Notes on the Melody of Things is taken from the fifth volume of Rilke’s Collected Works, published by Insel (1965). It dates from the year 1898, when Rilke was just twenty-three years old. Few people are aware of its existence, and English translations are noticeably rare. I discovered the Notes myself through a German/French bilingual edition, published by Allia, Paris, in 2008, which I happened to review for the Times Literary Supplement. This little book was a popular choice on Allia’s list and, priced at a mere 3 euros, could hardly be passed by. Some of the information from my introduction here was sourced from the Allia book, specifically a ‘translator’s note’ by Bernard Pautrat.
The year before Notes was written, Rilke had been following courses at the University of Munich in Germany and had there met the enigmatic Lou Andreas-Salomé for the first time. This deeply attractive, independent, formidably intellectual, well-travelled woman had relationships with a number of leading intellectual figures of the age, such as Wagner and Freud, but was most ardently pursued by Nietzsche, whose volley of marriage proposals only glanced off the armour of her strictly maintained independence, a bitter disappointment which could only hasten the troubled philosopher’s descent into self-loathing and mental chaos.
When Rilke met Salomé in Munich she was fifteen years his senior. He quickly fell in love with her and they lived in close liaison, travelling widely, even with Salomé’s then husband, sharing their impressions and thoughts on mutually sustaining subjects. Salomé taught the young poet Russian, advised him to change his name to the more commanding ‘Rainer’ from the fey-sounding ‘René’, and became his chief advisor and confidante. It was she who began introducing him to intellectually minded members of the European aristocracy, initiating a system of patronage which was to remain absolutely crucial throughout Rilke’s working life. And, most tellingly, she talked of Nietzsche and their platonic yet intensely cerebral relationship, drawing Rilke closer to the personality of the most essential thinker of the modern age and his writings.
In the spring of 1898 Rilke visited Italy to study Renaissance painting in Florence. In encountering the Italian masters, Rilke embarked on the first of a series of self-educating periods of artistic observation, which would continue later in Paris with the overwhelming lesson of Cézanne in 1907. But in 1898, he was only beginning his journey towards that distinctive poetry of inwardness that would make his name in the forthcoming century. Notes then appears to exhibit a double formation in a concentrated observation of the work of the Italian Primitive painters and the philosophy of Nietzsche, namely from the period of The Birth of Tragedy, published in 1872 when Nietzsche was twenty-eight. Elements of the framework of the Notes are to be found in the Greek model behind The Birth of Tragedy, such as the stage, the actors and the chorus. Other elements are taken from his reflection on Italian paintings viewed in the galleries of Florence, the foreground, the background and the isolated figures represented within a landscape. In this early work, The Birth of Tragedy, taking Greek culture and the perceived failure of a Socratic ideal as a template for the modern age, Nietzsche sought to sweep away the debris of a culture made decrepit by 2,000 years of Christianity, and reinstate a Dionysian one with the unrestrained and deliriously ‘unscientific’ music of Wagner as its figurehead. In the Dionysian culture Nietzsche glorified, the primordial unity of the world is achieved through the individual who only commits to the wider community by immersing himself in life in the ‘here and now’ fully, and by eschewing that vague appearance of existence which the Apollonian culture champions. To connect with this individual essence is to find new hope in a fully lived earthly existence, beyond the precarious promise of an afterlife. Such thoughts naturally appealed to Rilke, who abhorred the dogma of religion and did not care much for what he augured in the orthodox entrails of Christianity. In Notes, the constant ebb and flow between background and the foreground, solitude and community, choir and ‘the melody of things’, all implicitly echo Nietzschean preoccupations with the Apollonian and the Dionysian. And, like Nietzsche, Rilke is suggesting a reform of all values, a revolution of the scene, which will constitute an overthrowing of the current culture still fettered to outmoded thought and thus the construction of a whole new way of being. Rilke’s urge to have done with the petrifying properties of realism and harness a new way of seeing is also symptomatic of his age and is copiously reflected in the works of dramatist writers of the period, such as Maurice Maeterlinck, Konstantin Stanislavski and Max Reinhardt. What’s more, the symbolist period in art was all about suggestion, rather than slavishly depicting reality, looking beyond the obvious to hidden identities within objects and landscapes, which could only be accessed by patient contemplation and a willingness to transmogrify plastic elements into a necessarily elusive theatre of the senses. This preoccupation is also present in the Notes.
