Conversations with Rilke

This first meeting with Rilke in Paris in early 1925 is the result of a correspondence which began with Betz pluckily writing to Rilke over the winter of 1922–23 to gain permission to translate an excerpt from The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, for inclusion in a special issue of Les Contemporains. From his chosen sequestration, the remote Château de Muzot in the Valais region of Switzerland, Rilke replies positively. This is not a given, since Rilke is very particular about who translates his work and even more so into French, his most treasured language. However, he had been impressed with the poems in Betz’s Scafelati pour troupes, which the young translator had gamely included with his appeal. Furthermore, Betz, without his knowledge, has also been recommended to Rilke as an able translator from German by one Inga Junghanns, a singer who had not only once performed for Rilke but also had taken it upon herself to translate the Notebooks into her native Danish. Rilke is further persuaded when Betz’s translated excerpt in Les Contemporains reaches his hands in July 1923 and appears to honour the original. Endorsed by his author, an exuberant Betz is keen to proceed and translate the remainder of the Notebooks, which hitherto had only received the attention of André Gide.

The relationship between Rilke and Gide is worthy of a book in itself, and their correspondence between 1909 and 1926 offers a wealth of insights. In these always cordial and genuinely respect- ful exchanges both men show interest, at least on the surface, in translating each other’s works, but in practice this endeavour was barely consummated and was perhaps more of a token effort, an authentic desire lacking application. Perceptive to the work’s credentials as an opulent contribution to early-twentieth-century literature rather than a vestige of nineteenth-century romanticism, Gide had published several pages of his own translation of the Cahiers in La Nouvelle Revue Française in 1911. Rilke was thrilled and impressed with Gide’s effort and returned the favour by translat- ing the Frenchman’s short story of 1907, ‘Le Retour de l’enfant prodigue’. The act of literary translation always underscored the friendship and mutual respect between these two writers of stat- ure. This collegiality extended into Rilke’s early years at Muzot and beyond. Gide expressed a desire for Rilke and no other to translate his prose poem Nourritures terrestres from 1897, but Rilke was obliged to tactfully decline as he was then fully engaged with completing the Duino Elegies and could not afford to be distracted. Furthermore, he had the previous autumn started translating the poems of Paul Valéry. Though his letters to Gide allowed Rilke to develop his command of the French language, in the end his long-term correspondent was usurped by Valéry, who latterly won Rilke’s devotion as a translator. It was in any case Gide’s disinclina- tion to return to Malte which paved the way for Betz.

The young Alsatian arrived at the apposite moment, and to Rilke appeared to possess the required sensitivity to bring his cherished prose work into the language he knew by now more intimately than any. Yet Rilke would not relinquish all control and would be very much present through the process as a guiding force, respectfully but firmly proffering his counsel.

The first, long-anticipated encounter between Rilke and Betz in Paris connects the warm correspondence to the collaborative work which proceeds during the spring months of 1925. The account of this first meeting is typical of so many of Betz’s clear-eyed observations, which capture the complex subtleties of his revered subject’s demeanour and only apply any mild criticism judicially. ‘He approached me with outstretched hand, with an eagerness dictated by his natural politeness, but where a true joyfulness broke through…’ One can’t help but be reminded of a similar recollection of an enamoured Stefan Zweig meeting the Belgian poet Émile Verhaeren for the first time. The first impression of the other in the act of welcome appears to leave a powerful imprint on the psyche which resists deterioration over time. Betz lingers over Rilke’s distinctive appearance and clothing:

Rilke had this somewhat strange silhouette that I would become accustomed to seeing over the months that followed and which barely changed during his stay in Paris. He sported a grey felt hat, with round brim and flat base, light gaiters, suede gloves and a grey cloth overcoat…

Betz recalls that the two men quickly leave the lounge of the Foyot, where the presence of an English woman busy writing letters unsettles the ambiance. This passing remark, which could almost go unnoticed, is, in fact, revealing. For it sets the two men as an article and brings them together in their own conspiratorial entity; the outside world, represented by the English woman, perhaps a tourist writing letters home or postcards, is the Paris they wish to avoid. On the walk that follows down to the Seine they return by rue de Grenelle, a route which leads to a highly significant moment for Rilke. At no. 5 were the then offices of the Gallimard publishing house, from whose basement Rilke, with Betz at his side, collects a box of his possessions and papers. These were the few things which Gide, through protracted and strenuous efforts, had managed to reclaim from Rilke’s flat when Rilke, sojourning in Germany in the summer of 1914, was unable to return to Paris due to the outbreak of war. The loss of his possessions, abandoned in the flat at 14, rue Campagne Première in Montparnasse, dealt a terrible blow. In Vienna Rilke had lamented his catastrophic loss to Stefan Zweig, who immediately galvanized his network of contacts to come to Rilke’s aid. He contacted Romain Rolland, who in turn contacted Gide, still in Paris. Gide leapt into action but by then the bulk of Rilke’s possessions had been auctioned off, having earlier been seized by the city authorities, who would have had few scruples when it came to the belongings of an enemy alien. However, he was able to procure from the concierge a box or two of Rilke’s papers which had been overlooked. It was these precious documents and effects that Rilke was finally reacquainted with in the basement of the Gallimard offices.

