Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) is considered the greatest lyric poet of modern Germany. His work is marked by a mystical sense of God and death.

Born in Prague on Dec. 4, 1875, Rainer Maria Rilke grew up in a middle-class milieu he called "petit bourgeois," of which he later felt ashamed. In spite of his sensitive, almost feminine nature, he was expected to become an army officer and was forced to spend 5 years (1886-1891) in the military academies of St. Pölten and Mährisch-Weisskirchen. After graduation from high school, he enrolled for a year as a student of literature at the German University of Prague (1895-1896) before moving away from his family. He continued his studies at the University of Munich for the next few years.

Early Works

At 19 Rilke began his literary career by publishing at his own expense a collection of indifferent love poems, Leben und Lieder (1894; Life and Songs), written in the conventional style of the Heine tradition. This was followed in 1895 by a collection of poems, Larenopfer, revealing a sentimental attachment to his native Prague. Both of these slim volumes as well as the next ones, Traumgekrönt (1896; Dream-Crowned), Advent (1897), and Mir zur Feier (1899; Celebrating Myself), fail to show the sharpness of observation that characterizes his later verse. His prose tales of this period, Am Leben hin (1898; On the Rim of Life), also contain little to foreshadow his later genius.

In his second, religious or mystic, period (1899-1903), Rilke, opposed to the naturalism of his time, became an esthetic symbolist and, above all, a religious prophet and humanitarian. In August 1900 he settled in the north German artist colony Worpswede near Bremen, met a young sculptress, Clara Westhoff, and married her. There he wrote a monograph, Worpswede (1902), about the painters whose work he observed, and contributed book reviews to the Bremer Tageblatt. His marriage, doomed almost from the start, remained a brief episode, although it was never formally dissolved. A few months after the birth (Dec. 12, 1901) of his daughter, Ruth, he departed for Paris, leaving behind his wife and child.

Two books of poetry, written for the most part during his time in the painters' colony, eventually brought Rilke fame. One was Das Buch der Bilder (1901, 1906; The Book of Images ), a volume of individual poems without a common theme, marked by intense musicality and the ability to conjure up moods almost independent of the meaning of the words that are used. The other volume contains a cycle of religious poems, Das Stundenbuch (1905; The Book of Hours), consisting of three parts, each marking a stage in his development: Das Buch vom mönchischen Leben (1899), Von der Pilgerschaft (1901), and Von der Armut und vom Tode (1903). Its genesis was Rilke's two trips to Russia, undertaken in 1899 and 1900. His delightful, childlike stories, Vom Lieben Gott (1900; Stories of God), reveal a "circling around God," as he himself calls it, in which God and the believer are mutually interdependent. These early works are sincerely mystical, revealing his sense of humility and brotherhood, his simple faith and genuine compassion for the poor and exploited.

Life in Paris

Rilke's life in Paris (1902-1910) initiated a new phase, marked by the most significant turn in his poetic career: his new attitude toward objective reality and his attempt to apprehend the very essence of things, animate as well as inanimate. The commission to write a monograph on the great French sculptor Auguste Rodin had brought Rilke to Paris. He served Rodin for a while as secretary, and he admired him more than any other living artist. Rodin taught Rilke not to wait passively for inspiration but rather to go out and look for subjects, to observe and study tangible objects. Rilke now developed a new concept of the artist as the hardworking craftsman. This new attitude manifests itself in those poems that appeared under the title Neue Gedichte (1907, 1908; New Poems). Here one finds his famous Ding-Gedichte (thing-poems), poetic re-creations of things he had seen and observed and which to him become impersonal symbols: animals and flowers, landscapes, and, above all, works of art.

During a trip to Sweden in 1904, Rilke composed the first version of Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornet Christoph Rilke, a romantic, even melodramatic, sentimental account of the last hours of a young aspiring cavalry officer. Later he tried to disassociate himself from this poem that became his most popular work. After the publication of his Neue Gedichte, Rilke set about completing an autobiographical novel begun in Rome 4 years before. In this, his only major narrative work, Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge (1910 Notebook of Malte Laurids Brigge), he tells the story of his own inner suffering during his lonely Paris years.

