Primo voto

Описание: Lou Andreas Salome


Rainer Maria Rilke to Lou Andreas-Salome

I held myself too open, I forgot
that outside not just things exist and animals
fully at ease in themselves, whose eyes
reach from their lives' roundedness no differently
than portraits do from frames; forgot that I
with all I did incessantly crammed
looks into myself; looks, opinion, curiosity.
Who knows: perhaps eyes form in space
and look on everywhere. Ah, only plunged toward you
does my face cease being on display, grows
into you and twines on darkly, endlessly,
into your sheltered heart.

As one puts a handkerchief before pent-in-breath-
no: as one presses it against a wound
out of which the whole of life, in a single gush,
wants to stream, I held you to me: I saw you
turn red from me. How could anyone express
what took place between us? We made up for everything
there was never time for. I matured strangely
in every impulse of unperformed youth,
and you, love, had wildest childhood over my heart.

Memory won't suffice here: from those moments
there must be layers of pure existence
on my being's floor, a precipitate
from that immensely overfilled solution.

For I don't think back; all that I am
stirs me because of you. I don't invent you
at sadly cooled-off places from which
you've gone away; even your not being there
is warm with you and more real and more
than a privation. Longing leads out too often
into vagueness. Why should I cast myself, when,
for all I know, your influence falls on me,
gently, like moonlight on a window seat.

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Abschiedsgedicht [Ich steh im Finstern und wie erblindet...] (German)
I


Ich steh im Finstern und wie erblindet,
weil sich zu Dir mein Blick nicht mehr findet.
Der Tage irres Gedränge ist
ein Vorhang mir nur, dahinter Du bist.
Ich starre drauf hin, ob er sich nicht hebt,
der Vorhang, dahinter mein Leben lebt,
meines Lebens Gehalt, meines Lebens Gebot -
und doch mein Tod -.

II

Du schmiegtest Dich an mich, doch nicht zum Hohn,
nur so, wie die formende Hand sich schmiegt an den Ton.
Die Hand mit des Schöpfers Gewalt.
Ihr träumte eine Gestalt -
da wurde sie müde, da ließ sie nach,
da ließ sie mich fallen, und ich zerbrach.

III

Warst mir die mütterlichste der Frauen,
ein Freund warst Du, wie Männer sind,
ein Weib, so warst Du anzuschauen,
und öfter noch warst Du ein Kind.
Du warst das Zarteste, das mir begegnet,
das Härteste warst Du, damit ich rang.
Du warst das Hohe, das mich gesegnet -
und wurdest der Abgrund, der mich verschlang.




(Rainer Maria Rilke an Lou Andreas-Salomé - 1901)