But to reduce Notes to a simple manifesto for Nietzschean revolt or a radical text for the new theatre would be grossly over-simplistic. For it is a significant movement towards the poetry, which was as far as Rilke was concerned, only to begin properly a year later in 1899, with The Book of Hours. Notes is at once mysterious and enigmatic, tantalising and sometimes infuriating in the way it falls back like a wave from the sea wall of absolute clarity. It leads the reader into a labyrinth veiled with the most beautiful and artful webs that must catch on you as you pass. The reader should therefore harvest sublime moments such as: ‘You must extract the rhythm of the waves’ sound from the roaring tumult of the sea and from the tangled net of everyday conversation, somehow draw the one living line that bears the rest…’ or acknowledge the typically Rilkean aphorism of ‘Even when the root is ignorant of the fruits, it nourishes them nevertheless.’ It would be true to say that these Notes, miniature prose poems in a sense themselves, announce the great poetry to come. The particular attention paid to the complex relationship between the close at hand and the wider unknown immensity beyond, will always remain a recurring element of Rilke’s poetry. Solitude, the giving productive solitude that outruns loneliness for a time, will always constitute its main artery and, as Rilke reminds us from the lower rung of his maturity, ‘The more solitary a person is, the more solemn, moving and powerful their community.’
We are right at the beginning, you see.
As if before everything. With
a thousand and one dreams behind us and
without act.
I can think of no knowledge more sacred
than this:
That you must become one who begins.
One who writes the first word behind
a century-long
dash.
It occurs to me: with this observation:
that we still paint figures against a
gold background, like the early Primitives.
Before the indeterminate they stand.
Sometimes of gold, sometimes of grey.
Sometimes in the light and often with,
behind them, an inscrutable darkness.
That is understood. To know men
one must isolate them. But after a long
experience, it seems right to put back
such isolated reflections into a relationship,
with each other and with more ripened
gaze accompany their broad gestures.
Compare just once the gold background of the
Trecento, with the numerous later compositions
of the old Italian masters, where the figures assemble
for a Santa Conversazione before a radiant landscape
in the light air of Umbria. The gold background
isolates each figure. The landscape shines behind
them like a common soul, from which they draw
their smile and their love.
Then think on life itself. Remember that men
have many inflated gestures and unimaginably
grandiose words. If they were, if only for a time,
as calm and as deep as the beautiful saints of Marco
Basaiti, then behind them too you would find
the landscape they have in common.
And there are moments too where
a man before you stands apart, clear and calm
before his splendour. These are rare festivals
that you will never forget. From that point on
you love this man. That is to say, you trace
with your own tender hands, the contours
of his personality as you knew it in this hour.
Art does the same. It is, yes, the most ample,
the most presumptuous love. It is God’s love. It
cannot stop at the individual who is only the door
to life. It must break through. It must never tire.
To fulfil itself, it must labour where all – are a one.
And when it gives to this one, then for all comes
a richness without limit.
How far art is from this can be seen
on the stage, where it says or means to say
how life is, not the individual in his ideal repose
but the movement and interaction of the many.
So the truth is, it simply places people
side by side, as in the Trecento, and leaves them
to forge closer relationships before the grey or
gold of the background.
And that is what happens. They try to reach
each other with words, with gestures. They almost
dislocate their arms, for their gestures are too short.
They make interminable efforts to launch syllables,
but they are frankly bad players of the ball, who don’t
know how to catch. So time passes in stooping and
seeking – just as in life.
And art has done nothing other than shown us
the confusion in which we reside most of the time.
It has worried us, instead of making us quiet and
calm. It has proved that each lives on their island;
only the islands are not distant enough that we might
live peacefully and in solitude. One can disturb another
or terrify them, or pursue them with spears – only
no-one cannot help no-one.
From island to island there is only one possibility:
dangerous leaps, where one risks more than one’s legs.
This means an eternal leaping back and forth,
with accidents and absurdities; for if it happens that
two people leap towards one another at the same moment,
they meet each other only in mid-air
and following this taxing exchange, they find themselves
one from the other, as far apart as before.
This is not at all strange; for in reality the bridges
that lead one to the other, over which you
travel with beautiful solemn step, are not in us,
but behind us, precisely as in the landscapes of
Fra Bartolomeo or Leonardo. It is a fact that life
really does reach a fine point in the individual.
But from summit to summit the path runs through
ever broadening valleys.
When two or three people are assembled,
this does not mean they are properly together.
They are like marionettes whose strings are
in different hands. Only when one hand guides
them all do they form a community which compels
them to bow low or crash into each other.
And the strength of the human, that too is there
in the one sovereign hand that holds the strings.
Now they find themselves in the common hour, in the
common storm, in the one room where they find each
other. Not until a background is raised behind them do
they begin to consort with one another. For they must
invoke the one homeland. They must at the same time
show each other their accreditations, that they carry
with them and which hold the word and seal of the
same Prince.
