# Rilke ‘Translations’

By Peter Howitt, 16 October 2024.
Web page: https://compossible.blog/2024/10/16/rilke-translations/
Licence: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

---


These 'translations' were made relying on a number of sources including AI translations and, in respect of 'It Is Possible', relying heavily on Robert Bly's translation which he named 'Pushing Through'. The author does not speak German, so interpretations might be a more accurate description.

  1. [It Is Possible](<https://compossible.blog/2024/10/16/rilke-translations/#it-is-possible>)
  2. [The Watcher](<https://compossible.blog/2024/10/16/rilke-translations/#the-watcher>)



* * *

## It Is Possible

   It is possible I am trying to push through solid rock lying in

hard veins, like an ore alone;

I am in so deep I can see no end, and no space:

everything is close to me

and everything close is stone.

I am not wise in suffering,—

so this great darkness makes me feel small;

if you are a master: make yourself strong, break through:

Let your whole hand reach in to me,

So my great grief can happen to you.

![AI generated image](/images/uploads/2025/11/image-20.png "AI generated image")

* * *

Original:

Vielleicht, daß ich durch schwere Berge gehe

in harten Adern, wie ein Erz allein;

und bin so tief, daß ich kein Ende sehe

und keine Ferne: alles wurde Nähe

und alle Nähe wurde Stein.

Ich bin ja kein Wissender im Wehe,—

so macht mich dieses große Dunkel klein;

bist Du es aber: mach dich schwer, brich ein:

daß deine ganze Hand an mir geschehe

und ich an dir mit meinem ganzen Schrein.

**Vielleicht, daß ich durch schwere Berge gehe**  (1903, _Rainer Maria Rilke)_

* * *

## The Watcher

Stale dull days,

I can tell the storms are coming

by the trees that rap

against the worried window-panes

and I hear the sound

of distant things,

saying that which:

I cannot bear without a friend,

cannot love without a sister.

* * *

The storm transforms,

reshaping as it blows

through the forest,

through time,

leaving everything ageless:

the landscape,

like a verse in the holy psalms,

serious, forceful

and eternal.

* * *

How little is that which we contest,

what wrestles with us, how great!

if we would let ourselves

be conquered,

by the great storm

(as do other things),

we too might become

immense,

vast and nameless.

* * *

What we defeat is so tiny,

and the success makes us small,

the eternal and extraordinary

_will not_  be bent by us.

* * *

Think of the Angel who appeared

to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:

His adversary's sinews were stretched,

and strengthened (like steel) by the battle and

were plucked by His fingers

like strings, deep melodies.

* * *

_That_  _man_, whom the Angel honours in

deigning to fight,

was vanquished,

yet he strides forth proud,

made strong

by the hard hand

that carved him.

* * *

Victories do not tempt him:

_that_  _man_  grows only

by being beaten,

in resounding defeat

against ever greater things.

![AI generated image](/images/uploads/2025/11/image-21.png "AI generated image")

_Der Schauende_, from _The Book of Images_  by Rainer Maria Rilke. 

Thanks to Andrew Garfield for bringing this to people's attention in his beautiful reading of the version titled _The Man Watching,_  by Robert Bly and for his reading of _Learning to Measure Time in Love and Loss_  by Chris Huntington: