Dear Pastor Ludwig,
.PP
.na
Your question what Rilke might have meant
when he qualified his ontologic declaration
"Gesang ist Dasein" with the phrase "Fu#r den Gott ein leichtes"
has preoccupied me from the time that your letter came.
The quotation is from a cycle "Die Sonette an Orpheus".
No sooner had I cited it,
than I was embarrassed to have introduced
a pagan strain into a Christian celebration,
especially where I myself had made such an issue
of idolatry, "Du sollst keine anderen Go#tter neben mir haben."
.PP
Rilke speaks of Orpheus as a god,
and echoes the tradition that the gods lead easy lives,
as befits the "beautiful people" or the "jet set"
of a pre-aeronautical age.
He may have been influenced by Hoelderlins "Schicksalslied":
.sp
.in+5
.nf
Ihr wandelt droben im Licht
 Auf weichem Boden, seelige Genien
  Gla#nzende Go#tterlu#fte
   Ru#hren euch leicht,
    Wie Finger der Ku#nstlerin
     Heilige Saiten.

Schicksallos, wie der schlafende
 Sa#ugling, athmen die Himmlischen;
  Keusch bewahrt
   In bescheidener Knospe,
    Blu#het ewig
     Ihnen der Geist,
      Und die seeligen Augen
       Blicken in stiller
	Ewiger Klarheit.

Doch uns ist gegeben,
 Auf keiner Sta#tte zu ruhn,
  Es schwinden, es fallen
   Die leidenden Menschen
    Blindlings von einer
     Stunde zu andern
      Wie Wasser von Klippe
       Zu Klippe geworfen,
	Jahrlang ins Ungewisse hinab.
.sp
.in-5
.PP
.na
But for Rilke to attibute Elysian bliss to Orpheus
seems inappropriate.
Orpheus, as I learn from Edith Hamilton's little paperback
on mythology, was not a god at all,
but the son a Thracian prince and one of the muses,
and his "Dasein" was anything but "leicht".
.IP
"Desperately he (Orpheus) tried to rush after her (Eurydice)
and follow her down, but he was not allowed.
The gods would not consent to his entering the world of the dead
a second time, while he was still alive.
He was forced to return to the earth alone, in utter desolation.
Then he forsook the company of men.
He wandered through the wild solitudes of Thrace,
comfortless except for his lyre, playing, always playing,
and the rocks and the trees and the rivers heard him gladly,
his only companions.
But at last a band of Maenads came upon him.
They were as frenzied as those who killed Pentheus so horribly.
They slew the gentle musician, tearing him limb from limb,
and flung the severed head into the swift river Hebrus."
.PP
The Maenads, it seems, "really couldn't stand that music."
And as for Rilke, he availed himself of what is conventionally
called "poetic license".