Notes on the Melody of Things

Last updated

Notes on the Melody of Things (original title, in German: Notizen zur Melodie der Dinge) is an 1898 text by the Austrian writer Rainer Maria Rilke.

Contents

Writing and publication

Rilke wrote "Notes on the Melody of Things" at age 23. He was influenced by his relationship with psychoanalyst and writer Lou Andreas-Salomé, a colleague and close companion of Friedrich Nietzsche who introduced Rilke to the philosopher's work, as well as a visit to Florence in 1898 in which he studied Renaissance painting. [1]

The piece was not published during Rilke's lifetime, but many of its ideas would appear in Rilke's essay "The Value of the Monologue," also published in 1898. [2]

The piece was eventually published in the fifth volume of Rilke's collected works, between 1955 and 1966 in Frankfort and Wiesbaden. Writer Damion Searls later translated the text into English for his anthology 2010 The Inner Sky: Poets, Notes, Dreams.

Themes

"Notes on the Melody of Things" discusses theater criticism, landscape painting, human relations, memory, and solitude. [2] , and of humans' relationship to the natural world, mediated through art. In the text, Rilke characterizes the world as the background of a medieval or Renaissance-era painting, glowing behind human figures. [3] He uses the phrase "melody of the background" to describe the atmosphere of such a landscape as a "melody" connecting all of human life and nature, and argues that one must understand this melody to understand the world. [4]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Albrecht Dürer</span> German painter, printmaker and theorist (1471–1528)

Albrecht Dürer, sometimes spelled in English as Durer, was a German painter, printmaker, and theorist of the German Renaissance. Born in Nuremberg, Dürer established his reputation and influence across Europe in his twenties due to his high-quality woodcut prints. He was in contact with the major Italian artists of his time, including Raphael, Giovanni Bellini, and Leonardo da Vinci, and from 1512 was patronized by Emperor Maximilian I.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rainer Maria Rilke</span> Austrian poet and writer (1875–1926)

René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke, known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was an Austrian poet and novelist. Acclaimed as an idiosyncratic and expressive poet, he is widely recognized as a significant writer in the German language. His work is viewed by critics and scholars as possessing undertones of mysticism, exploring themes of subjective experience and disbelief. His writings include one novel, several collections of poetry and several volumes of correspondence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonnet</span> Poetic form, traditionally fourteen specifically-rhymed lines

A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's invention, and the Sicilian School of poets who surrounded him then spread the form to the mainland. The earliest sonnets, however, no longer survive in the original Sicilian language, but only after being translated into Tuscan dialect.

A song cycle is a group, or cycle, of individually complete songs designed to be performed in sequence, as a unit.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adalbert Stifter</span> Austrian writer, poet, painter, and pedagogue (1805–1868)

Adalbert Stifter was an Bohemian-Austrian writer, poet, painter, and pedagogue. He was notable for the vivid natural landscapes depicted in his writing and has long been popular in the German-speaking world, while remaining almost entirely unknown to English readers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Italian Renaissance</span> Italian cultural movement from the 14th to 17th century

The Italian Renaissance was a period in Italian history covering the 15th and 16th centuries. The period is known for the initial development of the broader Renaissance culture that spread across Western Europe and marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity. Proponents of a "long Renaissance" argue that it started around the year 1300 and lasted until about 1600. In some fields, a Proto-Renaissance, beginning around 1250, is typically accepted. The French word renaissance means "rebirth", and defines the period as one of cultural revival and renewed interest in classical antiquity after the centuries during what Renaissance humanists labelled as the "Dark Ages". The Italian Renaissance historian Giorgio Vasari used the term rinascita ("rebirth") in his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects in 1550, but the concept became widespread only in the 19th century, after the work of scholars such as Jules Michelet and Jacob Burckhardt.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Don Paterson</span> Scottish poet, writer and musician (born 1963)

Donald Paterson is a Scottish poet, writer and musician. His work has won several awards, including the Forward Poetry Prize, the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. He was recipient of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry 2009.

<i>New Poems</i> Collection of poems written by Rainer Maria Rilke

New Poems is a two-part collection of poems written by Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926). The first volume, dedicated to Elisabeth and Karl von der Heydt was composed from 1902 to 1907 and was published in the same year by Insel Verlag in Leipzig. The second volume, dedicated to Auguste Rodin, was completed in 1908 and published by the same publisher. With the exception of eight poems written in Capri, Rilke composed most of them in Paris and Meudon. At the start of each volume he placed, respectively, Früher Apollo and Archaïscher Torso Apollos, poems about sculptures of the poet-God.

<i>Sonnets to Orpheus</i> Sonnet cycle by Rainer Maria Rilke

The Sonnets to Orpheus are a cycle of 55 sonnets written in 1922 by the Bohemian-Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926). It was first published the following year. Rilke, who is "widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets," wrote the cycle in a period of three weeks experiencing what he described a "savage creative storm." Inspired by the news of the death of Wera Ouckama Knoop (1900–1919), a playmate of Rilke's daughter Ruth, he dedicated them as a memorial, or Grab-Mal, to her memory.

