Wednesday, August 12, 2020

VIDEO: The Poet & the Sculptor / Rilke & Rodin

In this video excerpt from a talk I recently gave to a class of brilliant young writers, I describe the interdisciplinary relationship between Rainer Maria Rilke and Auguste Rodin (a relationship depicted in Lost Son, my novel about Rilke). 

What can creative writers learn from what Rilke learned from Rodin?

The talk includes my own translation of Rilke's great poem "The Panther" (also found below).

 

The Panther
Rainer Maria Rilke
(transl. M. Allen Cunningham)

His gaze, from the passing bars,
has grown so weary that it can hold nothing more.
To him there are a thousand bars
and beyond the thousand bars no world at all.

The soft drop of his dread sleek steps,
conscribed to a tight circle,
is like a dance of stamina around a center
in which a greater will stands stunned.

Yet sometimes the curtain of the pupil stirs,
opens itself soundlessly -- then an image gets inside,
passes through the silent tension of the limbs
and -- snared in the heart, ceases to be.