poet, but the heart of God as well. Mitchell also has the integrity to refrain from attempting to translate some works which, I believe, he would have otherwise loved to share. His rationale, from the intro to the "Notes" section, follows:
"Translating poems into equivalent formal patterns is to some extent a matter of luck, or grace, and this is especially true of rhymed poems. Rilke called rhyme "a goddess of secret and ancient coincidences" and said that "she is very capricious; one cannot summon or foresee her; she comes as happiness comes, hands filled with the achievement that is already in flower." Some of my favorite poems never got beyond a rough draft, because that sweet goddess refused to make even the briefest appearance." This poetry is a love letter to life, no matter what an acedemic might say about the relative merits of the translation/ interpretation. Reading Rilke, I understand why Jung (I think it was Jung) said, "Everywhere I go, I find the poet is there before me." (or words to that effect) Enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Too splendid for words ...
Review: "You are not my favorite poet. That implies comparison. You are poetry itself." in a letter from Marina Tseteyeva to Rilke. Since I do not speak German, I can speak neither to the accuracy of translation nor interpretation (realizing that they are separate concepts). But I can tell you that this keeps me coming back for more (so much so I have 2 copies, plus a hardback, which differs slightly in content). It's the sort of book that if I loan it, I'm astonished to get it back. And don't really mind. Mitchell has included in his notes excerpts from diaries and letters which I otherwise would never have had the joy of knowing, nor insght into not only the heart of the poet, but the heart of God as well. Mitchell also has the integrity to refrain from attempting to translate some works which, I believe, he would have otherwise loved to share. His rationale, from the intro to the "Notes" section, follows:
"Translating poems into equivalent formal patterns is to some extent a matter of luck, or grace, and this is especially true of rhymed poems. Rilke called rhyme "a goddess of secret and ancient coincidences" and said that "she is very capricious; one cannot summon or foresee her; she comes as happiness comes, hands filled with the achievement that is already in flower." Some of my favorite poems never got beyond a rough draft, because that sweet goddess refused to make even the briefest appearance." This poetry is a love letter to life, no matter what an acedemic might say about the relative merits of the translation/ interpretation. Reading Rilke, I understand why Jung (I think it was Jung) said, "Everywhere I go, I find the poet is there before me." (or words to that effect) Enjoy.
Rating: 
Summary: Klage...
Review: ..."Ich möchte aus meinem Herzen hinaus
unter den großen Himmel treten.
Ich möchten beten..."
(Klage)
I love Rilke, and Klage is one of my favorite poems, but the translation of it is horrible. a car? what car? it's a boat! I do not have much (almost any, for the time being) knowledge in the German language, but from just reading and comparing the German/English poems I can see the translator just didn't do his job...
Still, it's a beautiful book if only for The Gazelle, which will make your heart stand still...
Die Gazelle:
Verzauberte: wie kann der Einklang zweier
erwählter Worte je den Reim erreichen,
der in dir kommt und geht, wie auf ein Zeichen.
Aus deiner Stirne steigen Laub und Leier,
und alles Deine geht schon im Vergleich
durch Liebeslieder, deren Worte, weich
wie Rosenblätter, dem, der nicht mehr liest,
sich auf die Augen legen, die er schließt:
um dich zu sehen: hingetragen, als
wäre mit Sprüngen jeder Lauf geladen
und schösse nur nicht ab, solang der Hals
das Haupt im Horchen hält: wie wenn beim Baden
im Wald die Badende sich unterbricht:
den Waldsee im gewendeten Gesicht.
Rating:
Summary: Some translation, some rewriting
Review: Despite the glowing reviews, and my adoration of Mitchell's _The Book of Job_, I was disappointed by this book. First, I have previously heard poems from _The Book of Hours_ that sang to me, but there are only 2 fragments from that book included here. Second, the translations in places lose (to my ear) too much of the meaning and poetry of Rilke. Having just learned German and lived 10 days with Germans in Germany, I could tell that it was the translation--and not Rilke--that was lacking. Some of the translations are powerful and beautiful--if somewhat different from Rilke--namely, Spanish Dancer, Archaic Torso of Apollo, Washing the Corpse, Exposed on the cliffs of the heart, Antistrophes, Original Version of the 10th Elegy, Imaginary Career, and some Sonnets of Orpheus.
For too many of the other poems, though, there is more poetry in simply the sound of the German read aloud (absent of meaning) than in the content of the English version. Sometimes this may be because Mitchell is striving for a similar rhythm or rhyme as Rilke's; there are places, though, where this can not be the excuse. For example, in the idiot's song, Rilke has, literally, "Sometimes think I, I can no more--" Manchmal glaub ich, ich kann nicht mehr--, which Mitchell translates Sometimes I think that I can't go on--, which adds another (perhaps obvious) meaning, hitting the reader over the head -- and is _less_ rhythmic than the literal!
Or examine the last lines of "Buddha in Glory" from Rilke:
"denn ganz oben werden deine Sonnen / voll und gluhend umgedreht.
Doch in dir ist schon gegonnen, / was die Sonnen ubersteht."
Literally: "for quite above become your suns / full and glowing spinning round. / Yet in you is already begun / what overcame the suns."
For unsurmised reasons, Mitchell has changed "suns" to stars", and altered other meanings--to my comprehension, weakening it:
"a billion stars go spinning through the night, / blazing high above your head. / But in you is the presence that / will be, when all the stars are dead."
Rating:
Summary: Some translation, some rewriting
Review: Despite the glowing reviews, and my adoration of Mitchell's _The Book of Job_, I was disappointed by this book. First, I have previously heard poems from _The Book of Hours_ that sang to me, but there are only 2 fragments from that book included here. Second, the translations in places lose (to my ear) too much of the meaning and poetry of Rilke. Having just learned German and lived 10 days with Germans in Germany, I could tell that it was the translation--and not Rilke--that was lacking. Some of the translations are powerful and beautiful--if somewhat different from Rilke--namely, Spanish Dancer, Archaic Torso of Apollo, Washing the Corpse, Exposed on the cliffs of the heart, Antistrophes, Original Version of the 10th Elegy, Imaginary Career, and some Sonnets of Orpheus.
For too many of the other poems, though, there is more poetry in simply the sound of the German read aloud (absent of meaning) than in the content of the English version. Sometimes this may be because Mitchell is striving for a similar rhythm or rhyme as Rilke's; there are places, though, where this can not be the excuse. For example, in the idiot's song, Rilke has, literally, "Sometimes think I, I can no more--" Manchmal glaub ich, ich kann nicht mehr--, which Mitchell translates Sometimes I think that I can't go on--, which adds another (perhaps obvious) meaning, hitting the reader over the head -- and is _less_ rhythmic than the literal!
Or examine the last lines of "Buddha in Glory" from Rilke:
"denn ganz oben werden deine Sonnen / voll und gluhend umgedreht.
Doch in dir ist schon gegonnen, / was die Sonnen ubersteht."
Literally: "for quite above become your suns / full and glowing spinning round. / Yet in you is already begun / what overcame the suns."
For unsurmised reasons, Mitchell has changed "suns" to stars", and altered other meanings--to my comprehension, weakening it:
"a billion stars go spinning through the night, / blazing high above your head. / But in you is the presence that / will be, when all the stars are dead."
Rating:
Summary: What is it that the poetry of Rilke has?
Review: I am reading these poems and trying to understand their appeal- and they do have appeal. There is a certain rendering of experience , of perception and reflection upon that perception. There is a certain aura of mystical meaning, of something hidden and beyond coming through the world of appearance. There is a certain sense of wonder and of questioning, and of always somehow leaving the reader with that question and with that mystery. There is a unique language of sensual and philosophical words .There is Love and Understanding and Presence and Absence and God.
I know I have not defined it for anyone , even for myself. And perhaps this is also it, some feeling of some apprehension which does not quite grasp the reality - reality that is escaping us as we apprehend it.
This is not very helpful I am afraid , and all I can do is suggest the Rilke poems as far more instructive than anything I have said.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful!
Review: I bought this book along time ago, but it has remained on my shelf untouched until tonight because I knew that Rilke wrote in German and that I would be reading a translation which I thought my detract from the power and original intention of the poetry. But I decided to open it tonight out of curiosity after reading a few of the letters from Letters to a Young Poet and Rilke immediately became my favorite poet. Even when I don't understand what he is saying his poems carry an immediacy and a power which bring me close to tears. I have not read any other translations of his work so I am not qualified to comment on the quality of this translation, but if you like poetry I would definately suggest getting your hands on some Rilke!
Rating: 
Summary: Ein Wehn im Gott
Review: I got this book before going to live in Germany for 3+ years to get a feel for the country, for the language. The lack of giving this 5-stars isn't so much for the translation of poetry (since I could only order a ziegersnitzel, book a zimmerfrei, and little else en deutsche), but simply that the writing hasn't drawn me back into it time and time again like the bilingual translation I have of Octavio Paz. Whether it's the poetry from the poet or the poetry from the translater, I'm not sure. With that said, there is some brilliant poetry here and Steven Mitchell being a poet himself puts it down faithfully with regard for the poet's voice. I wasn't under the impression that German could be a poetic language, but after being exposed to it and reading this book I'm moved to change my opinion. Here's some of the better lines: True singing is a different breath, about nothing. A gust inside the God. A wind. And the beauty of bilingual editions gives us Rilke's words as well: In Wahrheit singen, ist ein andrer Hauch. Ein Hauch um nichts. Ein Wehn im Gott. Ein Wind.
Rating:
Summary: Ausgezeichnet, übermenschliches Übersetzung
Review: I simply cannot imagine not owning this book. For less than the price of a cd, less than the price of a good meal, you can reward yourself with two things: (1) perhaps the finest example of German poetry (the book is bilingual) this side of Schiller, and (2) without a doubt the finest translation of Rilke, or probably any poet, you will ever encounter in English. Those are hefty words, but I can say no less about this magnificent book. I often find myself reading the English more than the German, the translations are so elegant. In its review of the volume, the New York Times Book Review said that "it is easy to feel that, if Rilke had written in English, he would have written in this English." I concur. Mitchell should have won a Pulitzer, or whatever one gets for translations, for this book. I am only a cautious fan of his Tao Te Ching translation, though I know that he says up front that he is interpreting more than translating in that work (and with the TTC you can do that). But this book is superlative. Often, translators of poetry feel that they have to re-write the poem in order to get der Sinn, and Mitchell, himself a poet, could have done that easily and given us a nice book (even bad Rilke by a good translator is better than no Rilke at all). Mitchell did not do that; he very simply gave us Rilke, Rilke's poems, in English. They say what Rilke said, I don't know how else to say that. Mitchell wisely does not try to reproduce Rilke's rhyme schemes, though he does seem to match Rilke's alliterations note for note. This is not a flaw in the translations by any means; complex, artful, infuriating German sentence structure being what it is, I cannot imagine successfully duplicating the rhymes and still making a book as beautiful as the one Mitchell has made. German is a forbidding, precise, and multi-layered language, a daily Sprechstimme that is a far cry from the crude throat noises one often hears from people who wouldn't know German if it bit them (they are probably thinking of French, a terribly gutteral tongue that they likely haven't heard either). But, thankfully, Mitchell is not translating French (much; there are a few sketches included in French), and anyway everyone knows that Merwin is the past master at that. Baudelaire is about the only poet I can stand to read in French, anyway, maybe Rimbaud (Paul Schmidt's Arthur Rimbaud: Complete Works is a masterful translation, the best on the market in English, and Rimbaud is difficult in French). To conclude, Mitchell's poems in this volume aren't translations of Rilke's poems, so much as they are Rilke's poems. Let me give one example, the first stanza of the first of the Sonnetts to Orpheus,in German then in English: Da stieg ein Baum. O reine Übersteigung! / O Orpheus singt! O hoher Baum im Ohr! / Und alles schweig. Doch selbst in der Verschweigung / ging neuer Anfang, Wink und Wandlung vor. Now, the same thing, in English: A tree ascended there. Oh pure transcendence! / O Orpheus sings! Oh tall tree in the ear! / And all things hushed. Yet even in that silence / a new beginning, beckoning, change appeared. This is what you want in a translation. (By the way, if you are a student of any level interested in German poetry, you have to own this book, if just for the vocabulary (in case you are a heathen and cannot buy it for the sake of sheer joy).
