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Excerpt：里爾克的《致年青詩人十封信》英譯本 (Letters to a Young Poet: The Norton Centenary Edition
2026/05/23 05:13
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Excerpt：里爾克的《致年青詩人十封信》英譯本 (Letters to a Young Poet: The Norton Centenary Edition)
Many weeks passed before a reply came. The blue-sealed letter bore the postmark of Paris, weighed heavy in the hand, and showed on the envelope the same beautiful, clear, sure characters in which the text was set down from the first line to the last. With it began my regular correspondence with Rainer Maria Rilke which lasted until 1908 and then gradually petered out because life drove me off into those very regions from which the poets warm, tender, and touching concern had sought to keep me.
But that is not important. Only the ten letters are important that follow here, important for an understand-ing of the world in which Rainer Maria Rilke lived and worked, and important too for many growing and evolv-ing spirits of today and tomorrow. And where a great and unique man speaks, small men should keep silence.
——FRANZ XAVER KAPPUS, INTRODUCTION
Berlin, June 1929
……幾個星期過去，回信來了。信上印著巴黎的戳記，握在手裡很沉重；從頭至尾寫著與信封上同樣清晰美麗而固定的字體。於是我同萊內·馬利亞·里爾克開始了不斷的通訊，持續到1908年才漸漸稀少，因爲生活把我趕入的正是詩人以溫暖、和藹而多情的關懷所爲我防護的境地。
這些事並不關重要，所重要的是下邊這十封信，爲了理解里爾克所生活所創造的世界是重要的，爲了今日和明天許多生長者和完成者也很重要。一個偉大的人、曠百世而一遇的人說話的地方，小人物必須沉默。
——卡普斯
（馮至 譯）
比起里爾克的詩集或是《馬爾泰手記》，《致年青詩人十封信》（Letters to a Young Poet）應該是相對比較不熟的一本書。
恰巧在圖書館新書展示區看到W. W. Norton & Company出版的百年紀念版，也就順手借閱。
沒想到本書頗有特色，首先是另一位曾經翻譯里爾克作品的知名譯者Damion Searls寫了相當長的一篇前言，大大地讚美這個譯本；而本書譯者同時是出版社闆娘的身分也特別被揭露出來。
本書另一個特色則是附錄了里爾克寫這10封信時所經歷1903-1908期間吧的編年史，這裡頭考據的相關資料應該很有參考價值。
以下就以本書併同張錯的中譯本摘要分享〈里爾克第八封信〉。
書名：Letters to a Young Poet: The Norton Centenary Edition
作者：Rainer Maria Rilke
譯者：M. D. Herter Norton
出版社：W. W. Norton & Company
語言：英文
出版日期：2023/05/23
書名：里爾克-軍旗手、致年青詩人十封信
The Love and Death of Cornet Christopher Rilke、Letters to a Young Poet
作者：萊納．瑪利亞．里爾克
原文作者：Rainer Maria Rilke
譯者：張錯
出版社：商周出版
出版日期：2023/07/29
【Excerpt】
Eight
Borgeby gard, Flädie, Sweden,
August 12th, 1904
I want to talk to you again a while, dear Mr. Kap-pus, although I can say almost nothing that is helpful, hardly anything useful. You have had many and great sadnesses, which passed. And you say that even this passing was hard for you and put you out of sorts. But, please, consider whether these great sadnesses have not rather gone right through the center of yourself? Whether much in you has not altered, whether you have not somewhere, at some point of your being, undergone a change while you were sad? Only those sadnesses are dangerous and bad which one carries about among people in order to drown them out; like sicknesses that are super-ficially and foolishly treated they simply withdraw and after a little pause break out again the more dreadfully; and accumulate within one and are life, are unlived, spurned, lost life, of which one may die. Were it possible for us to see further than our knowledge reaches, and yet a little way beyond the outworks of our divining, perhaps we would endure our sadnesses with greater confidence than our joys.
For they are the moments when something new has entered into us, something unknown; our feelings grow mute in shy perplexity, everything in us with-draws, a stillness comes, and the new, which no one knows, stands in the midst of it and is silent.
