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Hello friends, and welcome back after quite a long hiatus to my newsletter. I’ve been adding quotes from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Book of Hours to my quotes journal, the majority of which I earmarked when I read the book in class at USC for ‘Thinking Without God in Modern Europe.’ That course was particularly exciting — it radically reshaped my thinking on how to learn. My professor explained the difficult philosophical concepts of Kant, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche in deep, yet astonishingly academic ways, alongside relating them to literature and poetry of the time, one of which was this book. (Read my published paper (!!!) on Nietzsche and Rilke here).
The English translation of Rilke’s Book of Hours — with the subheading ‘Love Poems to God,’ which makes me absolutely delirious — was done by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy. My professor explained in class that they took a few liberties (understatement) with the text, including dropping out some of the German parts when translating to English. Despite these shortcomings, and the fact that we don’t have another published English translation of the text, it really is a beautiful edition. In a manic fit, I purchased a two-volume set of Rilke’s collected poetry in German in Santa Barbara, promising myself that I will one day (hopefully within the next ten years) be able to read the poetry that has affected me so deeply in its original. When that happens, I shall report back with my own unofficial Hannah Contreras certified translations.
Barrows and Macy, however, have captured the hollow, melancholic spirit of Rilke’s monk. His Book of Hours is written in three parts in the voice of a monk searching for God: the Book of a Monastic Life, the Book of Pilgrimage, and finally, the Book of Poverty and Death. The poems are deeply — almost painfully — intimate, and they detail such a close relationship between the human and the divine that at times the reader cannot tell where one begins and the other ends. In it, Rilke formulates an image of God that resonates deeply with me, as I’ve recently been trying to quantify my own relationship with God — if such a thing can be done. If it can, I would argue that this book is the closest any of us have ever come to putting down the joys and fears of communicating — and living — with the divine on paper.
The book begins with the idea that human perception gives meaning to reality. This idea, in turn, blends well with the notion introduced later on in the collection that humanity gives God Himself meaning.
"I know that nothing has ever been real without my beholding it. All becoming has needed me. My looking ripens things and they come toward me, to meet and be met." — Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours 1.1
It is imperative to remember throughout the reading of the Book of Hours that this is a monk writing these texts. There is an implicit loneliness spread throughout the entire collection; one must imagine the monk, alone in a drafty old room in the monastery, quill scratching the rough paper, staring out a window into some European countryside and wondering what the importance of his life path is.
For Rilke’s God (and his monk), time compresses and lengthens at will. God must ripen before he takes root in the darkness of humanity; this idea of flowering and maturing is well-explored in the collection. Nature is primordial; humanity is a crumbling ruin that is tearing itself to pieces. Nevertheless, God — a secret, hidden thing, which worms its way into us, into our cracks and crevices — prevails with a disinterested attitude. Rilke’s God is at once deeply invested in humanity as a home (since, as it was already established, humanity provides God with meaning), but entirely disinterested in human affairs as they weigh upon the heart.
In art, and perhaps in Rilke’s own poetry, the human makes a humanistic creation of another human.
"I have many brothers in the South who move, handsome in their vestments, through cloister gardens. The Madonnas they make are so human, and I dream often of their Titians, where God becomes an ardent flame." — Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours 1.3
Yet, God becomes a force; God becomes flame, heat, passion, something inhuman perceived in art by human eyes. The aesthetic experience of God is as a natural phenomenon, while human hands can create lifelike human images. The monk himself, perhaps in the double role of poet and interpreter, says the following about himself; creates an image of the self through voyeuristic perception of it.
"But when I lean over the chasm of myself — it seems my God is dark and like a web: a hundred roots silently drinking." — Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours 1.3
For the monk, the connection to God is an intensely personal one. God is not God the Father; God is my God. Is this greed? Is this selfishness? I’d argue that this is truth. In Rilke’s vision of divinity, God resides within the human. Humanity has become the house of God, and God is able to be held even in His largest form in the heart of each person as a home. My God is a partnership; it is love. The monk’s loneliness is expressed in the chasm of his person, but God lives there. God sees the uncertainty and darkness of the monk’s heart and yet he resides there silently.
Familiarity with God is a fickle thing. Throughout the collection, this familiarity is explored in ways that express the true difficulty of baring your soul to anyone. The monk tries, and fails, multiple times to connect with Rilke’s silent, introverted God.
