contre qui, rose
when i was a kid i played this song in a band
https://youtu.be/PlqKH8bjWdY?si=QWojTFQhPfRcKi7F
it is an arrangement for band by HR Reynolds of a choral piece by Morten Lauridsen set to the text of the poem "contre qui, rose" by Rainer Maria Rilke
first, this piece has something quite delicate in it. there is longing and confusion and pain.
if i read harshly, it is something like patriarchal or masculine condescension (this reading is clearest in the climax of the piece, but i dislike that part... I think the composer and arranger both took the perspective of the man who picks a rose1...)
still, there is something gentle here.
i looked into the poem.
https://lyricstranslate.com/en/rainer-maria-rilke-contre-qui-rose-english
Contre qui, rose, avez-vous adopté ces épines ? Votre joie trop fine vous a-t-elle forcée de devenir cette chose armée ?
Mais de qui vous protège cette arme exagérée ? Combien d'ennemis vous ai-je enlevés qui ne la craignaient point. Au contraire, d'été en automne, vous blessez les soins qu'on vous donne.
with an english translation of unknown quality:
Against whom, rose, have you assumed these thorns? Is it your too fragile joy that forced you to become this armed thing?
But from whom does it protect you, this exaggerated defense? How many enemies have I have I lifted from you who did not fear it at all? On the contrary, from summer to autumn you wound the affection that is given you.
The first paragraph i find meaningful... it is difficult to love and it is easy to hurt.
The second paragraph i first read as a sort of masculine possessiveness, ownership, dethorning a rose and blaming it for its defenses...
but i looked into the poet on wikipedia. this man was raised as a girl by his parents, treated as a doll in their grief at having lost an infant daughter, and so used him to replace her. (Is a man raised this way really a man?)
he wrote his epitaph which reads (text lifted from wikipedia)
Rose, oh reiner Widerspruch, Lust, Niemandes Schlaf zu sein unter soviel Lidern.
with English translation of questionable quality...
Rose, o pure contradiction, desire to be no one's sleep beneath so many lids.
The point is, i think he was the rose, and so i read his poem as a kind of personal anguish and frustration... Trying to love but hurting those dear to you and still being unable to fend off danger. So who are these thorns for? They only hurt who you care about..
When i played this song as a kid in high school, i could understand the first paragraph and it resonated deeply and to play this was an expression of love, even the height of the piece was meaningful to me
footnotes
checking the program notes it seems Lauridsen writes "We have all been in situations where we have given affection and not had it returned, where attempts at communication have been unsuccessful, met by resistance or defenses of some kind." and so for being unable to imagine himself a rose i condemn him. He writes also "the music folds back on itself, ending on a cluster that simply fades away as does the hope of understanding the reasons for the rose’s thorny protection." A despicable coward. Unintentionally he portrayed anguish and confusion at trying to love and it being still so difficult...↩