〈里爾克第八封信〉
1904年8月12日，瑞典，波格比卡得莊園（Borgeby Gard），弗拉底（Fladie）
親愛的卡卜斯先生：
想和你再說一些話，即使說出來一無是處，無濟於事。我知道你曾經承受過多次巨大悲傷，即使這些悲傷已經過去了，你還是無法掙脫它的影響。但請再自省一下，這些悲傷真的過去了嗎？當你感覺黯然神傷，是不是因為它們沒有對你產生真正的影響，使你對存在的體驗有所不同？悲傷所以會成為險惡之物，是因為我們把它帶向人群並掩蓋它，就像敷衍治療疾病，當病況暫時收斂，過些時又會來勢洶洶捲土重來。它在你體內堆積，成為被摒棄、毫無生氣、失落迷茫、可以把你殺死的生命。但假若我們能超越常識看遠一點，稍稍越過所能猜度的頂端，也許就能擁有比歡樂更大的信心去擔當悲哀，那是無數的片刻，正值有新的陌生事物發生，把我們置入一種沉默凝滯的複雜處境，讓我們產生畏縮侷促的感覺，一切在內心退卻，一動不動，不發一言。這時，無人認識的「新」就站在我們中間，沉默不語。
……
And to speak of solitude again, it becomes always clearer that this is at bottom not something that one can take or leave. We are solitary. We may delude ourselves and act as though this were not so. That is all. But how much better it is to realize that we are so, yes, even to begin by assuming it. We shall indeed turn dizzy then; for all points upon which our eye has been accustomed to rest are taken from us, there is nothing near any more and everything far is infinitely far. A person removed from his own room, almost without preparation and transition, and set upon the height of a great mountain range, would feel something of the sort: an unparalleled insecu-rity, an abandonment to something inexpressible would almost annihilate him. He would think himself falling or hurled out into space, or exploded into a thousand pieces: what a monstrous lie his brain would have to invent to catch up with and explain the state of his senses! So for him who becomes solitary all dis-tances, all measures change; of these changes many take place suddenly, and then, as with the man on the mountaintop, extraordinary imaginings and singular sensations arise that seem to grow out beyond all bearing. But it is necessary for us to experience that too. We must assume our existence as broadly as we in any way can; everything, even the unheard-of, must be possible in it. That is at bottom the only courage that is demanded of us: to have courage for the most strange, the most singular and the most inexplicable that we may encounter.
再說一下孤獨吧，那就更清楚看出孤獨根本不是可以隨意選擇或捨棄的事物。我們皆孤獨，只不過自欺欺人假裝並非如此罷了。去接受我們皆孤獨卻是更佳選擇——真的，開始接受這假設，當然也會讓我們暈頭轉向，平常我們眼睛看慣的一切都被移走了，再也沒有親近的事物，所有遠方更是無限遙遠，像本來待在房間內的人，忽然未受警告安排，就被移往高山絕頂。那種莫名其妙被棄置毀滅的感覺令人不安，就像自高處跌落，或被拋擲向空中掉下來粉身碎骨，他的腦袋需要找出一個龐大謊言，去說明他所感覺到的迷失。因為當我們孤單的時候，所有的距離會產生變化，所有比例均衡的感覺也產生了變化，許多變化都是驀然而來，像那被放在山頂的人，思潮起伏，胡思亂想直到忍受不了，但我們還是要這樣去經驗！需要盡可能「廣闊」接受存在！所有前所未聞，未曾發生的事物均可能存在。這就是我們唯一基本需要的勇氣，去面對最陌生怪異以及無法了解的事物。……
……
So you must not be frightened, dear Mr. Kappus, if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloud-shadows, passes over your hands and over all you do.
You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any agitation, any pain, any melancholy, since you really do not know what these states are working upon you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question whence all this may be coming and whither it is bound? Since you know that you are in the midst of transitions and wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything morbid in your processes, just remember that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself of foreign matter; so one must just help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and break out with it, for that is its progress. In you, dear Mr. Ka-pus, so much is now happening; you must be patient as a sick man and confident as a convalescent; for perhaps you are both. And more; you are the doctor too, who has to watch over himself. But there are in every illness many days when the doctor can do nothing but wait. And this it is that you, insofar as you are your own doctor, must now above all do.
