The Elegant Variation: CONNECTIONS: ROSS, RILKE

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October 27, 2007

CONNECTIONS: ROSS, RILKE

Geoff Dyer's review of Alex Ross's marvelous The Rest is Noise is now available online. We couldn't help but approvingly note his closing paragraph:

It would be unfair, though, to dwell on omissions when so much has been included. “The Rest Is Noise” is a great achievement. Rilke once wrote of how he learned to stand “more seeingly” in front of certain paintings. Ross enables us to listen more hearingly.

We've always loved this Rilke poem and that line in particular, although Dyer seems to be working from either a different translation or faulty memory. We reproduce this gem, "Moving Forward," for you here, as translated by Robert Bly:

The deep parts of my life pour onward,
as if the river shores were opening out.
It seems that things are more like me now,
that I can see farther into paintings.
I feel closer to what language can't reach.
With my senses, as with the birds, I climb
into the windy heaven, out of the oak,
and in the ponds broken off from the sky
my feeling sinks, as if standing on fishes.

Posted at 10:28 AM in Connections | Permalink

Comments

hi; 1st time commenting, long time reader. as beautiful as that poem is, i'm not so sure if dyer is referencing that poem. i think dyer might be referring to rilke's letters on cezanne, in which he wrote that as he stood in the middle of the exhibition, in between two rooms at salon d'automne, he did not particularly 'see' the paintings, but felt the presence of the paintings as a colossal reality.

Posted by: sd | October 27, 2007 at 11:46 AM

I did wonder about that, too, though I don't recall the "seeingly" bit from the Letters but I've pulled them down to thumb back through them. I'll see if I can track down Dyer to clarify.

Posted by: TEV | October 27, 2007 at 12:09 PM

In the original text of 'Fortschritt', the relevant line reads:

'[werden] alle Bilder immer angeschauter'

which, though impossible to translate literally, means something like 'all paintings become ever more deeply seen', but very much in the sense of internalised.

Posted by: Lee | October 27, 2007 at 12:30 PM

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The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."

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*Now in Paperback*

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SECOND LOOK

The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald

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The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

October 27, 2007

CONNECTIONS: ROSS, RILKE

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
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SECOND LOOK

Categories

The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog. A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog "Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

October 27, 2007

CONNECTIONS: ROSS, RILKE

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE: Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism