The Dark Interval: Letters on Loss, Grief and Transformation by Rainer Maria Rilke

Gleaned from Rainer Maria Rilke's voluminous, never-before-translated correspondence, this book collects the poet's best writings on grief and loss in one place for the first time. The result is a profound vision of the mourning process and a meditation on death's place in our lives, as well as a compilation of sensitive and moving expressions of consolation and condolence. from the publisher

Rainer Maria Rilke wrote over 14,000 letters before his tragic death from leukemia at age fifty-one, we are informed in the Preface to The Dark Interval. This volume consists of two dozen of Rilke's condolence letters, newly translated and gathered into one volume. Also included is a letter Rilke wrote to his Polish translator in which he discusses the themes communicated in his poetry.

The letters convey Rilke's philosophy of accepting death as part of existence, embracing the pain, and ensuring that we never truly lose loved ones, they are always with us and their work becomes our work.

I was in my late 20s when I picked up Rilke's slim volume Letters to a Young Poet. I kept the book close, often rereading it, and I gave copies to friends. I added Rilke's poetry to my shelves. I will never forget sitting on the cliffs of Mt. Desert Island, under blue skies with gulls circling overhead, the rushing sea and lobster boats below, and opening for the first time Duino Elegies to read,

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the Angelic
Orders? And even if one were to suddenly
take me to its heart, I would vanish into its
stronger existence. For beauty is nothing but
the beginning of terror, that we are still able to bear,
and we revere it so, because it calmly disdains
to destroy us.

Forty years later I still return to Rilke again and again, struggling to understand the letters and poems that have moved me so. I had no idea that The Dark Interval would offer so many answers.

I read a letter at a time, for Rilke's original ideas take concentration and thought. These are letters I will read and reread.

On the death of Countess Alexandrine Schwerin's father Rilke wrote, "...have faith in what is most horrible, instead of fighting it off--it reveals itself for those who can trust it," for "death is only a relentless way of making us familiar and even intimate with the side of our existence that is turned away from us."

To Nanny Wunderly-Volkart he wrote, "We have to get used to the fact that we rest in the pause between two of God's breaths: for that means: to be in time...The brief time of our existence is probably precisely the period when we lose all connection to him and, drifting apart from him, become enmeshed in the creation which he leaves alone."

To Countess Margot Sizzo-Noris-Crouy on the death of her mother, Rilke wrote, "...we should make it our deep and searing curiosity to explore such loss completely and to experience the particular and singular nature of this loss and its impact within our life." He again mentions death as the side of life "permanently turned away from us, and which is not its opposite but its complement to attain perfection, consummation, and the truly complete and round sphere and orb of being." Death is a friend, he consoles, the true yes-sayer. In another letter to the Countess he writes about life's horrors and the unity of bliss and horror as "two faces of the same divinity" as the meaning of his Sonnets to Orpheus.

Rilke's letter to Witold Hulewiz, who translated Rilke's writing into Polish, he addresses the central theme of "the affirmation of life-and-death," death being the "side of life turned away from us."

"Transience everywhere plunges unto a deep being," he wrote Hulewiz. The angel of the Elegies "is that being which vouches for the recognition of the invisible at a higher order of reality." 

Rilke states that his angels are not biblical but is "that creature in whom the transformation of the visible into the invisible...appears already consummated." And that is what terrifies we mortals so for we cling to the visible world.

As Letters to a Young Poet can help us learn how to live, The Dark Interval can show us how to accept the mystery of the future which we cannot see or know.

The title The Dark Interval comes from a poem in Rilke's Book of Hours which ends,

I am the rest between two notes
That harmonize only reluctantly:
For death wants to become the loudest tone--

But in the dark interval they reconcile
Tremblingly, and get along.
And the beauty of the song goes on.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Dark Interval: Letters on Loss, Grief, and Transformation
by Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Ulrich Baer
Random House Modern Library
Pub Date 14 Aug 2018 
ISBN 9780525509844
PRICE $22.00 (USD)

I have previously written about Rilke at

The Rilke of Ruth Speirs: New Poems, Duino Elegies, Sonnets to Orpheus & Others
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-rilke-of-ruth-speirs-new-poems.html

Roots of Understanding: Letters to a Young Poet
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2014/04/roots-of-understanding-letters-to-young.html

Review of You Must Change Your Life: the Friendship of Auguste Rodin and Ranier Maria Rilke
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-friendship-of-auguste-rodin-and.html

Dear Nelton

Many years ago I was at the Royal Oak, MI flea market and saw a trunk full of old papers that had been lifted from the streets. I asked the seller what he wanted for the papers, and he said $10, which was an awful lot of money for what was trash! I gathered up all the papers I could, noting there were covered with a thick sprinkling of baby powder. There was one album with papers, a few photos, and a few letters.

Back home, I sorted the papers. There was a whole man's history in receipts, from the purchase of a ring to payments on a house and furniture. I later sold these to a collector of African American ephemera.

The letters were very moving. George S. Miller was a vet who was trying to get the government to cover his medical expenses for injuries incurred in the war. He was in love with a woman named Nelton, who had a son. He poured his heart out to her, how he wanted to be a father to her son.

I made a little quilt with scanned letters and photos printed on fabric. Because George's life was in such turmoil, the quilt is chaotic. I used a vintage napkin for the background, which I stamped with various paint patterns. I layered my scans with fabric bits, and appliqued threads and buttons and silk flowers.

George's handwriting was not hard to read, and he wrote three sheets of paper per letter, using three-hole-punched lined school paper.

The photos showed two women, one of whom I believe to be Nelton.

Several houses photos were included. I found a paper with his address.

My heart still breaks when I read this letter from George. I wonder if he and Nelton ever were able to be together as a family. I sure hope so.

*****

2019 Update:

I searched Ancestry.com trying to discover more about George and Nelton.

Nelton E. Battles was born December 24, 1923, and died in Highland Park, MI, on March 16, 1987. George's 1962 letter to Nelton is addressed Seebalt St. in Detroit and the records show that in 1990 Nelton lived at 4382 Seebalt St.

You can see that the home in the black and white photos I found with the papers is the same house as pictured below. Today tet home is foreclosed and owned by the city. It was once a lovely house built in 1915. This Westside neighborhood is now mostly vacant homes today.

Seebalt Street home where Nelton once lived

In one letter George says he is sending money to Mrs. Nelton Battles, 2635 Cortland St., Detroit. That location is vacant land today.

George S. Miller's 1951 letter from the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States is addressed to 730 W Euclid St. in Detroit. I have seen Euclid St. I remembered it from the 1960s and several times in the last few years we have gotten lost coming off the expressway and drove past Euclid. The street is just north of New Center where I have visited Henry Ford Hospital specialists. The house appears to have been torn down. The houses next to where it would have been were built around 1907, large brick houses that once were lovely.

It is possible that I have found George in the census.

The 1930 Census for Detroit shows George Mill, born around 1926, 4 years old, living with parents George and Myrtle Miller and siblings Gladys and JC. Both parents were born in South Carolina. George Sr. worked in an auto factory. They paid $30 rent at 664 Livingston St., Detroit. I can't find Livingston on the map or in an internet search. The area must have been torn down years ago, perhaps during 'urban renewal' when African American communities were displaced to build the expressways.

The 1940 Census for Detroit shows George was 14 years old. Goerge was 40 and worked as a line foreman for road construction, earning $945 a year. Myrtle was 39 years old. John C., George, and Lilia were the children. The family lived on 3888 St. Antoine St. This is another street I have driven by. It's not far from Orchestra Hall where we attend the Detroit Symphony.

From Detroit Streets:

Beaubien and St. Antoine originated from the two Beaubien brothers, Lambert and Antoine, each of whom received half of the family farm after the death of their father, Jean Baptiste Beaubien, one of the first white settlers on the river, opposite Fort Dearborn. Lambert was a colonel in the First Regiment of Detroit's militia. He fought in the War of 1812. Antoine chose to name his property after his patron saint, St. Antoine. Antoine was a lieutenant colonel in the Michigan Territorial Militia. He donated a chunk of his land for the Sacred Heart Academy, once located at the corner of Jefferson and St. Antoine.
http://apps.detnews.com/apps/history/index.php?id=199#ixzz0qOP2Vxki

It would be great to locate George's military records.