Rating:
Summary: Ausgezeichnet, übermenschliches Übersetzung
Review: I simply cannot imagine not owning this book. For less than the price of a cd, less than the price of a good meal, you can reward yourself with two things: (1) perhaps the finest example of German poetry (the book is bilingual) this side of Schiller, and (2) without a doubt the finest translation of Rilke, or probably any poet, you will ever encounter in English. Those are hefty words, but I can say no less about this magnificent book. I often find myself reading the English more than the German, the translations are so elegant. In its review of the volume, the New York Times Book Review said that "it is easy to feel that, if Rilke had written in English, he would have written in this English." I concur. Mitchell should have won a Pulitzer, or whatever one gets for translations, for this book. I am only a cautious fan of his Tao Te Ching translation, though I know that he says up front that he is interpreting more than translating in that work (and with the TTC you can do that). But this book is superlative. Often, translators of poetry feel that they have to re-write the poem in order to get der Sinn, and Mitchell, himself a poet, could have done that easily and given us a nice book (even bad Rilke by a good translator is better than no Rilke at all). Mitchell did not do that; he very simply gave us Rilke, Rilke's poems, in English. They say what Rilke said, I don't know how else to say that. Mitchell wisely does not try to reproduce Rilke's rhyme schemes, though he does seem to match Rilke's alliterations note for note. This is not a flaw in the translations by any means; complex, artful, infuriating German sentence structure being what it is, I cannot imagine successfully duplicating the rhymes and still making a book as beautiful as the one Mitchell has made. German is a forbidding, precise, and multi-layered language, a daily Sprechstimme that is a far cry from the crude throat noises one often hears from people who wouldn't know German if it bit them (they are probably thinking of French, a terribly gutteral tongue that they likely haven't heard either). But, thankfully, Mitchell is not translating French (much; there are a few sketches included in French), and anyway everyone knows that Merwin is the past master at that. Baudelaire is about the only poet I can stand to read in French, anyway, maybe Rimbaud (Paul Schmidt's Arthur Rimbaud: Complete Works is a masterful translation, the best on the market in English, and Rimbaud is difficult in French). To conclude, Mitchell's poems in this volume aren't translations of Rilke's poems, so much as they are Rilke's poems. Let me give one example, the first stanza of the first of the Sonnetts to Orpheus,in German then in English: Da stieg ein Baum. O reine Ãœbersteigung! / O Orpheus singt! O hoher Baum im Ohr! / Und alles schweig. Doch selbst in der Verschweigung / ging neuer Anfang, Wink und Wandlung vor. Now, the same thing, in English: A tree ascended there. Oh pure transcendence! / O Orpheus sings! Oh tall tree in the ear! / And all things hushed. Yet even in that silence / a new beginning, beckoning, change appeared. This is what you want in a translation. (By the way, if you are a student of any level interested in German poetry, you have to own this book, if just for the vocabulary (in case you are a heathen and cannot buy it for the sake of sheer joy).
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