{"id":1063,"date":"2024-03-04T13:38:55","date_gmt":"2024-03-04T18:38:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/podcast.ruthstonehouse.org\/?post_type=podcast&p=1063"},"modified":"2024-03-22T11:23:15","modified_gmt":"2024-03-22T15:23:15","slug":"reading-with-rilke-the-first-elegy","status":"publish","type":"podcast","link":"https:\/\/podcast.ruthstonehouse.org\/podcast\/reading-with-rilke-the-first-elegy","title":{"rendered":"Reading with Rilke: The First Elegy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Rainer Maria Rilke has been hailed as one of the most profound and genius poets of the 20th century. His Duino Elegies <\/em>in particular, in tandem with the Sonnets to Orpheus, are seen as the pinnacle of his poetic achievements. Whole books could be written on each elegy. Here, Bianca Stone joins with guests to deep-dive into each poem and find inspiration from Rilke’s enduring insights. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Special guest Alina Stefanescu joins the podcast to discuss Rilke’s “The First Elegy,” which sets the stage for his decade long inquiry into the inner-outer world of the psyche, and experience in the world and the mission of his poetic oeuvre. Here we see the longing for an authentic relation to the divine, to the infinite, and complex relation to selves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With special thanks to Noelle Mrugalla-Paraan for reading us The First Elegy in the original German.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About our Guest: Alina Stefanescu<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Alina Stefanescu was born in Romania and lives in Birmingham, Alabama with her partner and several intense mammals. Recent books include a creative nonfiction chapbook, Ribald (Bull City Press Inch Series, Nov. 2020) and Dor, which won the Wandering Aengus Press Prize (September, 2021). Her debut fiction collection, Every Mask I Tried On, won the Brighthorse Books Prize (April 2018). Alina\u2019s poems, essays, and fiction can be found in Prairie Schooner, North American Review, World Literature Today, Pleiades, Poetry, BOMB, Crab Creek Review, and others. She serves as poetry editor for several journals, reviewer and critic for others. She is currently working on a novel-like creature. More online at www.alinastefanescuwriter.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alina’s Poems on ITERANT<\/a>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Books We Mention:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, Stephen Mitchell<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus, Stephen Mitchell<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Duino Elegies, Alfred Corn (WW Norton)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

New Poems, Rilke, Joseph Cadora (Copper Canyon)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