親愛的卡卜斯先生，當你碰到一種前所未有的悲哀，像光閃雲影讓你坐立不安，千萬不要恐慌，要明白有事情發生在你身上，是生命沒有忘記你，它會承接住你，不讓你跌倒，那你又何必把生命困擾、痛苦、沮喪排除出外呢？尚且你更不知道這些情況究竟替你做了什麼?為何折磨自己去追問那些困擾與痛苦是來自何方去往何處呢？尤其你知道自己正在過渡期，最需要就是變化。假如過程中發覺可能有病理的問題，那就要記住疾病代表一個生命有機體，渴望從變異陌生的處境釋放出來，如要幫助病人除病，就要讓疾病全部發作，才能使病者有所進展。親愛的卡卜斯先生，現在你心事重重，定要有耐心像病者，也要像有信念的康復者，也許兩者皆是。尚有一點，你也要像個醫生般地看顧自己，而且任何疾病都會遇到醫生也束手無策只能等待的日子，這時就是你作為自己的醫生所要特別注意的。
Do not observe yourself too much. Do not draw too hasty conclusions from what happens to you; let it simply happen to you. Otherwise you will too easily look with reproach (that is, morally) upon your past, which naturally has its share in all that you are now meeting. But that part of the errors, desires and longings of your boyhood which is working in you is not what you remember and condemn. The unusual conditions of a lonely and helpless childhood are so difficult, so complicated, open to so many influences and at the same time so disengaged from all real connections with life that, where a vice enters into it, one may not without more ado simply call it vice. One must be so careful with names anyway; it is so often on the name of a misdeed that a life goes to pieces, not the nameless and personal action itself, which was perhaps a perfectly definite necessity of that life and would have been absorbed by it without effort. And the expenditure of energy seems to you so great only because you overvalue victory, it is not the victory that is the "great thing" you think to have done, although you are right in your feeling; the great thing is that there was already something there which you could put in the place of that delusion, something true and real. Without this even your victory would have been but a moral reaction, without wide significance, but thus it has become a segment of your life. Your life, dear Mr. Kappus, of which I think with so many wishes. Do you remember how that life yearned out of its childhood for the "great"? I see that it is now going on beyond the great to long for greater. For this reason it will not cease to be dif-ficult, but for this reason too it will not cease to grow.
不要太勤於檢討你自己，也不要對發生在你身上的事情太快下結論——姑且讓它們發生吧！不然你就會過於容易地透過（所謂的道德）指控來看待你的過往，你現在發生的一切當然和過往有關，但凡是出自於你童年以來的迷惑、期待與欲望等事，已無法在現在的你身上發揮影響力了。童年的孤單寂寞是那麼難受、複雜、遭遇多方外面影響，同時又被切斷掉生命的現實細節，即使如此，童年有過什麼惡習，也不可就此稱為惡習。我們需注意平常怎麼使用「名稱」，是否因為選擇了罪惡的命名，而將生命的完整粉碎毀掉；其實那些名稱並無法取代一個人的行為本身，因為確切的行為本身，是和整個生命融為一體的。但因你把勝利看得太高，以為「勝利」就是已經完成的「偉業」，反而讓自己消耗太多精力，即使感覺真是如此。事實上，偉大指的是你應該以真實確定的事物，去替代虛假對我們的消耗，否則你的勝利不過是道德反應，沒什麼意義，可是你卻讓它成為生命的一個片段，親愛的卡卜斯，我對你生命有很大期望，你還記得童年時曾經有「偉業」的嚮往嗎？我現在看到你已經這上面繼續前進，渴望著更大成就的到來，所以才會不停碰到困難，但也因此生命才不停茁長。
And if there is one thing more that I must say to you, it is this: do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life has much difficulty and sadness and remains far behind yours. Were it otherwise he would never have been able to find those words.