Whether it be the singing of the lamp or the voice
of the storm, whether it be the breath of evening,
or the groan of the ocean that envelops you – always
behind you an expanse of melody keeps watch, woven
of a thousand voices, where only here and there
is there room for your solo. To know ‘at what moment
you must make your entrance’, that is the secret of
your solitude: just as the art of genuine fellowship is
to allow the lofty words to fall into the common melody.
If the saints of Marco Basaiti had something to confide
to each other beyond their sacred nearness, one to the
other, they would not reach out their thin, gentle hands to the
foreground of the painting they inhabit. They would withdraw to the
background, become quite small, and, deep in the listening
countryside, come towards each other over tiny bridges.
We in front are just the same, sanctifying yearnings.
Our fulfilment takes place in the luminous backgrounds.
Only there is momentum and will. Only there play out histories
in which we are merely the dark headlines. Only there are our
accords, our leave-takings, our consolation and our grief.
It is there we are, while here in the foreground we
come and go.
Recall the people you found gathered together who had barely
shared an hour in common. For example, those relatives who meet
in the death chamber of someone deeply loved. In that moment
one is lost in her memory, another in his. Their words cross each
other unawares. Their hands miss each other in the initial confusion.
Until behind them the pain unfurls. They sit, incline their brows and
keep silent. Over them a rustling like a forest. They are close to one another,
as never before.
Or else, when there is no deep pain to make people
equally silent, one hears more, the other less, of the background’s
powerful melody. Many never hear it at all. They are like trees
which have forgotten their roots and now think that their strength
and life force is the rustling of their branches. Many do not have
time to listen. They do not wish for an hour to enclose them. These
are the poor homeless ones who have lost the purpose of existence.
They strike the keyboard of days and play the same monotonous
diminishing note over and over.
If then we wish to be the initiates of life, we must consider
two things.
First the great melody, in which objects and scents, pasts,
twilights and nostalgia, work together –
and second: the individual voices, that consummate and
accentuate the fullness of this choir.
And for a work of art that means: an image of the deeper life,
of existence that is not only of today, but always possible in all
times, to place in perfect equilibrium the two voices, that of the
lasting hour and that of the group of people who are reconciled
within it.
To this end, you must distinguish the two elements of this melody
of life in their primitive form; you must extract the rhythm of the
waves’ sound from the roaring tumult of the sea and from the
tangled net of everyday conversation, somehow draw the one
living line that bears the rest. You must place the pure colours side
by side to come to know their contrasts and affinities. You must
have forgotten the many, for the sake of the most important.
Two people, who are quiet to an equal degree, they should not
converse about the melody of their hours. This melody is for them
the element they have in common. Like a burning altar it stands
between them and they feed the holy flame ardently, with their
scattering of syllables.
Now if I place these two people onto a stage, and artistically draw
from their being, I do so with the intention of showing two lovers
and explaining why they are so blessed. But in the scene, the altar
is invisible and none can comprehend the gestures of sacrifice
they are making.
There are two ways out of this:
Either the two must stand up and try to state,
with many words and muddled gestures
what they were living before.
Or:
I change nothing in their deepest action
and add these words myself:
Here is an altar on which a sacred flame
burns. You become aware of its light
radiating off the faces of these two people.
The latter option seems to me the only artistic
one. Nothing of the essential is lost; no confusion
of the simple elements can disturb the course of
events, as long as I depict the altar that unifies
these two solitaries in a way that all see and
believe in its presence. Much later, spectators
will arrive instinctively to observe the fiery column,
and I won’t need to add further explanation.
But much later.
But this story of the altar is only a parable, and
a vague one at that. What is significant here is
to express on stage their common hour, within
which the two figures come to speak. This song, which
in life is confined to the thousand voices of day or night,
to the rustling of the forest or the ticking of a clock, its
hesitant tolling of the hour, this broad chorus of the
background which determines the rhythm and the tone
of our words, cannot, for the moment, be understood
by such means.
For what people call ‘atmosphere’, that hardly
does itself justice in recent plays – is really just
an initial imperfect attempt to let the landscape
behind the people shimmer through. Most are not
even aware of it, and due to its gentle intimacy
it will never be possible for all to become aware.
Technical amplification of sound or lighting
effects would be absurd, for from a thousand
voices only one rises to a point, so that all action
is left hanging from its edge.
This justice towards the broad song of the background
is only secured if it is valid in wholeness, which for the
moment seems unrealisable, not only due to the means
of our stagecraft, but equally the mistrust of the theatre going
masses. Equilibrium can only be achieved through a rigorous
means of stylisation. Namely, when you play the melody of infinity
on the same keyboard on which the hands of the scenic action are
placed, it means the great and the wordless are tuned down
to the words.
This is nothing more than the implementation of the chorus,
which unfolds calmly behind the light and glimmering dialogues.