With the completion of Malte Laurids Brigge in the winter of 1909/1910, Rilke's Paris time came to an end; he spent only 18 months of the next 4 1/2 years in Paris. These were the years of an inner crisis, and in his utter restlessness and despair he moved from country to country. Anxious to explore new territories, he traveled in the winter 1910/1911 to North African countries, Algiers, Tunis, and Egypt, and from November 1912 to February 1913 he lived in Spain. Amid the profound hopelessness and frustration of these years, however, was one event which was to change Rilke's whole literary career: Princess Marie of Thurn and Taxis offered him the hospitality of her Castle Duino, near Trieste, on the Dalmatian coast. Here in 1912 he began to compose a series of elegies that were to become his ultimate poetic achievement. They were not, however, completed until 10 years later.

Later Years

When the war broke out in August 1914, Rilke was caught in Leipzig and was forced to remain in Germany. Most of the next 5 years he spent in and around Munich, except for 7 months' service in the Austrian army. In the first days of the war, Rilke passed through a brief period of exaltation and wrote his patriotic Fünf Gesänge (Five Songs). But this initial enthusiasm and solidarity with his patriotic countrymen soon gave way to indifference and, finally, to outright opposition to the German war effort.

In June 1919 Rilke accepted an invitation for a lecture tour in Switzerland, where he remained, except for a few sojourns in Italy and France, including a 7-month stay in Paris in 1925, until the end of his life. During the first year or two, he searched desperately for a refuge where he could take up the cycle of poems that he had left unfinished for so long. He discovered in the summer of 1921 Muzot, a deserted medieval tower, hardly habitable, near Sierre in the canton of Valais. Here in February 1922 he completed within a few days the cycle of poems he had begun in Duino in 1912. Dedicated to his hostess and benefactress, Princess Marie, he called them in gratitude Duineser Elegien (Duino Elegies). Their publication in 1923 marked the high point of his career, and even Rilke himself, critical of his own work, regarded them as his most important achievement. The great themes of the Elegien are man's loneliness, the perfection of the angels, life and death, love and lovers, and the task of the poet. They were followed by the Sonette an Orpheus (Sonnets to Orpheus), a total of 55 poems which represent the other aspect of Rilke's vision: his sense of joy, affirmation, and praise.

In his last years (1923-1926) Rilke turned more and more to French literature, not only translating André Gide and Paul Valéry, but also writing poems in French (Poe‧mes français). He died of leukemia on Dec. 29, 1926, in a sanatorium in Valmont above Montreux.

Further Reading

A truly satisfactory biographical study of Rilke cannot be undertaken until all his papers become available. A first serious attempt was made by Eliza M. Butler in her monograph, Rainer Maria Rilke (1941), and later by Jean Rodolphe de Salis in a book which covers only the last 7 years of Rilke's life, Rainer Maria Rilke: The Years in Switzerland (1964). For analysis of Rilke's writings, the works of two American scholars are recommended: Frank H. Wood, Rainer Maria Rilke: The Ring of Forms (1958), and Heinz F. Peters, Rainer Maria Rilke: Masks and the Man (1960). Useful background material is in Cecil M. Bowra, Heritage of Symbolism (1943), and particularly in the short work on German literature by Ronald Gray, The German Tradition in Literature, 1871-1945 (1965), which includes an incisive interpretation of some of the key works of Rilke.

Additional Sources

Freedman, Ralph, Life of a poet: a biography of Rainer Maria Rilke, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1995.

Hendry, J. F., The sacred threshold: a life of Rainer Maria Rilke, Manchester: Carcanet New Press, 1983.

Kleinbard, David, The beginning of terror: a psychological study of Rainer Maria Rilke's life and work, New York: New York University Press, 1993.

Leppmann, Wolfgang, Rilke: a life, New York: Fromm International Pub. Corp., 1984.

Nalewski, Horst, Rainer Maria Rilke, Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut, 1976.

Prater, Donald A., A ringing glass: the life of Rainer Maria Rilke, Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press, 1993.

Tavis, Anna A., Rilke's Russia: a cultural encounter, Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1994.

For more information on Rainer Maria Rilke, visit Britannica.com.