Yours:
RAINER MARIA
如果我還有話要說，就是不要以為安慰你的人，就活在你覺得頗為有用的那幾句單純寧靜話語的簡單生活之中，其實他的生命遠比你還悲哀困難，他是為專門為你說的，所以他才找到了那些話來對你說。
你的里爾克
Many weeks passed before a reply came. The blue-sealed letter bore the postmark of Paris, weighed heavy in the hand, and showed on the envelope the same beautiful, clear, sure characters in which the text was set down from the first line to the last. With it began my regular correspondence with Rainer Maria Rilke which lasted until 1908 and then gradually petered out because life drove me off into those very regions from which the poets warm, tender, and touching concern had sought to keep me.
But that is not important. Only the ten letters are important that follow here, important for an understand-ing of the world in which Rainer Maria Rilke lived and worked, and important too for many growing and evolv-ing spirits of today and tomorrow. And where a great and unique man speaks, small men should keep silence.
——FRANZ XAVER KAPPUS, INTRODUCTION
Berlin, June 1929
……幾個星期過去，回信來了。信上印著巴黎的戳記，握在手裡很沉重；從頭至尾寫著與信封上同樣清晰美麗而固定的字體。於是我同萊內·馬利亞·里爾克開始了不斷的通訊，持續到1908年才漸漸稀少，因爲生活把我趕入的正是詩人以溫暖、和藹而多情的關懷所爲我防護的境地。
這些事並不關重要，所重要的是下邊這十封信，爲了理解里爾克所生活所創造的世界是重要的，爲了今日和明天許多生長者和完成者也很重要。一個偉大的人、曠百世而一遇的人說話的地方，小人物必須沉默。
——卡普斯
（馮至 譯）
比起里爾克的詩集或是《馬爾泰手記》，《致年青詩人十封信》（Letters to a Young Poet）應該是相對比較不熟的一本書。
恰巧在圖書館新書展示區看到W. W. Norton & Company出版的百年紀念版，也就順手借閱。
沒想到本書頗有特色，首先是另一位曾經翻譯里爾克作品的知名譯者Damion Searls寫了相當長的一篇前言，大大地讚美這個譯本；而本書譯者同時是出版社闆娘的身分也特別被揭露出來。
本書另一個特色則是附錄了里爾克寫這10封信時所經歷1903-1908期間吧的編年史，這裡頭考據的相關資料應該很有參考價值。
以下就以本書併同張錯的中譯本摘要分享〈里爾克第八封信〉。
書名：Letters to a Young Poet: The Norton Centenary Edition
作者：Rainer Maria Rilke
譯者：M. D. Herter Norton
出版社：W. W. Norton & Company
語言：英文
出版日期：2023/05/23
書名：里爾克-軍旗手、致年青詩人十封信
The Love and Death of Cornet Christopher Rilke、Letters to a Young Poet
作者：萊納．瑪利亞．里爾克
原文作者：Rainer Maria Rilke
譯者：張錯
出版社：商周出版
出版日期：2023/07/29
【Excerpt】
Eight
Borgeby gard, Flädie, Sweden,
August 12th, 1904
I want to talk to you again a while, dear Mr. Kap-pus, although I can say almost nothing that is helpful, hardly anything useful. You have had many and great sadnesses, which passed. And you say that even this passing was hard for you and put you out of sorts. But, please, consider whether these great sadnesses have not rather gone right through the center of yourself? Whether much in you has not altered, whether you have not somewhere, at some point of your being, undergone a change while you were sad? Only those sadnesses are dangerous and bad which one carries about among people in order to drown them out; like sicknesses that are super-ficially and foolishly treated they simply withdraw and after a little pause break out again the more dreadfully; and accumulate within one and are life, are unlived, spurned, lost life, of which one may die. Were it possible for us to see further than our knowledge reaches, and yet a little way beyond the outworks of our divining, perhaps we would endure our sadnesses with greater confidence than our joys.
For they are the moments when something new has entered into us, something unknown; our feelings grow mute in shy perplexity, everything in us with-draws, a stillness comes, and the new, which no one knows, stands in the midst of it and is silent.
