A word about the string. Eine Saite, a string, is the title of this gathering place of thoughts and images. It comes from a poem by Rilke, Am Rande der Nacht (On the Border of Night), which sets up the speaker, the person experiencing, as a string:
Ich bin eine Saite,
über rauschende breite
Resonanzen gespannt.
(I am a string, stretched over rumbling, broad resonances.)
The full poem and translation are posted in the about page. I recommend reading the German aloud, if you can come close to pronouncing it. The rhythms are wonderful.
RIlke loves a wide open space - field of Queen Anne’s Lace and big firs during the heavy snowstorm days.
It has appealed to me to have “A String” be the title of a website that is mostly about spinning, weaving, sewing, textiles. However, I’m feeling the need to admit what German speakers must already know - although have been too polite to bring up: the string in Rilke’s poem is a musical instrument string. The word in German would be different if he were talking about yarn, thread, spun fiber. Strings for instruments are usually made from sinew or metal - a different material entirely. So there you have it, I admit to knowing that the stretched string in the poem is not the same kind of string I have stretched across my studio for weaving.
Beginning of a walknut-dyed weaving. 10/2 cotton warp and weft, mill spun.
And yet. We are in the world of poetry, where meaning is specific and also deep, layered. Any string of any material can be stretched across rumbling, broad resonances. The strings of my warp contribute to the vibrations within a vast space (more so, if I’m weaving outside.)
Weaving linen outdoors last summer.
The poem culminates in the realization:
Ich soll zilbern erzittern - I must silverly shiver!
(My translation, my exclamation point) The person who is a string suddenly knows how to participate, how to create something that will cause “everything” to “live under me” - or as I interpret, to enliven in that space over which I am stretched. And this is another parallel - when my yarn is spun, and stretched, and woven, I silverly shiver. I choose my participation, that will resonate around me, through all the enlivened things.
Handspun cotton catching the sunlight
This is elusive, but it has been deeply known to me since I first read the poem: that there is a way to be in the world, activating your own sound, evoking harmony, resonance, dance, light.
My writing slows as it becomes harder to make the words say what I understand from Rilke - but it’s there in the poem.
In Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows’ translation, they say:
A silver thread,
I reverberate:
then all that’s underneath me
comes to life.
My neighbor finds resonance in shaping found wood sculptures and suspending them.
I’ve been wanting to write about this for a long time, and about other things Rilke… so many unwritten Rilke thoughts! But especially lately, I’ve thought about poetry and translation and what words mean, because it’s important for subversion, for questioning what we’ve always been taught.
I learned about and ordered this book, an interpretation of the Therigatha, delving only slightly into the stir that it caused around the question of whether it could be called a ‘translation.’ (The current subtitle, “original poems inspired by…” is modified, post-stir.) Without going into my own reading of the original Pali text and various officially sanctioned translations, I will just say I’m more interested in finding out what a poem can do for you, how it cam make you feel and possibly change. (And this version of the poetry of enlightened women does more for me upon first reading than years of referring to the literal translations.)
And I also tend to think that anyone reading poetry, even in a native language, is engaged in translation to some extent, because we each bring our own history of understanding to all words, and we cannot say or know what a poet “means” with a certain word, apart from how it affects us. (Ooh, intent and impact… there’s another thick topic.)
I truly hope to bring more poetry here, alongside the weaving, since they are intertwined in my body and mind. This pulling of myself in the two directions, from words and intellect to hands and technique, makes me feel that they are two ends of the same string, and that all these meanings are present and vital, if not for Rilke then for me, through the intersection of his words and my life.