Rilke, René Karl Wilhelm Josef Maria (Prague, 1875-1926, Val-Mont nr. Montreux), used the German form of his first name, styling himself Rainer Maria Rilke. He belonged to the German-speaking minority in Prague and was the son of an unsuccessful officer, turned railway employee, and of an emotional, ambitious, and possessive mother. His early years with her may well have produced in later life the exceptionally strong impulse to be mothered. Intended for a military career (in compensation for his father's failure), he was sent to the Military School (Militär-Akademie) at St Pölten (Lower Austria) at the age of 11. He proved unsuited for the army and went in 1891 to the School of Commerce (Handelsakademie) at Linz, but was no better adapted to this course and returned home in 1892. The patronage of a well-to-do uncle enabled him to read for university entry, and in 1895 he began to study philosophy at Prague University. He did not care for this, however, and in 1896 migrated to Munich, ostensibly to study, but actually to devote himself to writing.

Rilke was brought up as a practising Roman Catholic, but in his adolescence he rebelled against the Christian faith, and between 1893 and 1898 wrote several anti-Christian poems which were included with other previously unpublished poetry in vol. 3 of Sämtliche Werke (1959). An early autobiographical novel, Ewald Tragy, written c.1896, appeared in 1944 Leben und Lieder (1894) consists of somewhat sentimental and self-indulgent poetry, and Larenopfer (1896) largely of delicate impressions of old Prague. Traumgekrönt (1897) begins to show Rilke's evocative power; it comprises two cycles headed Träumen and Lieben. The collection Advent (1898), divided into Gaben, Fahrten, Funde, and Mütter, shows a deepening introspection. About this time Rilke was drawn into a liaison with Lou Andreas-Salomé, whose influence confirmed him in his dedication to poetry. Together they undertook two journeys to Russia (1899 and 1900); deeply impressed by the piety and simplicity of the Russian people, he composed the poetry of Das Stunden-Buch (1905), an extended cycle purporting to be written by a Russian monk; its haunting music has a truly inward tone reflecting Rilke's newly acquired cult, the religion of art. Contacts in Russia included meetings with Tolstoy, the painter L. O. Pasternak (father of the novelist), and the peasant Spiridon Droschin, author of poetry which Rilke rendered into German; Rilke's own attempt to write poetry in Russian is a further mark of the deep impression of the experiences in Russia. His new outlook also changed his mode of living when, on his return, he settled for a time in the Bremen fen country, attracted by a community of artists in Worpswede, on which he wrote the monograph Worpswede (1903). In 1901 he married the sculptor Clara Westhoff; a daughter, Ruth Rilke, was born and the couple lived in stringent financial circumstances in Rilke's farmhouse in Westerwede. They separated the following year; Clara Rilke died in 1954. In June 1902 Rilke had another kind of experience of North Germany, staying as guest of Prince Emil von Schönaich-Carolath in Schloß Haseldorf in Holstein. While seeing himself as homeless (‘ein ziemlich Heimatloser’), he was impressed by the sense of belonging emanating from the landscape descriptions of G. Frenssen, with whose work he became acquainted through his host; yet he insisted on the supremacy of self-transcendence (‘aber mehr, als in der Heimat stehen ist doch noch: weit aus ihr hinauswachsen in den Himmel. Das meine ich’).

A few years earlier Rilke had been impressed by the monumental poetry of Stefan George, though his own poetry continued to show the lush harmonies of Mir zur Feier (poems, 1899) and Geschichten vom lieben Gott (prose, with this title 1904, originally Vom lieben Gott und Anderes, 1900), and this soft richness persists in the Stunden-Buch, written between 1899 and 1903. To 1899 belongs also what was once Rilke's most popular work, Die Weise vom Leben und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke (1906), a narrative in rhythmic prose about a presumed ancestor in the Turkish war of 1663.

