A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place
your sight can knock on, echoing; but here
within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze
will be absorbed and utterly disappear:
just as a raving madman, when nothing else
can ease him, charges into his dark night
howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels
the rage being taken in and pacified.
She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen
into her, so that, like an audience,
she can look them over, menacing and sullen,
and curl to sleep with them. But all at once
as if awakened, she turns her face to yours;
and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny,
inside the golden amber of her eyeballs
suspended, like a prehistoric fly.
The superstitions often linked with cats have been superbly portrayed by the poet. The expression is extremely captivating. I would like to quote a few lines as under: you see yourself, tiny, inside the golden amber of her eyeballs suspended, like a prehistoric fly.
As to the gender confusion mentioned below, bear in mind only that cat is a feminine noun in German and the original title is Schwartze Katze, with the e ending on the adjective schwartz denoting the female gender, as opposed to the er ending on male adjectives, e.g., schwartzer Mann.
Love that twisty ending; reminiscent of 'The Panther”—only rather than the cat caught in the center of man’s confinement, it is man reduced and trapped within the eternal gaze of the cat. So what was it with Rilke and black cats, anyway? And here she takes the role of a kind of innocuous black hole, absorbing without comment whatever he brings her, until that time when she turns her head and—there you are. Sinister! I rated this little gem a 10. ; -)
A brilliant poem that takes the cliche of black cats as an omen and transforms it into a bone-chilling experience, collapsing both object and subject in the end.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
Great poem. Cats have been associated and are considered to be the carrier of dark mysteries of life. Seeing the reflection of your own self in cat's eye is like seeing that part of your self which is mysterious, elusive yet influencing our good and evil tendencies in the deepest part of our consciousness.