Rilke's Life of the Virgin Mary - Rainer Maria Rilke - translated by C.F. MacIntyre

Rilke's Life of the Virgin Mary

Rainer Maria Rilke

C.F. MacIntyre (Translator)

University of California Press

1974

I picked this up because I had been searching for a different edition of this work for a few years. The one I had been looking for was a different translation and though a few decades newer has never shown up used. I read some Rilke back in university. And had a small volume of selected poems that I have read before. But I was fascinated to find he had a cycle of pomes on The Blessed Virgin Mary. 

The description of this volume is:

“"In this cycle of poems, Rilke resembles the painter's of the Middle Ages in the human treatment with which he presents his characters." Original German and English translations are facing pages.”

I highlighted a two passages from the preface. They are:

“The Life of the Virgin Mary was begun in 1900, under the inspiration of some sketches by Heinrich Vogler. It was rewritten and published in 1913, with a dedication to the artist, but the drawings were not included in the book.”

and

“Whether or not Rilke was an orthodox Catholic has no bearing on the effect of the series as poetry—the immediate communication and the sincerity of the impression. And it is because the other great poets of the last hundred years, including Baudelaire, Maliarme, Stefan George, and Paul Valery—but leaving aside Claudel and Peguy, and Gerard Manley Hopkins,—have ignored the Bible as a source of subject matter, Rilke’s delicate contribution to the tradition may seem especially significant and unusual.”

The poems in the collection are:

Birth of Mary

The Presentation of Mary in the Temple

Annunciation to Mary

Visitation of the Virgin

Joseph’s Suspicion

Annunciation above the Shepherds

Birth of Christ 

Rest on the Flight into Egypt

Of the Wedding at Cana

Before the Passion

Pieta

Consolation of Mary with the Resurrected Christ

Of the Death of Mary

At the end of the volume is an extensive collection of notes. On each of the poems. A few of the poems really stuck me, some I went back and reread a few times before moving on. Some of them are:

"BIRTH OF MARY

Oh, what must it have cost the angels not 

to sing out suddenly, as one bursts in tears, 

since they well knew: the mother is born tonight 

who bears the boy, the One who will soon appear.

Hovering, they kept silence and showed the way 

down which Joachim’s lonely homestead lay; 

ah, they felt pure tension in themselves, in the air, 

but no one might go down to him. The pair

were already out of their wits with what was doing.

A neighbor came and played wise but didn’t know how. 

The old man went and stopped the dark cow’s mooing, 

thoughtfully. Such a night never was till now."

ANNUNCIATION TO MARY

Not that an angel came in, understand, 

was she alarmed. As little as others start 

when a sunray or beam of moonlight darts 

into a room and busies itself here and there, 

would she have been made angry by the guise 

in which an angel came. Could she surmise 

how tedious angels find such tarrying here ? 

(Oh, if we knew how pure she was! A hind, 

once when resting, saw her in the wood, 

and gazing lost itself until it could — 

all without any coupling with its kind — 

conceive the unicorn, pure animal, 

the beast of light.) Not that he entered, but 

that he bowed down so close to her the face 

of a young man, this angel, that her gaze 

as she glanced up joined with his, as if all 

outside there suddenly seemed void and what 

the millions saw, were doing, suffering, 

seemed forced into them: only she and he— 

the seeing and seen, the eye and eye’s delight 

nowhere else but in this one place. See! 

this is frightening. And they were both afraid.

Then the angel sang his melody.

JOSEPH’S SUSPICION

And the angel, taking due pains, told 

the man who clenched his fists:

But can’t you see in her robe’s every fold 

that she is cool as the Lord’s morning mists?

But the other, gazing gloomily, just murmured: 

What is it has wrought this change in her?

Then cried the angel to him: Carpenter, 

can’t you see yet that God is acting here?

Because you plane the planks, in your pride would 

you really make the Lord God answerable 

who unpretentiously from the same wood 

makes the leaves burst forth, the young buds swell?

He understood that. And now as he raised 

his frightened glance toward the angel who 

was gone already... slowly the man drew 

his heavy cap off. Then in song he praised.

I also loved Of The Death Of Mary but it is a multipage poem. This is a volume I could easily return to again and again. I loved the side by side German and English even though I cannot read the German. I will keep my eye out for the original translation I was looking for, because it was a part of a series. But I am very grateful to have given this volume a read. I can easily recommend it. It was deeply moving. And it stirred me to prayer. A great collection of poems.

Note: This book is part of a series of reviews: 2023 Catholic Reading Plan! 

Reviews of other books by Rainer Maria Rilke:

Selected Poems

Life of the Virgin Mary

…