Metrically, the opening words of four accented syllables assert their expressive selves before giving way to the more recognisable dactylic lines (the standard metre of the Elegies) that follow, and instead of end rhymes, there is alliteration, establishing an affiliation and sense between words, and further caesuras, the latter preventing that sense to settle. Phonetically, the initial line ascends with an increasing density of sound, the pinched vowels deepening as the line develops, with the second syllable of “schriee” onomatopoeically transmitting the cry. “Cry out” (R/S) and “cry aloud” (S/W) are attempts to capture the demonstrative quality of “schreien”, but the simpler “cry” is more in keeping with the dignified interiority of the speaking subject. Some choose “scream” (N/K), which is the most literal meaning of “schreien” (Edvard Munch’s painting, “Skirk”, is known as “The Scream” in English and as “Der Schrei” in German), but this is an angular form of utterance directed outwards, and suggests, perhaps, emotional imbalance. The translators avoid dictionary definitions such as “shout”, “yell” or “shriek”. “Schreien” has no simple equivalent in English. The Elegy begins with a plaintive interrogation, “wer”, which is linked to a conditional “wenn ich schriee” (and the speaking breath pauses between the two) and separated by a caesura, the first of many that establish the cogitative thrust of the poem. Instead, the opening lines are marked by a voice of supplication, the medium of an abrasive “Ich”, whose pained tones we have not heard since the Stundenbuch ( Book of Hours) (“cry out, cry out, perhaps that would help the saviour here”). The former is a medium of control, a gaze, the product of an equipoise and impassibility that gave rise in Rilke’s Dinggedichte to crafted vignettes, in which the object-world seemingly (in both senses of the word) came to presence on its own terms.īut that eye is not here in the first Duino Elegy. The round eye, which in its thinking plenitude links consciousness to the world (so that even the panther, in the poem of the same name, must suffer not from what it cannot do, but from what it cannot see), now gives way to another bodily organ that is not an organ: the mouth. Und wir bewundern es so, weil es gelassen verschmäht,

Denn das Schöne ist nichtsĪls des Schrecklichen Anfang, den wir noch grade ertragen, Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der EngelĮiner mich plötzlich ans Herz: ich verginge von seinem

First elegy rilke