The silence ceaselessly acting in all its amplitude and significance
makes the words in front appear like natural complements, and we
can hence envisage a global representation of the song of life,
which, otherwise, seems impossible, since those scents and dark
sensations cannot be employed on stage.
I wish to refer to a little example:
Evening. A small room. At the central table
two children opposite each other beneath the lamp,
grudgingly bent over their books. They are both
far away – far. The books conceal their flight.
From time to time, they call to each other, so
they won’t lose themselves in the vast forest
of their dreams. In this confined space, they
live out fantastic colourful destinies. They fight
and they prevail. They return home and marry.
Teach their children to be heroes. Even die.
I am individual enough to swallow that as a
storyline!
But what is this scene without the singing of the
old outmoded hanging lamp, without the breathing
and groaning of the furniture, without the storm
around the house. Without this whole dark background,
through which the children draw the threads of their
fables. How differently these children would dream
in the garden, differently again by the sea, differently
again on a palace terrace. It is not the same thing to
embroider on silk and on wool. People must know
that on the yellow canvas of that evening room, the
pair are reproducing, vaguely, the two clumsy lines
of their meandering pattern.
What I propose then, is to let the whole melody
ring out just as the boys hear it. A silent voice
must hover over the scene and at an invisible sign
the tiny voices of the children settle and drift, whilst
the wider current roars on through the narrow
evening room, from infinity to infinity.
I know many such scenes, and still wider ones.
Whether the scene is an explicit, expressly stylised
or more prudent allusion, the chorus will either
find its place in the scene itself and will assert itself
by a vigilant presence, or else it will be reduced to
a voice, which ascends, expanding and impersonal
from the brewing of the common hour. In each
case there resides in this voice, as in the classical
chorus, a wiser knowledge; not because it judges the
events of the storyline, but because it is the foundation
from where this gentle song is released and into whose
lap it finally beautifully falls.
With stylised presentation, in other words, unrealistic,
I see only transition, for the art that we welcome
involuntarily to the scene, is that which resembles life
and which, in this exterior sense is ‘true’. Precisely this
approach is the way which leads to a deepening interior
truth: to recognise the primitive elements and employ
them. With solemn experience we will learn to use these
fundamental motifs in a freer and less conventional manner
and at the same time draw closer again to realism, for a
limited time. But this will not be the same as what went
before.
These efforts seem necessary to me, otherwise the
knowledge of the most subtle feelings which are acquired
from prolonged and serious work, will be lost in the noise
of the scene as never before. And that would be a shame.
After the scene one could, if it is done without leaning too
heavily towards the tendentious, announce new life, that
is to say communicate equally to those who have not
learned the gestures by their own impulse or strength.
Not that one can convert them due to the scene. But at
least they should experience: that this exists in our epoch,
and so close, surely that is happiness enough.
It is of almost religious significance, this understanding: that
once you have discovered the melody of the background, you
are no longer helpless in your words and confused in your decisions.
A serene certitude is born from the simple conviction
that you are part of a melody, that you justifiably hold a certain
place and have a particular task at the heart of a wider work
where all is of equal value, the smallest or greatest.
Not to be excessive is the prime condition for a calm and
conscious unfolding.
All discord and error comes when people seek to find
their element in themselves, instead of seeking it behind
them, in the light, in landscape at the beginning and in death.
In so doing, they lose themselves and gain nothing in return.
They mingle with each other because they cannot properly
unify. They hold fast to one another and cannot find their feet
since both are unsteady and weak; and in this desire to hold
one another up, they exhaust all their strength, to the extent
that from the outside, they cannot perceive the tangible sound
of a wave.
But each common element presupposes a series of distinct
solitary beings. Before them, there was a whole denuded of
relationships, existing only for itself. It was neither poor nor rich.
From the moment when certain of its parts became alienated
from the maternal unity, it entered into opposition with them,
for in distancing themselves they evolved. But it never lets
go of their hand. Even when the root is ignorant of the fruits,
it nourishes them nevertheless.
And like fruits we are. We hang high on strangely contorted
branches and endure many winds. What is ours is ripeness, our
sweetness and our beauty. But the strength for that runs through
the one trunk, from a root that widens to cover all. And if we want
to witness its power, we have to use it, all of us, in the most
consummate notion of solitude. The more solitary a person is,
the more serious, moving and powerful their community.
And it’s rightfully the most solitary beings who possess the lion’s
share of the community. I stated earlier, that one person perceives
more, another less, of the broad melody of life; and
correspondingly each is awarded a greater or lesser
position in the grand orchestra. Whosoever perceives the
melody as a whole will be at once the most solitary and most
deeply embedded in the community. For he will hear what no one
else hears, and for this sole reason will understand in his
consummation, what the rest catch as incomplete fragments.