Diana Thater gorillagorillagorilla - Universalmuseum Joanneum

Rainer Maria Rilke
Duino Elegies:
The Eighth Elegy
With all its eyes, the animal sees
the open. Only our eyes are
as if reversed and set as traps
encircling it, all around its open exit.
What is outside, we know that from an animal’s
face alone; for already we turn the early child
around and force it, so that backwards
it sees shaping, not the open
so deep within an animal’s face. Free from death.
We alone see death; the animal that’s free
has its decline behind it always
and before it, God; and when it runs, it runs
in eternity, the way that fountains run.
We don’t ever have before us, not one
single day, the pure space into which
flowers endlessly blossom. It’s always world
and never Nowhere without Not: that pureness,
not watched over, that one breathes and
endlessly knows and doesn’t desire. As a child,
something gets absorbed in this when off alone
and gets shaken. Or else he dies and is it!
For close to death, one sees death no longer
and stares outward, perhaps with the spacious
gaze of animals.
Lovers, if either one weren’t there to
block the view, are close to it and marvel…
As if by oversight, it’s opened for them
behind each other… But neither gets beyond
across the other, and world returns for them.
Always facing towards creation, we see
only there the reflection of freeness,
darkened by us. Or when an animal looks up,
a mute one, and calmly sees through us.
This is called fate: finding oneself opposite
and only that and always opposite.
Were there awareness of our kind in that
secure animal approaching us
the other way –, it would wrench us around
with its wandering. But its being to itself is
infinite, not comprehended, and without a glance
at its condition, pure, like its outlook.
And there where we see future, it sees everything,
and itself in everything and healed forever.
And yet within that watchfully warm animal
is the weight and care of a great melancholy.
For always clinging to it too is that which
often overwhelms us, – that memory,
as if what one is pressing after had
once been closer, more faithful, and its attachment
infinitely tender. Here all is distance,
and there it was breath. After the first home,
the second is sensed to be doubly engendered and windy.
O blessedness of little creatures,
who always stay within the womb that bore them;
O happiness of the gnat, hopping still within,
even at its wedding: for everything is womb.
And see the half-security of the bird,
who knows nearly both from its origin,
as if it were the soul of an Etruscan,
from a dead man whom a space had welcomed,
yet with the resting figure as a lid.
And how dismayed is something that must fly
and comes from womb. As if frightened of itself,
it flashes through the air, as when a crack
runs through a cup. Thus the trail of the bat
tears through the porcelain of evening.
And we: spectators, always, everywhere,
facing all of this, not once beyond!
It overflows us. We put it into order. It falls apart.
We put it back in order and fall apart ourselves.
Who, therefore, has turned us around, so that
no matter what we do, we’re in that attitude
of someone leaving? Like him, upon
that final hill that shows him his whole valley
one more time: turning, stopping, lingering –,
we live like that, our way is always parting.
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