On the Blue Side— At the West End Gallery
Poetic power is great, strong as a primitive instinct; it has its own unyielding rhythms in itself and breaks out as out of mountains.
–Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters toa Young Poet
The line above from Rilke has been translated a couple of different ways. This is an abridged version that omits any reference to the subject, a German poet, who Rilke was describing in his letter. This version becomes only about poetic power. This is the version you will mainly see quoted today.
The original version was a direct reference to Richard Dehmel, a German poet who died in 1920 from injuries sustained in WW I. Dehmel was an influential poet in Germany in the pre-war years, his verse considered very rhythmic. It was a favorite among popular composers of that era– Richard Strauss, Carl Orff, and Kurt Weill, for examples–who regularly set his poetry to their music. He is best known for his work that was strongly sexual in nature, so much so that he faced obscenity charges several times.
The original line is at the end of a paragraph where Rilke writes about his admiration for the beauty of Dehmel’s work as well as his concern that he sometimes went beyond the prevailing accepted levels of decency of that era. The original line:
His poetic strength is great and as powerful as primal instinct; it has its own relentless rhythms within, and explodes from him like a volcano.
It wasn’t changed that much actually, mainly keeping a direct reference to Dehmel and using the explosive nature of a volcano instead of breaks out as out of mountains.
I know this is not of much interest to anyone, but I only mention it because the original made me think of the Red Tree in some of my paintings as a sort of small volcanic explosion. I had never thought of them in this way and it intrigued me. It gave them a new dimension.
I can definitely see this in the painting at the top, On the Blue Side, which is at the West End Gallery. The Red Tree here has a feel of released energy, as though it is exploding from the earth. Maybe trees and everything springing from the earth is a small volcano, a bursting eruption of energy? I don’t know but I like the idea.
Hmm….
Here’s a song that is about mountains in a way. This is Remember the Mountain Bed, another favorite from Mermaid Avenue, the Wilco/Billy Bragg collaboration where they composed music for the unpublished Woody Guthrie lyrics. Good stuff.
Redtree Times 