Rilke and fish-language

Zwischen den Sternen, wie weit; und doch, um wieviels noch weiter,
was man am Hiesigen lernt.
Einer, zum Beispiel, ein Kind... und ein Nächster, ein Zweiter --
o wie unfasslich entfernt.

Schicksal, es misst uns vielleicht mit des Seienden Spanne,
dass es uns fremd erscheint;
denk, wieviel Spannen allein vom Mädchen zum Manne,
wenn es ihn meidet und meint.

Alles ist weit--, und nirgends schliesst sich der Kreis.
Sieh in der Schüssel, auf heiter bereitetem Tische,
seltsam der Fische Gesicht.

Fische sind stumm..., meinte man einmal. Wer weiss?
Aber ist nicht am Ende ein Ort, wo man das, was der Fische
Sprache wäre, ohne sie spricht?


[Sonnets to Orpheus, II.20]


Between the stars, how far; and yet by how much farther still,
what one learns of the here and now.
Someone, a child for example... and a next one, a second--
oh how inconceivably distant.

Fate, perhaps it measures us with spans of Being
so that to us it seems strange;
Think how many such spans stretch from woman to man
when she avoids him and has him in mind.

All is far--, and nowhere does the circle complete itself.
See, in the dish, on the festively prepared table,
how odd the faces of fish.

Fish are mute..., one once thought. Who knows?
But is there not finally a place where what the fish
would speak is spoken without them?

[tr. tmorange w/help from poulin, herter norton and snow]

i reread all rilke's sonnets to orpheus at book court in brooklyn this afternoon (in the edward snow translation, best translator of rilke i know) and this one's positing of a fish-language in its closing lines reminded me of jessica's rug-language, and what walter benjamin says in the early essay "on language as such and the language of man" about lamp-language:

Language communicates the linguistic being of things. The clearest manifestation of this being, however, is language itself. The answer to the question 'What does language communicate?' is therefore 'All language communicates itself.' The language of this lamp, for example, communicates not the lamp (for the mental being of the lamp insofar as it is communciable, is by no means the lamp itself) but the language-lamp, the lamp in communication, the lamp in expression." (SW 1 63, cf. Reflections 315-316)