News of the Universe, Robert Bly (Counterpoint)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The word <\/strong>lyric <\/em><\/strong>comes to us from the ancient lyre\u2014from this relationship between the poem, the accompanying instrument, and the song. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Poetry began with oral recitations, punctuated by intonation, accompanied by a lyre, a stringed musical instrument which dates back to 1400 BC in ancient Greece. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As poetry was born from this relationship to music, the lyre was born of Hermes’ cunning in Greek myth. Hermes, son of Zeus and messenger of the gods, stole a herd of sacred cattle from Apollo, the god of poetry and music. Hermes was clever, tricky, a good thief who didn’t let the wrong act prevent him from conducting the conventional rituals. (These rituals will become central to every religion, and religions institutionalized the rituals that keep the world in balance.) What Hermes brought to rituals was a sort of cleverness, namely, cunning<\/em>, that didn’t intend to destroy rituals so much as <\/em>alter <\/em>them creatively. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, Hermes played with form<\/em>: he improvised on the given rites, and “completed” them, in this case, by slaughtering a cow and offering it as a libation (or first fruit) to his father, Zeus. While his father was distracted, Hermes used the cow’s intestines and a tortoise shell to craft the world’s first lyre. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remember that Hermes had stolen these cows from Apollo, the god of poetry and music. When Apollo discovered his cows had been stolen by Zeus’ son, he was furious. And he would have cursed Hermes if not for the hypnotizing melodies emanating from the lyre. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I must have this instrument!” Apollo told Hermes, “I will give you my cows in return for it!” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is how Apollo became the maestro of the lyre, Hermes got away with stealing some cows, and poetry gained its lyrical symbol as depicted in countless paintings and sculptures<\/a> of Apollo holding the lyre. Or (as pictured above): an ancient Greek vase painting of Apollo with a lyre and a crow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I love how close “lyre” sounds to “liar,” and how the proximity of sounds provides us with material as writers. The shadow of Hermes’ cunning stands on the boundary erected between music and poetry. There is guts and silk in it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are the two materials necessary for the construction of a poem: guts and silk. These are also the two materials used to make lyre-strings. Ancient lyres and harps were strung with animal intestines; modern lyres tend to be strung with silk. Both materials were  selected for their strength and resonance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Resonance develops at the level of the word, the note, even the syllable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guts and silk are the basis of the instrument\u2014they designate its potential<\/em>\u2014 but resonance depends on how we play the words. And words are not empty. Words come to us with their own textures and ambient hums. Words arrive with two things that make it possible for us to draw resonance from them: denotation and connotation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Denotation refers to a word’s explicit meaning \u2013 the literal thing, the dog that appears in the mind when one says dog. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Connotation refers to a word’s implied meaning, its secret history, its skeletons and illicit illuminations \u2013 the history which appears when someone says female dog. <\/em>At the level of the line, the connotation is kryptonite. Evoking a strange connotation by leaning into archaic juxtapositions can make a poem throb in unexpected ways. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cole Swensen articulated the relationships connoting creates between words and subjects in a prose poem:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Guts and silk.<\/strong> Two words that begin everything. The cosmos is created from the tension between words. Darkness and light. Major and minor. Good and evil. Connotation and denotation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The binary, like dialectic, thrives in this oppositional tension. Tension creates new conditions which call for new words to describe them. James Joyce used 28,899 different words in Ulysses<\/em>. Words are how we hold on to the hues of a moment. Words come into being to describe a moment, and this act of description also creates <\/em>the moment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Words create, describe, destroy, and imagine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If something interests me, I want to know everything about it\u2014I study a car wheel as closely as I study my own disappointments. This impulse to fill my head with details, to be completely immersed in the accumulation, leads me to metaphors and images. Later, I go back to shape, narrow, pare, and select the images I want most. As I take notes, I italicize or underline the “high-voltage words”\u2013the ones that seem to thrum and throb with their own energy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, did you know the ancient lyre was played by being strummed<\/em> like a guitar rather than being plucked with the fingers as with a harp? A pick called a plectrum<\/em> was held in one hand, while the fingers of the free hand silenced the unwanted strings. Technically, the lyre is part of the zither family<\/em>. In organology<\/em>, a lyre is considered a yoke lute<\/em>, since it is a lute in which the strings are attached to a yoke that lies in the same plane as the sound-table and consists of two arms<\/em> and a crossbar<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The earliest picture of a Greek lyre appears in the famous sarcophagus<\/em> of Hagia Triada<\/a>, a Minoan settlement in Crete, used during the Mycenaean occupation<\/em> of Crete (c.\u20091400 BC). In these images, Apollo holds the lyre\u2014but it was Hermes who invented it. A magic trick created the instrument used by the god to symbolize poetry. Poetry partakes of this devious playfulness. It has the capacity to shapeshift into voices and persons, to wear a mask long enough to create a world for others, to reimagine the world that exists or reveal more inside it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Music, the lyre-song, hides motion\u2014or it gives Hermes the chance to escape. Lyric poetry soothes the monster; it disarms the beast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rainer Maria Rilke has been hailed as one of the most profound and genius poets of the 20th century. His Duino Elegies in particular, in tandem with the Sonnets to Orpheus, are seen as the pinnacle of his poetic achievements. Whole books could be written on each elegy. Here, Bianca Stone joins with guests to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1065,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"https:\/\/ruthstonepodcast.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com\/RilkeElegy1_NewVersionAlinaSoundEdited.m4a","cover_image":"https:\/\/podcast.ruthstonehouse.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Ode-and-psyche-podcast-logo-square-favicon.png","cover_image_id":"772","duration":"","filesize":"144.61M","date_recorded":"2024-03-04 13:38:55","explicit":"","block":"","filesize_raw":"151634123"},"tags":[],"series":[59],"acf":[],"episode_featured_image":"https:\/\/podcast.ruthstonehouse.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/RILKE-first-elegy.jpg","episode_player_image":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/podcast.ruthstonehouse.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Ode-and-psyche-podcast-logo-square-favicon.png?fit=512%2C512&ssl=1","download_link":"https:\/\/podcast.ruthstonehouse.org\/podcast-download\/1063\/reading-with-rilke-the-first-elegy.m4a","player_link":"https:\/\/podcast.ruthstonehouse.org\/podcast-player\/1063\/reading-with-rilke-the-first-elegy.m4a","audio_player":null,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"dark","subscribeUrls":{"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/the-ruth-stone-foundation-podcast\/id1432185166?mt=2","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"https:\/\/podcasts.google.com\/feed\/aHR0cHM6Ly9wb2RjYXN0LnJ1dGhzdG9uZWhvdXNlLm9yZy9mZWVkL3BvZGNhc3Q","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/7dvQOPyfUAPicR1BhonwbR","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"},"stitcher":{"key":"stitcher","url":"","label":"Stitcher","class":"stitcher","icon":"stitcher.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https:\/\/podcast.ruthstonehouse.org\/feed\/podcast\/default-podcast","embedCode":"

Reading with Rilke: The First Elegy<\/a><\/blockquote>