Wed 12 Mar 2008
I love Rilke and I was sent a lovely translation of this Sonnet to Orpheus by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy which seemed to capture all my recent musings on change and flux and the excitement of accepting both. Strangely, this sonnet is not in my Mitchell edition of Rilke but it seems miraculously Buddhist in sentiment, though perfectly Rilkean in construction.
As I was reading it I thought it might be nice to create a 4 dimensional quotation for the blog. Almost 6 hours later, here it is. Who would have thought something so simple looking would require such finessing. Though truth to tell I love the zone I get into while editing and never tire of watching the sequence back over and over.
The music is Rachmaninov’s 10th Prelude played by Vladimir Ashkenazy.
[watches 4d quotation]
[long pause]
[realises has ceased respiration]
sigh of utter entranced delight
Beautiful, Alistair, thanks for spending the six hours!
And for being the spur for my finally getting into Rilke. I feel I need to explore different translations, a pleasure that still lies ahead…
very nice.
I wonder if everyone can see this? It’s a quicktime file – so I had a sneaking suspicion that Windows users might not see it.
Can you let me know?
your sneaking suspicion is correct. How lamentable!
I am, alas, a Windows user, but I was able to view the
film perfectly. It’s lovely and inspiring, as is this
blog.
Makes me want to read some Rilke!
Many thanks!
-r
r,
Were you? I still cannot. What is wrong with my
computer?
I feel like a horrible, shlocky student, whom befall all
the obstacles in this classroom.
But.. the shlocky student is headed to the library to join the
collective effort to read Rilke now.
Hi Lori,
You’re definitely not horrible or shlocky! There’s such
an abundance of technology lately, you almost have to
consciously choose what to pay attention to — kind of
like a pastry shop, but not as nice!
If you have Windows XP, you can download a free copy
of Quicktime at,
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/
Follow the instructions to download, and you’ll probably
have a better experience if you have a computer less
than, say, 7 years old (and preferably newer).
Hope that works for you.. but if not, there’s always
Rilke version 1.0, sitting quietly on a bookshelf at
your local library!
Have a warm, wonderful week.
-r
Thanks Robbie,
I was thinking about posting that plugin you need to make Windows play Quicktime – but you’ve done it for me.
op.31
op.37
(if you forget the name “Christ”.. Sergej can tell you the
second and the third part of this same story .. which
you’ve begun to listen. Have trust in me.. the sounds
are GREATER than any shape of imagined God.)