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Literary Research/Recherche littéraire 20.39-40 (2003): 307-309 Manfred Engel & Dorothea Lauterbach, eds., Rainer Maria Rilke: Gedichte in französischer Sprache, mit deutschen Prosafassungen. Trans. Rätus Luck. Frankfurt: Insel Verlag, 2003; 768 pp.; ISBN: 3458171460 This hefty "Supplementband" to the Insel historical-critical edition, Rainer Maria Rilke, Werke: Kommentierte Ausgabe in vier Bänden (I: Gedichte 1895 bis 1910; II: Gedichte 1910 bis 1926; III: Prosa und Dramen; IV: Schriften) firmly establishes the lead editor of the entire enterprise, Manfred Engel, as Germany's preeminent contemporary Rilke expert. It is fortunate, in the case of the 20th century's perhaps most international lyrical voice, that a younger generation of German based comparatists have taken up his cause again with intelligence and respect. We see this [end page 307] new spirit in the fine collection of fresh studies which Engel has recently gathered with Dieter Lamping under the title Rilke und die Weltliteratur (1999; see my review of this collaborative effort in Comparative Literature 53 [2001]: 265-8). And now for the first time we have what may well prove to be the lasting standard edition of Rilke's whole lyrical output in French. Thus, the anomalous situation arises in which the best first step to reclaim Rilke for Francophone readers as part of French poetry of the 20th century would be to translate the entire scholarly apparatus of the Engel-Lauterbach edition into French, to serve as an accompaniment for the reprinted French poems. Similarly, in order to proceed straight to a superb complete edition of the French poems for Anglophone readers — surely one of the greatest contingents of Rilke admirers — the Engel-Lauterbach apparatus should be translated into English, and naturally, instead of German versions accompanying Rilke's French poems, there would be older and/or newer renditions in English. Ideally (with some additions) the English side of the excellent bilingual edition by A. Poulin (1986) might be merged with the newly achieved editorial overview. And no doubt something comparable could be done for other cultural streams, such as the Japanese, in which Rilke has captured the attention of dedicated readers. One thing this new German effort makes clear is that the bristling nationalistic rejection of Rilke's French writings in German territories as the Nazis rose to power and the widespread puzzlement and standoffishness of many then contemporary French readers are pale historical ghosts. Much brighter is the picture of Rilke's genuine European voice with its several linguistic registers, a variety that today's readers, whatever their own primary native tongues may be, are more likely to find interesting in its own right — a response already familiar in the case of other cosmopolitan wanderers of 20th century like James Joyce and Ezra Pound. Today even skeptical Francophone readers are more likely to attentively revisit the original (positive) judgments by writers like Jean Cocteau and Paul Valéry, who respected Rilke's authentic tone as a French poet. The Engel-Lauterbach volume offers, first and foremost, Rilke's French poems as gathered in the collections Vergers, Les Quatrains Valaisans, Les Roses, Les Fenêtres, and, two runs of single poems written from April 1897 to May 1923 and September 1923 to September 1926; all of these are reproduced with facing German prose renditions of very high fidelity and quality by Rätus Luck. Second, the editors provide almost 400 pages of "Kommentar" which break down into the following sections: (a) some fifty pages that carefully analyze the creative pattern of Rilke's French lyricism or "L'oeuvre inconnue," alongside some documented early responses by notable poets; (b) some two dozen pages on the principles [end page 308] guiding the editing, commentary, and translation; (c) then, stretching over some 260 pages, for each cycle or set of poems, Rilke's own utterances on them, a general editorial statement on their time of composition, shaping, structures, themes, and key aspects of interpretation, plus, within each group, a more detailed treatment of all such questions poem by poem; (d) and, finally, helpful appendices covering the sources and scholarly literature, and indices of names and poems. Although the editors indicate the conditions especially relevant to a contemporary German rapprochement to Rilke's French writings, the great merit of the section "L'œuvre inconnue" is that their observations encompass the question of Rilke's world status and his accessibility through his French voice after it has been ignored for several generations. They provide, in effect, a monographic model of all the issues to be confronted: Rilke's acquired bilingualism; his special relation to the French language and culture; the peculiarities of his French poetry; the aesthetics and world view of his French lyrics in the context of his late work; the hallmarks of the "debate" regarding his "foreign" productivity and of its reception in Europe; and, the further contextualization of Rilke's extensive French expression alongside his occasional writings in and translations from half a dozen other languages. Rilke deserves to be studied under multiple headings alongside other unusual polyglot writers of the 20th century, from Fernando Pessoa to Vladimir Nabokov. He is a one-man justification for the inclusion of translation studies as part of comparative literature. Probably the most salient "mystery" about Rilke's creativity, which the editors discuss with such admirable clarity, is the fact that the overwhelming bulk of his French lyrics emerged in the same great period as his famous late works in German! The sheer quantity and continuity of the poet's French expression after his creative "restart" in German is astounding, but Rilke himself never explained it before death overtook him, and thus the task remains an attractive challenge for comparative literature scholars. Engel and Lauterbach have staked out the territory. It is hard to imagine how "mere" French experts or "mere" German experts can do justice to this total body of work. It is also equally obvious that comparatists (no matter what geocultural location they are practicing in) will welcome the Engel-Lauterbach edition as an indispensable tool in their pursuit of understanding these as yet inadequately sounded depths of the lyrical genius Rilke.
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