Friday, April 21, 2006

TRANSLATION - Rainer Maria Rilke - page a month

R. M. Rilke wrote this as a young man (age 25) in one night, 1899. Though it tells the story of a man fighting in Hungery in 1663 it gained immediate success during its 1912 publication selling 8,000 copies in three weeks. I love this work for its simplicity; Rilke was capable of fitting a lot into basic physical gestures and landscapes.

Die Weise von Lieben und Tod
des Cornets Christoph Rilke


(The Lay of the Love and Death
of Cornet Christoph Rilke)

“…the 24th of November, 1663. Otto of Rilke / of Langenau / Granitz and Zierga / travelled to Linda to collect reperations for his fallen brother Christoph who fell in the campaign in Hungary. He demanded compensation / but the Lehensreichung would give nothing / Otto of Rilke walked into the same trap his brother Christoph had (a man in a beige uniform brought him the death certificate: Cornet in the Campaign of Baron von Pirovano the Imperial etc.. All the men on horseback of the Heyershen regiments…were deceased) and returned home…”

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