Poet and translator Alfred Corn joins Bianca Stone to discuss his stunning translation of Rilke’s, Die Fünfte Elegie, The Fifth Elegy. Interestingly, this 5th was completed after all the others and moved up later. Understandable then that it has a ring of realization to it: around performance, happiness and erotic union, which reflects back directly upon the proceeding elegies, cautioning strongly against the latter’s deceptive touch. Pain and happiness, leap throughout the poem, mimicking the circus performers it meditates upon. The poems certainly channels both the “rose” and the “blue” periods of Picasso, whose served as part-muse for this incredible poem (see The Family of Saltimbanques, which hung on the wall at the apartment he was staying in when writing the bulk of the poem). The whole contains, like the jar of “Subrisio Saltat” itself, a vision towards obtaining that “eternally / valid currency of happiness” which is also “ever hidden away and unknown to us” but perhaps only available in art, that seeks to translate the untranslatable experience of being in the world, with all its suffering and love, it’s death and pleasure–all twinned and entwined… The delightful ambiguity of the poem offers an enormous amount of space to discover as readers, and fling ourselves more into those empty spaces.
Enjoy the podcast and email me with any comments or questions! bianca@ruthstonehouse.org
READ THE POEM WITH US! Available below
ORDER Corn’s Translation of Duino Elegies Here
Alfred Corn is the author of eleven books of poems, the most recent titled Unions (2015) and two novels, the second titled Miranda’s Book, which also appeared in 2015. His two collections of essays are The Metamorphoses of Metaphor and Atlas: Selected Essays, 1989-2007. He has received the Guggenheim, the NEA, an Award in Literature from the Academy of Arts and Letters, and one from the Academy of American Poets. He has taught at Yale, Columbia, Connecticut College, The University of Cincinnati, and UCLA. In 2013 he was made a Life Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge. In 2015 he was guest speaker at the new museum in Wuzhen, China, dedicated to the work of the painter and writer Mu Xin. In the spring of 2016 Chamán Ediciones in Spain published Rocinante, a selection of his work translated in Spanish, the same translation appearing the following year in Mexico under the title Antonio en el desierto. A new collection of essays titled Arks & Covenants appeared in May of 2017. In October of 2016, Roads Taken, a celebration of the 40th anniversary of Alfred Corn’s first book All Roads at Once was held at Poets’ House in New York City, and in November 2017 he will be inducted into the Georgia Writers’ Hall of Fame.