〈里爾克第八封信〉
1904年8月12日，瑞典，波格比卡得莊園（Borgeby Gard），弗拉底（Fladie）
親愛的卡卜斯先生：
想和你再說一些話，即使說出來一無是處，無濟於事。我知道你曾經承受過多次巨大悲傷，即使這些悲傷已經過去了，你還是無法掙脫它的影響。但請再自省一下，這些悲傷真的過去了嗎？當你感覺黯然神傷，是不是因為它們沒有對你產生真正的影響，使你對存在的體驗有所不同？悲傷所以會成為險惡之物，是因為我們把它帶向人群並掩蓋它，就像敷衍治療疾病，當病況暫時收斂，過些時又會來勢洶洶捲土重來。它在你體內堆積，成為被摒棄、毫無生氣、失落迷茫、可以把你殺死的生命。但假若我們能超越常識看遠一點，稍稍越過所能猜度的頂端，也許就能擁有比歡樂更大的信心去擔當悲哀，那是無數的片刻，正值有新的陌生事物發生，把我們置入一種沉默凝滯的複雜處境，讓我們產生畏縮侷促的感覺，一切在內心退卻，一動不動，不發一言。這時，無人認識的「新」就站在我們中間，沉默不語。
……
And to speak of solitude again, it becomes always clearer that this is at bottom not something that one can take or leave. We are solitary. We may delude ourselves and act as though this were not so. That is all. But how much better it is to realize that we are so, yes, even to begin by assuming it. We shall indeed turn dizzy then; for all points upon which our eye has been accustomed to rest are taken from us, there is nothing near any more and everything far is infinitely far. A person removed from his own room, almost without preparation and transition, and set upon the height of a great mountain range, would feel something of the sort: an unparalleled insecu-rity, an abandonment to something inexpressible would almost annihilate him. He would think himself falling or hurled out into space, or exploded into a thousand pieces: what a monstrous lie his brain would have to invent to catch up with and explain the state of his senses! So for him who becomes solitary all dis-tances, all measures change; of these changes many take place suddenly, and then, as with the man on the mountaintop, extraordinary imaginings and singular sensations arise that seem to grow out beyond all bearing. But it is necessary for us to experience that too. We must assume our existence as broadly as we in any way can; everything, even the unheard-of, must be possible in it. That is at bottom the only courage that is demanded of us: to have courage for the most strange, the most singular and the most inexplicable that we may encounter.
再說一下孤獨吧，那就更清楚看出孤獨根本不是可以隨意選擇或捨棄的事物。我們皆孤獨，只不過自欺欺人假裝並非如此罷了。去接受我們皆孤獨卻是更佳選擇——真的，開始接受這假設，當然也會讓我們暈頭轉向，平常我們眼睛看慣的一切都被移走了，再也沒有親近的事物，所有遠方更是無限遙遠，像本來待在房間內的人，忽然未受警告安排，就被移往高山絕頂。那種莫名其妙被棄置毀滅的感覺令人不安，就像自高處跌落，或被拋擲向空中掉下來粉身碎骨，他的腦袋需要找出一個龐大謊言，去說明他所感覺到的迷失。因為當我們孤單的時候，所有的距離會產生變化，所有比例均衡的感覺也產生了變化，許多變化都是驀然而來，像那被放在山頂的人，思潮起伏，胡思亂想直到忍受不了，但我們還是要這樣去經驗！需要盡可能「廣闊」接受存在！所有前所未聞，未曾發生的事物均可能存在。這就是我們唯一基本需要的勇氣，去面對最陌生怪異以及無法了解的事物。……
……
So you must not be frightened, dear Mr. Kappus, if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloud-shadows, passes over your hands and over all you do.
You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any agitation, any pain, any melancholy, since you really do not know what these states are working upon you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question whence all this may be coming and whither it is bound? Since you know that you are in the midst of transitions and wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything morbid in your processes, just remember that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself of foreign matter; so one must just help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and break out with it, for that is its progress. In you, dear Mr. Ka-pus, so much is now happening; you must be patient as a sick man and confident as a convalescent; for perhaps you are both. And more; you are the doctor too, who has to watch over himself. But there are in every illness many days when the doctor can do nothing but wait. And this it is that you, insofar as you are your own doctor, must now above all do.
