from Isaac Babel, "The Road To Brody" (1923) in The Collected Stories trans. Peter Constantine (2002)
I mourn for the bees. They have been destroyed by warring armies. There are no longer any bees in Volhynia.
We desecrated the hives. We fumigated them with sulfur and detonated them with gunpowder. Smoldering rags have spread a foul stench over the holy republics of the bees. Dying, they flew slowly, their buzzing barely audible. Deprived of bread, we procured honey with our sabers. There are no longer any bees in Volhynia.
The chronicle of our everyday crimes oppresses me as relentlessly as a bad heart. Yesterday was the first day of the battle of Brody. Lost on the blue earth, we suspected nothing - neither I, nor my friend Afonka Bida. The horses had been fed grain in the morning. The rye stood tall, the sun was beautiful, and our souls, which did not deserve these shining, soaring skies, thirsted for lingering pain.
Showing posts with label beauty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label beauty. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Thursday, February 14, 2008
rilke's angels
from Rainer Maria Rilke, "The First Elegy" in Duino Elegies (1923)
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them pressed me
suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed
in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we are just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains
to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.
. . .
Oh, and night: there is night, when a wind full of infinite space
gnaws at our faces. Whom would it not remain for--that longed-after
mildly disillusioning presence, by which the solitary heart
so painfully meets. Is it any less difficult for lovers?
But they keep on using each other to hide their own fate.
Don't you know yet? Fling the emptiness out of your arms
into the spaces we breath; perhaps the birds
will feel the expanded air with more passionate flying.
from Robert Hass, "Looking for Rilke," in Twentieth Century Pleasures
The angels embody the sense of absence which had been at the center of Rilke's willed and difficult life. They are absolute fulfillment. Or rather, absolute fulfillment if it existed, without any diminishment of intensity, completely outside of us. You feel a sunset open up an emptiness inside you which keeps growing and growing and you want to hold onto that feeling forever; only you want it to be a feeling of power, of completeness, of repose: that is the longing for the angel. You feel a passion for someone so intense that the memory of their smell makes you dizzy and you would gladly through yourself down the well of that other person, if the long hurtle in the darkness would then be perfect inside you: that is the same longing. The angel is desire, if it were not desire, if it were pure being. Lived close to long enough, it turns every experience into desolation, because beauty is not what we want at those moments, death is what we want, an end to limit, and end to time.
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them pressed me
suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed
in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we are just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains
to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.
. . .
Oh, and night: there is night, when a wind full of infinite space
gnaws at our faces. Whom would it not remain for--that longed-after
mildly disillusioning presence, by which the solitary heart
so painfully meets. Is it any less difficult for lovers?
But they keep on using each other to hide their own fate.
Don't you know yet? Fling the emptiness out of your arms
into the spaces we breath; perhaps the birds
will feel the expanded air with more passionate flying.
from Robert Hass, "Looking for Rilke," in Twentieth Century Pleasures
The angels embody the sense of absence which had been at the center of Rilke's willed and difficult life. They are absolute fulfillment. Or rather, absolute fulfillment if it existed, without any diminishment of intensity, completely outside of us. You feel a sunset open up an emptiness inside you which keeps growing and growing and you want to hold onto that feeling forever; only you want it to be a feeling of power, of completeness, of repose: that is the longing for the angel. You feel a passion for someone so intense that the memory of their smell makes you dizzy and you would gladly through yourself down the well of that other person, if the long hurtle in the darkness would then be perfect inside you: that is the same longing. The angel is desire, if it were not desire, if it were pure being. Lived close to long enough, it turns every experience into desolation, because beauty is not what we want at those moments, death is what we want, an end to limit, and end to time.
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