four-thirty-three

I.

The Unicorn Tapestries
Capturing the Unicorn: How Two Mathemeticians Came to the Aid of the Met

Tapestry, "The Unicorn at Bay," c. 1495-1505

Tapestry, "The Unicorn in Captivity," c. 1495-1505

—–
II.

When the Depression hit I was taken out of private school and put into public school. So I had a new set of friends to bring home to have a look at whatever my father was. These were the ten-year-old children of the yeomanry of Hoosierdom, and it was they who first told me that my father was as exotic as a unicorn.

 

In an era when men of his class wore dark suits and white shirts and monochromatic neckties, Father appeared to have outfitted himself at the Salvation Army. Nothing matched. I understand now, of course, that he had selected the elements of his costume with care, that the colors and textures were juxtaposed so as to be interesting and, finally, beautiful….

 

And he was the first planetary citizen my new friends had ever seen, and possibly the last one, too. He was no more a respecter of politics and national boundaries than (that image again) a unicorn. Beauty could be found or created anywhere on this planet, and that was that….

 

I try to imagine my father speaking to me across the abyss of the dead and the living, and I hear him saying this: ‘Do not pity me because I in my prime awaited romantic challenges which never came. If you wish to carve an epitath on my modest headstone in Crown Hill Cemetary at this late date, then let it be this: IT WAS ENOUGH TO HAVE BEEN A UNICORN.’”

 

[from an essay by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. written for Architectural Digest, collected in Fates Worse Than Death: An Autobiographical Collage, 1992]

—–

III.
O dieses ist das Tier, das es nicht gibt.
Sie wußtens nicht und habens jeden Falls
–sein Wandeln, seine Haltung, seinen Hals,
bis in des stillen Blickes Licht–geliebt.

Zwar war es nicht. Doch weil sie’s liebten, ward
ein reines Tier. Sie ließen immer Raum.
Und in der Raume, klar und ausgepart,
erhob es leicht sein haupt und brauchte kaum

zu sein. Sie nährten es mit keinem Korn,
nur immer mit der Möglichkeit, es sei.
Und die gab solche Stärke an das Tier,

dass es aus sich ein Stirnhorn tried. Ein Horn.
Zu einer Jungfrau kam es weiß herbei–
und war im Silber-Spiegel und in ihr.

Oh this is the animal that never was.
They didn’t know that, they just went ahead
and loved it; its walk, bearing, neck–they loved
even the light of its silent gaze.

Never existed. And yet, because they loved,
a pure creature began to occur. They always
left room for it, and in that cleared space
it simply lifted its head, and hardly needed

to exist. They never fed it grain
but rather, always, possibility.
And that gave the animal such energy

that it grew a brow-horn. A single horn.
And it came white unto a virgin here–
and was, in the silver mirror, and in her.

[from Sonette an Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926). English translation by David Young]

This entry was posted Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 at 5:56 pm and is filed under art, poetry, quote. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.