Rilke Vorfrühling

The English reader might easily miss the Ton in Betonung in Rilke's "Vorfrühling" which I prefer to translate as "Now-Spring" as it is "auf einmal".

- Ton is also the distinctive layer of sediment known as "sculpting clay" although the word may have been for dried clay.  Note Rilke and sculpture.

Vorfrühling  is Februar into März.  Februa is thought to have given rise to Valentine's day as a counter to Lupercalia.  Mars corresponds to Ares, the son of Zeus and Hera - so unlike Uranos, the offspring of Gaia (in her sleep) through Eros.  With Uranos story, Erde (earth) and Raum (Himmel, heaven) part: after the events of this tale they are divided.  The sky will no longer "cover" the earth at night (cover, as in the copulation of horses, in which the stallion covers the mare.)

But there is a comic moment, as Elizabeth Bishop may have noticed (A Cold Spring). The "cow pat" [Kuhfladen, Kot] in spring may be grey (she has "cow flop".)

Note: Wege, Pfaden; English has "cowpath" but German does not.  Interestingly, Küher is Swiss for Kuhhirt - an amusing twist to calling 'Herr' as calling for one's shepherd [see: 'gott' and 'hu-']

In his French poem "Spring" [Printemps], the thread-bare gray cloud covers and then discloses the Stern [Venus was often called a star] who often is not high enough to be seen in mountainous lands.  Star is also astr- and the rose, like an Aster, is a pseudo-antherium - an "asterism", if you will, or Gestirn.  From the Mound of Venus we descend to the rose and die Scheide, labia, petals.

see:  Phänologie

The action of love, when in season, is not hidden under a grey blanket.

Note: of the empty tree and the 2nd day of the pascal "three days".  In this announced rebirth, man will simply rise from the clay.  But the story at that time is in no book - that comes far into the future.  Until that arrival, there is an empty "Buche" [see etymolgy of "book".]  In truth, in time, all of those "tidings" or "Kunden" come as later knowedge [Ankunft, Zukunft, Herkunft, kommen, kennen, Kunden, K·u·nnte.]

The "empty tree" in the Pascal story would have been a "T".  This is was divides "schreiten" from "schreien".

Psychologically, 'clay' may correspond to "intestinal chime".  Bishop has the green leaves of grass rise through the dry stool.  Cows, Kühe, shepherds, herds and variants such as the Hirschkuh of "Mariae Verkündigung" are found on many paths through Rilke's work.  The shepherd herds his flock with the arc of the artfully tossed stone - or is seen leaning on his stock.  See readily associated "Schein Scheiße Schießen" and "schreien - schriee".  With no great art, the shepherd also crouches in the field.  See: the Han outrage with the sanitary mores of the Tibetans.

Early spring is when we first walk in "mud" in the meadows and anything else that "wintered" there.  Apparently Lou Salomé first got him out and about in the fields and by-ways.

Personal note: having had occasion to administer Rorschach many years ago, I can say that many poems of Rilke can be related to one another rather as a subject may relate one card to another, either explicitly or otherwise.  See early writings of Roy Schafer on both what could be meant by "introjection" and on "color shock" in the grading of Rorschach responses.

Erotik Rilke

Erotik is not absent from Sein und Zeit: Rilke lies under so much weight, but the erotic layer is there, and although quite clearly preserved, requires to be read through a certain indirection.