Sunday, August 11, 2013

Rilke and Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein wrote a book about a picture (Bild) theory of meaning.  Rilke, a poet who Wittgenstein financially supported, wrote a poetry book called the Book of Pictures (Buch der Bilder).  The poem below is my translation of the first poem of the book, called Eingang.  Can you identify themes from Tractatus in the poem below?

"Entrance" from Buch der Bilder

Who you also would be: in the evening steps out
out of your room, where you know everything;
as the last one before the distance lies your house:
who you also would be,
With your eyes, which seldom wearily
free themselves from the necessary threshold,
you absolutely slowly heave a black tree
and set it up against the heavens: small and alone.
And you have made the world. And she is big
and like a word that yet ripens in silence.
And like your will grasping its own sense,

they sweetly let your eyes go...

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