Phôs

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926), from Das Stunden-Buch (The Book of Hours, 1905)

When I was commissioned to write a companion piece to Bruckner’s E-minor Mass I was asked specifically to use a text that had some connection with the divine.

Eventually I settled on a poem from Rilke’s Book of Hours, it begins: ‘Dein allererstes Wort war: Licht’ - ‘Your very first word was light’.

The poem does not stay in the realm of light for long but soon alludes to the paradoxical nature of creation too; the fear and suffering brought about by man’s existence.

In searching for a title I was looking for something that combined both the power and glory of light as a divine force, but also its complex relationship to man; the shadows cast and darkness felt thereafter.

In the Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon Barbara Cassin, writes:
“Phôs, the same word as ‘light’…also refers to a man, a hero, a mortal and was a common term in Homer’s time. …Greek man is then the one who sees, as a mortal, the light (that of the day of his birth, of the return, of death) what appears in the light, phenomena, and the person who enlightens them by expressing them.”

This more complex etymology of the notion of light I found to encapsulate quite well the ideas found in the poem.

For this reason I settled on calling the work Phôs.