"You, God, who live next door — If at times, through the long night, I trouble you with my urgent knocking — this is why: I hear you breathe so seldom. I know you're all alone in that room. If you should be thirsty, there's no one to get you a glass of water. I wait listening, always. Just give me a sign! I'm right here." — Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours I.6
God reveals and denies the monk over and over again. At times, God creeps into the innermost cavities of the monk’s soul, and the monk creates and recreates the image of God within his perception. However, like in this moment of submission, with the monk’s nearly desperate pleading, God eludes him.
Rilke’s God is a natural God. The monk prizes nature above all else. In the third book, the Book of Poverty and Death, he claims that human advancement has come at the cost of human happiness. The rich and the influential sit high up in their castles, ignorant of the suffering of the religious poor. Modernity has robbed the poor of their ripening, an idea that is weaved throughout the whole work.
"Their dying is long and hard to finish: hard to surrender what you never received." — Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours III.4/5
The monk, safe in his tower and communing with God, questions the traditions that hold the majority of people in poverty. He foresees the downfall of modern institutions and urges a return to nature, God’s domain. He sees God’s power in His creation; nature is an expression of godly power.
Nature ripens and blooms into maturity with grace and wisdom. The poor, laboring under harsh conditions and covered in dirt, living on the streets and never knowing a day of rest, yet still believing in God, are the antithesis of God’s nature.
The monk struggles with issues of morality, power, and violence as he yearns to get closer to God. He wants to understand God as a friend, as a brother, as a father. He both reveres God as Lord and yet understands that his perception of and devotion to God create God as Lord.
"I yearn to be held in the great hands of your heart —" — Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours II.2
The monk both cares for God and wants to be cared for by God. Hands are another motif spread throughout the book. Hands fashion, hands cradle, hands break — implicitly and explicitly, hands are drivers of great change. For the monk, the hands of God represent a safe haven from the evils of the world, and indeed, the evils of the monk’s own mind. Yet, within the poems, there is an almost resigned acceptance of the fantasy of the hands of God. Like the desperation with which the monk pleaded to God the neighbor, at the core of the monk’s poetry is the knowledge that God is ultimately out of reach.
"Then suddenly you're left alone with your body that can't love you and your will that can't save you." — Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours I.38
Nevertheless, this attempt at communication with God relieves some of the monk’s suffering. All of these issues that he struggles with — from the inevitability of death to modern poverty to parricide — are given an outlet in these poems.
The monk loves God. He loves God as a neighbor, as a brother, as a father, and as a creator. Just as the flower ripens in the spring, the monk sees God as an ever-ripening source of comfort. The monk has derived maturity and security from the idea of God. The line between devoted follower and doting creator becomes increasingly thin as the book progresses. It becomes difficult to determine where the monk begins and God ends as pronouns linger in the air, me becoming you becoming him.
"What will you do, God, when I die? I am your pitcher (when I shatter?) I am your drink (when I go bitter?) I, your garment; I, your craft. Without me, what reason have you?" — Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours I.36
The monk sees his relationship with God as an intensely personal and intimate one. In some poems, it seems as if the monk is God’s only project. Thus, the importance of the monk’s poems and pleas take on a new, heavier significance. If the monk is God’s most important, most beloved creation, then why do his pleas fall on deaf ears? Has the monk created God and the creation abandoned His creator? If God is the omnipotent, benevolent creator we have all been taught to believe that He is, then should the monk’s behavior not become our own? In our own lives, should we not be the most important of God’s creations?
"If this is arrogant, God, forgive me, but this is what I need to say." — Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours I.12
These poems are difficult, as all of Rilke’s poetry is. He writes with such an innerness that it becomes hard for the reader to dive deep into the heart of his writing. Nevertheless, this is one of his main attractions. I’d rather sit and be forced to sift through dense, spiritual, and intimate poetry, than have to read something that’s so obvious it’s practically forcing itself down your throat. Rilke’s poetry is for people who contemplate the deeper meanings of life and our place in it.
I hope this discussion of his poetry gave you something to think about, and perhaps even encouraged you to buy this book (from a local bookstore!). Time spent with Rilke will be well rewarded.
Vive in perpetuum,
Hannah Contreras