Looking Into A Painting

Looking Into A Painting

This is a poetic photograph and words to describe its impact on me would be better expressed in a poem like Rilke’s Moving Forward where we see Rilke looking at a painting. I love that he says when he is growing, he feels that dogs and trees are relatives and he can see farther into a painting, see into it more deeply.” I associated to this extraordinary poet since I perceive this expansive image like looking into a painting, the colors and composition having a painterly style. Many of Rilkes poems are surprisingly intimate, something I strive to obtain in bringing the viewer into my sensory world. Robert Blys translations capture Rilkes voice with simplicity and directness, a voice that would not be heard without the prowess of this award-winning poet and translator of one of the indisputably major poets of the twentieth century. For readers new to this master poet, there are many elements of Rilkes work that will be especially meaningful: his constant attempt to avoid living shallowly; his descriptions of the frightening sensation of growth, when one abandons his previous habits and comforts and moves into the unknown (“my feeling sinks, as if standing on fishes.”); his search for spirituality his sense of isolation and transcendence; his feelings of ecstasy and their opposite, the dispiriting sensations of apathy and failure. The words of Moving Forward are an amazing example of Robert Bly’s landmark translation: “The deep parts of my life pour outward, as if the river shores were opening out. It seems that things are more likely now, that I can see farther into paintings. I feel closer to what language cant reach. With my senses, as with birds, I climb into the windy heaven, out of oak, and in the ponds broken off from the sky my feeling sinks, as if standing on fishes.” I have always loved these lines; the fish image is a triumph, an amazing union of senses. It embodies exultation, humility, and danger in a single image. I have read his poems many times and like a painting come away with a new sense of what this remarkable poems mean which is to me a sign of an extraordinary poet and without Robert Blys brilliant translations that have captured Rilke’s voice, we may never have been exposed to the genius of the poems of Rainer Maria Rilke.

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