親愛的卡卜斯先生，當你碰到一種前所未有的悲哀，像光閃雲影讓你坐立不安，千萬不要恐慌，要明白有事情發生在你身上，是生命沒有忘記你，它會承接住你，不讓你跌倒，那你又何必把生命困擾、痛苦、沮喪排除出外呢？尚且你更不知道這些情況究竟替你做了什麼?為何折磨自己去追問那些困擾與痛苦是來自何方去往何處呢？尤其你知道自己正在過渡期，最需要就是變化。假如過程中發覺可能有病理的問題，那就要記住疾病代表一個生命有機體，渴望從變異陌生的處境釋放出來，如要幫助病人除病，就要讓疾病全部發作，才能使病者有所進展。親愛的卡卜斯先生，現在你心事重重，定要有耐心像病者，也要像有信念的康復者，也許兩者皆是。尚有一點，你也要像個醫生般地看顧自己，而且任何疾病都會遇到醫生也束手無策只能等待的日子，這時就是你作為自己的醫生所要特別注意的。
Do not observe yourself too much. Do not draw too hasty conclusions from what happens to you; let it simply happen to you. Otherwise you will too easily look with reproach (that is, morally) upon your past, which naturally has its share in all that you are now meeting. But that part of the errors, desires and longings of your boyhood which is working in you is not what you remember and condemn. The unusual conditions of a lonely and helpless childhood are so difficult, so complicated, open to so many influences and at the same time so disengaged from all real connections with life that, where a vice enters into it, one may not without more ado simply call it vice. One must be so careful with names anyway; it is so often on the name of a misdeed that a life goes to pieces, not the nameless and personal action itself, which was perhaps a perfectly definite necessity of that life and would have been absorbed by it without effort. And the expenditure of energy seems to you so great only because you overvalue victory, it is not the victory that is the "great thing" you think to have done, although you are right in your feeling; the great thing is that there was already something there which you could put in the place of that delusion, something true and real. Without this even your victory would have been but a moral reaction, without wide significance, but thus it has become a segment of your life. Your life, dear Mr. Kappus, of which I think with so many wishes. Do you remember how that life yearned out of its childhood for the "great"? I see that it is now going on beyond the great to long for greater. For this reason it will not cease to be dif-ficult, but for this reason too it will not cease to grow.
不要太勤於檢討你自己，也不要對發生在你身上的事情太快下結論——姑且讓它們發生吧！不然你就會過於容易地透過（所謂的道德）指控來看待你的過往，你現在發生的一切當然和過往有關，但凡是出自於你童年以來的迷惑、期待與欲望等事，已無法在現在的你身上發揮影響力了。童年的孤單寂寞是那麼難受、複雜、遭遇多方外面影響，同時又被切斷掉生命的現實細節，即使如此，童年有過什麼惡習，也不可就此稱為惡習。我們需注意平常怎麼使用「名稱」，是否因為選擇了罪惡的命名，而將生命的完整粉碎毀掉；其實那些名稱並無法取代一個人的行為本身，因為確切的行為本身，是和整個生命融為一體的。但因你把勝利看得太高，以為「勝利」就是已經完成的「偉業」，反而讓自己消耗太多精力，即使感覺真是如此。事實上，偉大指的是你應該以真實確定的事物，去替代虛假對我們的消耗，否則你的勝利不過是道德反應，沒什麼意義，可是你卻讓它成為生命的一個片段，親愛的卡卜斯，我對你生命有很大期望，你還記得童年時曾經有「偉業」的嚮往嗎？我現在看到你已經這上面繼續前進，渴望著更大成就的到來，所以才會不停碰到困難，但也因此生命才不停茁長。
And if there is one thing more that I must say to you, it is this: do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life has much difficulty and sadness and remains far behind yours. Were it otherwise he would never have been able to find those words.
Yours:
RAINER MARIA
如果我還有話要說，就是不要以為安慰你的人，就活在你覺得頗為有用的那幾句單純寧靜話語的簡單生活之中，其實他的生命遠比你還悲哀困難，他是為專門為你說的，所以他才找到了那些話來對你說。
你的里爾克
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