Conversations with Rilke by Maurice Betz

Translated by Will Stone

Review by Karen Langley

Aside from his verses, Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke is probably best known to the English-speaking world for his prose work, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Rilke’s work is loved and appreciated the world over, in many different languages, and a new release from Pushkin Press takes a look at the great writer through the eyes of his French translator. In Conversations with Rilke, Maurice Betz provides a rare look at the poet from someone who knew him and worked closely with him; this makes for a moving and fascinating read.

Born in Prague, and German-speaking, Rilke led a peripatetic life, moving around Europe and living for periods in Italy, Russia and France, amongst others, before finally settling in Switzerland. In the early 1900s, the poet had a spell of working for the sculptor Rodin, and during World War 1 a brief period of military service, for which he was totally unsuited. It was in 1925 that he stayed in Paris for a long spell, working with Maurice Betz on the French translation of the Notebooks; and is from this experience that Conversations springs.

Betz was already, at this point, an author in his own right; however, Rilke the poet had a special place in his heart, and Betz opens his book in autobiographical fashion by telling of his first encounters with the poetry of Rilke and how it sustained him during his experiences in the First World War. Once the War was over he found himself back in Paris, attempting to find himself as a writer and eventually mixing with other creatives such as Jean Cocteau and Andre Malraux. He was drawn into the orbit of Action magazine and learned from Cocteau about Rilke’s previous stay in Paris during the early 1900s.

Betz decided he wished to translate the whole of the Notebooks (a work written and set in Paris), and he was not alone in his appreciation of it, as Andre Gide had already translated a part of it. Betz wrote to Rilke; the latter responded positively; and out of this grew a friendship which would lead to the two men spending a good chunk of 1925 working together on the translation of the Notebooks. 

It’s clear from the narrative that Rilke liked and trusted Betz, and the translation proceeds well; although Betz is honest enough to reveal places where Rilke has corrected his work, coming up with another alternative. But alongside the history of their work together, we also get a marvellous portrait of Rilke the man. We see his love of Paris, his relationship to its beauty and its parks, and also his wariness when placed in the public eye. The Luxembourg Garden is a particular favourite, and there is a poignant moment at the end of the book, when Rilke has returned to Switzerland but Betz almost imagines he sees the poet’s figure walking towards him in the Garden.

Before our eyes was spread the Jardin de Luxembourg, lost to sight in its wintry bareness beneath the interlacing black web of the branches. To the left, in the tangle of dead trees, the triple basins of the fontaine Medicis, with reflections playing on its pool. But at the garden’s centre the larger basin shimmered, having absorbed the entire sky, a smear of light that travelled around from a distance the grey ribbon of the balustrade. Rilke loved this situation, which placed us, he said, ‘on the same level as the sky’.

During the summer of 1925, Rilke abruptly left Paris; this may have been for his health, which was often precarious; and Betz did not hear from him for several months. Nevertheless, the translation was completed and Rilke happy with it. But the two men were never to meet again, as Rilke died in December 1926; Betz would survive his mentor for 20 years, himself dying young in 1946.

‘When we are young we understand nothing,’ he said, perhaps thinking of that Prague era of which he could never speak about without a certain tension. ‘Life is only a long apprenticeship.’

Betz has produced a book which, as well as capturing two writers at work and in collaboration, also reflects the literary world of Paris at the time. The number of names which pass through its pages is impressive; the aforementioned Cocteau, Malraux and Gide, of course, as well as Colette, Blaise Cendrars, Francis Carco, Stefan Zweig and many more. Matisse and Rodin make appearances, as does Eleanora Duse; the book is a window into a lost world, and conjures beautifully a sparkling creative scene.

Conversations was first published in 1937, and a final chapter entitled Rilke Alive, apparently written in 1936, takes a poignant look at his memory, as a kind of epitaph. It’s a moving end to an often emotional book, and it’s clear how highly Betz regarded the poet.

Translator Will Stone provides an excellent introduction to the book, as well as extensive notes which give background to some names which might be new to the reader. Stone has the unenviable task in places of dealing with three way translation, involving texts which have gone from German to French and are now going to English; and he does a sterling job of explaining any complexities attached to that. Interestingly, this is not the only Betz book Stone has translated, as a previous volume Rilke in Paris is also available from Pushkin Press, and would make an excellent companion piece to this one. Stone is also responsible for a collection of Rilke’s verse for Pushkin and so it does seem as if he’s something of an expert on the poet. 

Conversations is a beautifully written work, one with quite ornate and lyrical prose, and it really transports the reader to a different time and place. It gives an insight into friendship, a look at how artists can work together, a glimpse into a lost world and a portrait of a great poet in his later years. Stone and Pushkin should be congratulated for bringing this powerful and moving piece of work into English; a treat for any lover of poetry and art.  

Karen Langley blogs at kaggsysbookishramblings and longs for the lost world of art and creativity.

Maurice Betz, Conversations with Rilke (Pushkin Press, 2025). 978-1805330288, 197pp, paperback.

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