<i>Duino Elegies</i> Book by Rainer Maria Rilke

The Duino Elegies are a collection of ten elegies written by the Bohemian-Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke. He was then "widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets", and began the elegies in 1912 while a guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis at Duino Castle, on the Adriatic Sea. The poems were dedicated to the Princess upon their publication in 1923. During this ten-year period, the elegies languished incomplete for long stretches of time as Rilke had frequent bouts with severe depression—some of which were related to the events of World War I and being conscripted into military service. Aside from brief periods of writing in 1913 and 1915, he did not return to the work until a few years after the war ended. With a sudden, renewed burst of frantic writing which he described as a "boundless storm, a hurricane of the spirit"—he completed the collection in February 1922 while staying at Château de Muzot in Veyras, Switzerland. After their publication in 1923, the Duino Elegies were soon recognized as his most important work.

<i>Letters to a Young Poet</i> Collection of letters by Rainer Maria Rilke

Letters to a Young Poet is a collection of ten letters written by Bohemian-Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) to Franz Xaver Kappus (1883–1966), a 19-year-old officer cadet at the Theresian Military Academy in Wiener Neustadt. Rilke, the son of an Austrian army officer, had studied at the academy's lower school at Sankt Pölten in the 1890s. Kappus corresponded with the popular poet and author from 1902 to 1908 seeking his advice as to the quality of his poetry, and in deciding between a literary career or a career as an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army. Kappus compiled and published the letters in 1929—three years after Rilke's death from leukemia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Orpheus and Eurydice</span> Ancient Greek legend

The ancient legend of Orpheus and Eurydice concerns the fateful love of Orpheus of Thrace for the beautiful Eurydice. Orpheus was the son of Oeagrus and the muse Calliope. It may be a late addition to the Orpheus myths, as the latter cult-title suggests those attached to Persephone. The subject is among the most frequently retold of all Greek myths, being featured in numerous works of literature, operas, ballets, paintings, plays, musicals, and more recently, films and video games.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Baladine Klossowska</span> Polish painter (1886–1969)

Baladine Klossowska or Kłossowska was a German painter. Originating from an artistic Jewish family with roots in Lithuania, she moved from Breslau, Germany, to Paris, France, at the turn of the 20th century, where she was a vivid and active participant in the explosion of artistic experiment then active in the city.

Alan Frank Keele is an American professor of German at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah.

Alfred A. Poulin, Jr. or A. Poulin (1938–1996) was an American poet, translator, and editor noted for his translation of Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus. Poulin studied at St. Francis College in Maine, Loyola University in Chicago, Illinois, and at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. He later taught as a professor at the State University of New York at Brockport. His translation work focused on translating poetry from French and German into English.

The Symphony No. 5 is a composition for baritone, mezzo-soprano, and orchestra by the American composer John Harbison. The work was commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the conductor James Levine. It was given its world premiere in Boston on April 17, 2008 by the mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey, the baritone Nathan Gunn, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra directed by James Levine. The text of the piece is set to Orpheus and Eurydice by Czesław Miłosz, Relic by Louise Glück, and the Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke.

Zinaida Alexandrovna Mirkina was a Russian essayist, translator and philosopher. She was an awardee of the Bjørnson Prize of the Norwegian Academy of Literature and Freedom of Expression for "extensive contribution to strengthening the freedom of expression in Russia."

<i>Pastoral Concert</i> Painting by Titian (c. 1509)

The Pastoral Concert or Le Concert Champêtre is an oil painting of c. 1509 attributed to the Italian Renaissance master Titian. It was previously attributed to his fellow Venetian and contemporary Giorgione. It is located in the Musée du Louvre in Paris.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Archaic Torso of Apollo</span> Poem by Rainer Maria Rilke

"Archaic Torso of Apollo" is a sonnet by the Austrian writer Rainer Maria Rilke, published in the collection New Poems in 1908. It opens the collection's second part and is a companion piece to "Early Apollo", which opens the first part. The poem describes the impressions given by the surviving torso of an ancient statue, which for the poet creates a vision of what the intact statue must have been like.

References

  1. Betz, Maurice (25 June 2019). Rilke in Paris. Steerforth Press. p. 83. ISBN   978-1782274742 . Retrieved 17 September 2022.
  2. 1 2 "Notes on the Melody of Things". The Literary Review. 52 (1). Retrieved 17 September 2022.
  3. Gosetti-Ferencei, Jennifer Anna (10 May 2019). "The Imaginative Ecology of Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus". In Vandegrift Eldridge, Hannah; Fischer, Luke (eds.). Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus: Philosophical and Critical Perspectives. Oxford University Press. ISBN   978-0190685430.
  4. Hirt, Katherine (19 May 2010). When Machines Play Chopin: Musical Spirit and Automation in Nineteenth-Century German Literature. De Gruyter. ISBN   978-3110232394 . Retrieved 17 September 2022.