Following the meeting at the Foyot, Rilke makes a preliminary visit to the apartment of Betz and his wife, and is enraptured by the romantic view of a still-bare, wintry Luxembourg from the fifth-floor balcony. Betz notes how Rilke clearly felt the attraction of being at a high vantage point, almost floating over the city, above the throng:

He also liked that the apartment was separated from the street below by the balcony which ran along the entire façade, so that we could imagine ourselves raised aloft above the city, to a great height, as in a balloon basket, and that even leaving the windows open we enjoyed a feeling of isolation and intimacy.

On the next visit they get down to work. Each day, unless he hap- pened to be ill-disposed through sickness, fatigue or some pressing obligation elsewhere, for he was much in demand, Rilke would arrive in Betz’s apartment around 10 a.m. They would then spend a few hours together, sitting at either side of a small card table until lunchtime, poring over the manuscript of the Cahiers until it was time to carefully place the marker at a certain page and resume their labours the following day.

The relationship between Rilke and Betz is undeniably com- panionable, sympathetic, and their friendship clearly burgeons over these months of close proximity, enhanced perhaps by the strong element of trust and mutual accord necessary to achieve the translation. However, the work on Malte presents a considerable number of challenges due to Rilke’s fastidiousness with a language of which he possesses the most extensive knowledge outside of his own. As Betz confesses here, offering what we must presume are only selective examples, Rilke is wont to pull his young translator up for not quite grasping the nuance or intention behind a certain phrase or image, by choosing a word which, though technically accurate or even artful, might give way to a more convincing alter- native. These are the customary difficult choices for the translator, those necessary refinements which affect the long-term stability and endurance of a translation, but which are not always visible to the naked eye of the translator, however skilful. Betz treats the reader to a number of examples of these fiendishly tricky areas of debate, though due to the three-way language exchange of German, French and English, this is somewhat harder to follow in an English translation. (Please refer to the Notes.) Rilke more often highlights an issue, something he is uncomfortable with, then provides an alternative word or phrase which Betz almost always obediently accepts. Yet Rilke also offers praise for sections where he senses Betz has transmitted the rhythm and texture of the origi- nal with sympathy. Of course, it is very difficult for the layman to know to what extent Betz may have blundered or excelled, as we only have his word for it, and clearly he is not going to sully his reputation by his own hand. It is important to understand that Betz saw himself increasingly as the authorized translator of Rilke into French and, looking back, self-evidently wished to justify his first translation. His all but unbroken run of subsequent translations and generally accepted position as chief ambassador for Rilke in France is an endorsement of this covetous position.

But any Rilke/Betz symbiosis should not be romanticized; Rilke left behind an unpublished collection entitled ‘Remarques à la suite de la traduction des Cahiers de M. L. Brigge’, now in the archive of the Colmar public library, and it is from this extraordinarily detailed document that Betz sources most of the problems of translation he cites here. However, it has also been argued by critics and more recent translators of the Notebooks into French, perhaps more vociferously to condone the necessity of their new version, that Betz knowingly supressed the most seri- ous criticisms laid at his feet by Rilke in this document in order to justify his translation. Whatever the case, it seems unquestion- able that Rilke genuinely believed Betz to be more than capable of undertaking the translation of the Notebooks based on a range of evidence, and doubtless a good measure of intuition. Rilke’s respect for the translator who would conjure his work into the language he most admired was indisputable. But, any camara- derie aside, Rilke held to exacting standards and his knowledge not just of the historical subject matter, but also the subtleties of his images was always going to exceed that of the younger man. Anyone, however inspired, intuitive and skilful they might be, would, in my view as a translator myself, have had to bow to and benefit from Rilke’s encroachment and augmentation. One thing we can be sure of is that the two men had forged a special bond by working together so intimately on the manuscript, for with no one else had Rilke worked so intensely and protractedly on his own writing. Betz, a young man in his twenties, had been permitted entry into a poetically complex interior world which few had witnessed at such close range, working at the rich seam itself, within the text, not only the mysterious sources and formations of the original being made manifest, but with the author of that text sat alongside him – verifying, endorsing, underlining, explaining, suggesting. Betz must have felt a tremendous responsibility and at the same time experienced a feeling of exclusivity in his privileged ‘pioneering’ position.