‘Subrisio Saltat.’: Translating the Acrobat in Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies

This chapter analyses in detail a charged moment in Rilke’s Duino Elegies, the appearance of the figure of the acrobat and the Latin phrase that signals his smile. The untranslated Latin is read as emblematic of the nimble yet evasive gestures of this sequence, in particular as illustrative of how the poet communicates an experience of loss in these often cryptic elegies. The chapter examines the possibilities for translation (into English and Irish) of the Latin inscription, showing how translational choices at the interlingual level open out on to expanded understandings of trnalsation, which include the intermedial translations between the visual arts and poetry enacted by Rilke, and the translation of experience into poetic expression. Gadamer’s hermeneutics offer a way of theorizing the subtle shifts between experience, expression, interpretation, and understanding as a process of retranslation. In this way, the movement of translation becomes another figure for the process of Verwandlung – transformation – that is the Elegies’ central concern.