The transition from the old to the new stronger style first appears in the Buch der Bilder (1902), which contains such diverse poems as the Impressionistic ‘Herbsttag’ and ‘Herbst’, and the hard, ringing lines of ‘Ritter’. After the breakdown of his marriage Rilke travelled, and Paris proved, both in its sordid squalor and as a centre of art (especially as he saw it in Rodin's sculpture, Auguste Rodin, a monograph, 1903), to be a vital experience. For some months he was Rodin's secretary, and after his dismissal remained in Paris for most of the time until 1909. He composed Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge (1910), and developed the new chiselled, precise, visual style which is largely associated with his name and characterizes the 2 vols. of the Neue Gedichte (1907-8). They contain such notable poems as ‘Der Panther’, ‘Das Karussell’, ‘Orpheus. Eurydike. Hermes’, ‘Papageienpark’, and ‘Die Flamingos’. By the use of visual images and classical plasticity he was able to give his inwardly directed poems a firm structure (see Dinggedicht). He also wrote Requiem (1909), consisting of two remarkable threnodies, the Requiem für eine Freundin (Paula Modersohn-Becker) and the shorter but even more beautiful Requiem für Wolf Graf von Kalckreuth, a young poet, not personally known to Rilke, who had taken his own life. In 1909 Rilke, overcome by restlessness, began to travel again, visiting North Africa and Spain and paying two visits to Duino Castle on the Dalmatian coast in 1911-12. Here he was the guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis-Hohenlohe, a lady of wealth, rank, and influence, who, assisted by the publisher Anton Kippenberg, enabled Rilke to fulfil in congenial conditions what he saw as his artistic mission.

In January 1912, left by arrangement alone in Duino, he began to compose the poems of the cycle which, when complete, was to be known as the Duineser Elegien (1923). He also wrote during this time the poems of Das Marien-Leben (1913). Although his Fünf Gesänge of 1914 reflect the initial wave of patriotism they also anticipate the mood of profound doubt. Late in 1915 he was called up for the Austrian army. A less apt soldier could hardly be conceived, and Rilke was quickly transferred to the Military Records Office (Kriegsarchiv) and soon after was discharged. For the rest of the war he withdrew into himself, waiting numbly for the return of peace and civilization. The elegies still seemed to him incomplete, an important but fragmentary expression of his existential religion of art and its terribly exacting demands, but inspiration was dormant. In 1922 a congenial environment for writing was found for him by a Swiss patron, W. Reinhard, at the castle of Muzot (Valais, Switzerland). Here, in the astonishingly short time of three weeks, in February, he wrote the two groups of Die Sonette an Orpheus (1923) and in between composed five more Duineser Elegien, so bringing them to the final canon of ten. With these two works, the uncompromising elegies and the relaxed and conciliatory sonnets, Rilke felt that he had fulfilled the demand made on him by his genius, though he continued to write elegant and delicate verse, some of which was in French (titles of their posthumous publications include Les Fenêtres and Les Roses, both 1927). Rilke translated poetry by Michelangelo, J. P. Jacobsen, Louïze Labé, Magallon, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Mallarmé, Verlaine, Baudelaire, Leopardi, Paul Valéry; Russian authors include Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov. He died of leukaemia.

Probably no German poet is so well known in the English-speaking world as Rilke. In Germany he has often been seen as a systematic philosopher and a dispenser of wisdom, but the interpreters have mostly been at variance about the nature of the message. Beyond all doubt is his standing as one of the great poets of the 20th c., grappling in verse with the problems of his own sensitive soul, seeking rather to interpret himself than to communicate with readers, and willing to make and accept sacrifices to achieve the perfection of his art. Despite occasional preciosity and affectation his power to manipulate words, and the delicate precision of his workmanship are superlative, and since, for all his egocentricity, he was a sentient human being, communication is established, even if it is not willed. The striking speed with which he wrote his greatest works proves that he belonged to a small category of poets (including Goethe) with whom poems are not wrought, but are incubated, often over a long period in the unconscious mind, so that when they finally reach the surface they can be written down as it were to inner dictation. This process does not preclude subsequent careful revision. Rilke himself called the final euphoric stage of this process the Umschlag, which by some has been translated as the reversal.

Gesammelte Werke (6 vols.) was published in 1927 and Sämtliche Werke (6 vols.), ed. R. Sieber-Rilke and E. Zinn, in 1955-66 (and in 12 vols. 1975); editions of correspondence include Gesammelte Briefe in sechs Bänden (from the years 1899-1926), ed. R. Sieber-Rilke and C. Sieber, 1936-9, and correspondence with H. von Hofmannsthal, 1978; with Lou Andreas-Salomé, 1952; with Marie von Thurn und Taxis (2 vols.), 1986; with Stefan Zweig, ed. D. A. Prater, 1987; and Briefe an Schweizer Freunde, 2nd ext. and annotated edn. by R. Luck and H. Sarbach, 1994. Two vols. of Selected Works, containing notable translations by J. B. Leishman and C. Craig Houston, appeared in 1954 and 1960.

Life

Rilke's youth at military and business school was not happy. His relations with his father were difficult, and he was able to attend the Univ. of Prague only with the help of an uncle. Married only briefly at the turn of the century, Rilke preferred an unsettled, wandering life among literary people; he was greatly influenced by his travels, notably by trips to Russia (1899, 1900). The sculptor Rodin, a close friend of Rilke who briefly employed him as secretary (1905–6), shaped the poet's career by introducing him to the craftsman's approach to creativity. After extensive travel in Italy, North Africa, and elsewhere, Rilke returned to Paris (1913), but World War I drove him back to Germany, where war service and chronic ill health frustrated his work. After 1919 he lived at Castle Muzot, in Valais canton, Switzerland. His death from a blood disease was hastened by the prick of a rose thorn.

Poetic Style and Themes

Rilke was sensitive and introspective. His poetic style was rich and supple, varying from the simple to the elaborate and profound. It is generally characterized by striking visual imagery, musicality, and a preponderant use of nouns. The erotic and spiritual love between men and women is a constant theme. In tone Rilke's verse was often mystical and prophetic; he used symbolism as a means of expression and created poetry that bears a strong resemblance to medieval verse. This resemblance may reflect Rilke's religious outlook—his probing into the emotional and spiritual issues involved in the search for goodness and transcendence in the absence of a personal God and his absorption with death as a poetic theme. Rilke was antimodern in many ways, an attitude particularly evident in his antipathy for large modern cities.

Works

Rilke's first book of poetry, Leben und Lieder [life and songs], appeared in 1894, but not until the stories of Geschichten vom lieben Gott (1904, tr. Stories of God, 1931) did his mature mysticism find expression. His visits to Russia inspired one of the three books of Das Stundenbuch (1905, tr. Poems from the Book of Hours, 1941), with which he achieved fame and in which he treated God as an evolutionary concept. His Neue Gedichte [new poems] (2 vol., 1964) are distinguished by the power and beauty of their verse, and critics often prefer them to Rilke's own favorite verse, his Duineser Elegien (1923, tr. Duino Elegies, 1930, 1961), which are written in a purposely staccato style and contain his most positive praise of human existence. Rilke's only novel was Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge (1910, tr., The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, 1964). He was a superb and prolific letter writer. Rilke's reputation has ascended to great heights since his death. Most of his work has been translated.

Bibliography

See his Journal of My Other Self (tr. 1930) and Letter to a Young Poet (rev. ed. 1954); biographies by H. F. Peters (1960), E. M. Butler (1941, repr. 1973), D. Prater (1986), and R. Freedman (1996); studies by E. C. Mason (1961), K. A. Batterby (1966), J. Rolleston, and A. Stephens (tr. 1972), E. Schwartz (1981), and W. H. Gass (2000).

Quotes:

"All emotions are pure which gather you and lift you up; that emotion is impure which seizes only one side of your being and so distorts you."

"The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things"

"Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers."

"Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always."

"Who's not sat tense before his own heart's curtain."

"For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation."

See more famous quotes by Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke

Born:	December 4 1875(1875--) Prague, Bohemia
Died:	December 29 1926 (aged 51) Switzerland
Occupation:	poet, novelist
Nationality:	Austrian
Writing period:	1894 - 1925
Debut works:	Leben und Lieder
Influences:	Lou Andreas-Salomé, Rodin, Cézanne, Leopardi
Influenced:	Martin Heidegger

Rainer Maria Rilke (4 December, 1875 – 29 December, 1926) is considered one of the German language's greatest 20th century poets. His haunting images tend to focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety — themes that tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist poets.

He wrote in both verse and a highly lyrical prose. His two most famous verse sequences are the Sonnets to Orpheus and the Duino Elegies; his two most famous prose works are the Letters to a Young Poet and the semi-autobiographical The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. He also wrote more than 400 poems in French, dedicated to his homeland of choice, the canton of Valais in Switzerland.

Life

1875-1896

He was born René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke in Prague, Bohemia (then within Austria-Hungary, now the Czech Republic). His childhood and youth in Prague was sorrowful. His father, Josef Rilke (1838-1906), became a railway official after an unsuccessful military career. His mother, Sophie ("Phia") Entz (1851-1931), came from a well-to-do Prague Jewish family^[1], the Entz-Kinzelbergers, who lived in a palace on the Herrengasse (Panská) 8, where René also spent much of his early years. However, despite his mother's Jewish background, Rilke was raised Roman Catholic ^{[citation needed]}.

The relationship between Phia and her only son was encumbered by her prolonged mourning for her elder daughter who was lost after only a week of life. In fact, during Rilke's early years Phia acted as if she sought to recover the lost girl through the boy by dressing him in girl's clothing when he was young, and making him act like a girl, etc..[1] The parents' marriage fell apart in 1884.

His parents pressured the poetically and artistically gifted youth into entering a military academy, which he attended from 1886 until 1891, when he left due to illness. From 1892 to 1895 he was tutored for the university entrance exam, which he passed in 1895. In 1895 and 1896, he studied literature, art history, and philosophy in Prague and Munich.

1897-1902

In 1897 in Munich, Rainer Maria Rilke met and fell in love with the widely traveled intellectual and lady of letters Lou Andreas-Salome (1861-1937). (Rilke changed his first name from "René" to the more masculine Rainer at Lou's urging.) His intense relationship with this married woman, with whom he undertook two extensive trips to Russia, lasted until 1900. But even after their separation, Lou continued to be Rilke's most important confidante until the end of his life. Because she had trained from 1912 to 1913 as a psychoanalyst with Sigmund Freud, she shared her knowledge of psychoanalysis with Rilke.

In 1898, Rilke undertook a journey lasting several weeks to Italy. In 1899, he traveled with Lou and her husband, Friedrich Andreas, to Moscow where he met the novelist Leo Tolstoy. Between May and August 1900, a second journey to Russia, accompanied only by Lou, again took him to Moscow and St. Petersburg, where he met the family of Boris Pasternak and Spiridon Drozhzhin, a peasant poet. Later, "Rilke called two places his home: Bohemia and Russia".^[2]

In autumn 1900, Rilke stayed at the artists' colony at Worpswede, where his portrait was painted by the proto-expressionist Paula Modersohn-Becker (illus. above). It was here that he got to know the sculptress Clara Westhoff (1878-1954), whom he married the following spring. Their daughter Ruth (1901-1972) was born in December 1901. However, Rilke was not one for a middle-class family life; in the summer of 1902, Rilke left home and traveled to Paris to write a monograph on the sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840-1917). Still, the relationship between Rilke and Clara Westhoff continued for the rest of his life.

1902-1910

At first, Rilke had a difficult time in Paris, an experience that he called on in the first part of his only novel, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. At the same time, his encounter with modernism was very stimulating: Rilke became deeply involved in the sculpture of Rodin, and then with the work of Paul Cézanne. For a time he acted as Rodin's amanuensis, eventually writing a long essay on Rodin and his work. Rodin taught him the value of objective observation, which led to Rilke's Dinggedichten ("thing-poems"), a famous example of which is "Der Panther" ("The Panther"). During these years, Paris increasingly became the writer's main residence.

The most important works of the Paris period were Neue Gedichte (New Poems) (1907), Der Neuen Gedichte Anderer Teil (Another Part of the New Poems) (1908), the two "Requiem" poems (1909), and the novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, started in 1904 and completed in January 1910.

1910-1919

Between October 1911 and May 1912, Rilke stayed at the Castle Duino, near Trieste, home of Countess Marie of Thurn and Taxis. There, in 1912, he began the poem cycle called the Duino Elegies, which would remain unfinished for a decade due to a long-lasting creativity crisis.

The outbreak of World War I surprised Rilke during a stay in Germany. He was unable to return to Paris, where his property was confiscated and auctioned. He spent the greater part of the war in Munich. From 1914 to 1916 he had a turbulent affair with the painter Lou Albert-Lasard.

Rilke was called up at the beginning of 1916, and he had to undertake basic training in Vienna. Influential friends interceded on his behalf, and he was transferred to the War Records Office and discharged from the military on June 9, 1916. He spent the subsequent time once again in Munich, interrupted by a stay on Hertha Koenig's Gut Bockel in Westphalia. The traumatic experience of military service, a reminder of the horrors of the military academy, almost completely silenced him as a poet.

1919-1926

On June 11, 1919, Rilke traveled from Munich to Switzerland. The outward motive was an invitation to lecture in Zürich, but the real reason was the wish to escape the post-war chaos and take up once again his work on the Duino Elegies. The search for a suitable and affordable place to live proved to be very difficult. Among other places, Rilke lived in Soglio, Locarno, and Berg am Irchel. Only in the summer of 1921 was he able to find a permanent residence in the Chateau de Muzot, close to Sierre in Valais. In May 1922, Rilke's patron Werner Reinhart purchased the building so that Rilke could live there rent-free.

In an intense creative period, Rilke completed the Duino Elegies within several weeks in February 1922. Before and after, he wrote both parts of the poem cycle Sonnets to Orpheus. Both are among the high points of Rilke's work.

From 1923 on, Rilke increasingly had to struggle with health problems that necessitated many long stays at a sanatorium in Territet, near Montreux, on Lake Geneva. His long stay in Paris between January and August 1925 was an attempt to escape his illness through a change in location and living conditions. Despite this, numerous important individual poems appeared in the years 1923-1926 (including Gong and Mausoleum), as well as a comprehensive lyrical work in French.

Only shortly before his death was Rilke's illness diagnosed as leukemia. The poet died on 29 December 1926 in the Valmont Sanatorium in Switzerland, and was laid to rest on 2 January 1927 in the Raron cemetery to the west of Visp. Rilke had believed that his death would be from blood poisoning as the result of having been pricked by a rose thorn. He chose his own epitaph as:

Rose, oh reiner Widerspruch, Lust,
Niemandes Schlaf zu sein unter soviel
Lidern.

Rose, oh pure contradiction, joy
of being No-one's sleep, under so
many lids.

Rilke's literary style

Rilke's work was highly influenced by his education and knowledge of classic authors. Ancient gods Apollo, Hermes and hero Orpheus can be found often as motives in his poems and are depicted in new ways and original interpretations (e. g. story of Eurydice, apathetic and dazed by death, not even recognising her lover Orpheus, who descended to hell for her, in the poem Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes). Another characteristic figures in Rilke's poems are angels, roses and a character of a poet and his creative work.

Rilke often worked with metaphors, metonymy and contradictions (e. g. as in his epitaph, rose is represented as a symbol of sleep - rose petals remind of close eye lids, and of awaken senses - colour, scent and fragility of a rose).

Rilke's influence

• German philosopher Martin Heidegger cites Rilke as an example of the highest form of thinker in his essay "What Are Poets For?" The essay's theme is largely explored through the examination of an "improvised verse" (short poem) Rilke wrote in 1924. Heidegger, sometimes considered the most influential German thinker of the 20th century, ranks Rilke in the German poetic tradition as second only to Hölderlin.
• Erie Chapman cites Rilke frequently in his essays on caregiving.
• The Rilke Project involves contemporary pop artists and actors (including Xavier Naidoo, BAP, Jürgen Prochnow, and Katja Riemann) interpreting Rilke's texts to make Rilke accessible to new generations.

Literature

• Rilke has also been celebrated in Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow and William Gaddis' voluminous novel The Recognitions, and is referred to in Julia Alvarez's novel How the García Girls Lost Their Accents.
• J.D. Salinger alludes to Rilke in various works, including the novel Franny and Zooey and the short story A Perfect Day for Bananafish.
• Audrey Niffenegger mentions and quotes from Rilke frequently in The Time Traveler's Wife.
• Douglas Coupland quotes Rilke's Letters To A Young Poet in Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture.
• A Rilke translation inspired Lost in Translation, a celebrated 1974 poem by James Merrill.
• Jo Shapcott's collection of poems, Tender Taxes, is based on a series of Rilke's poems written in French.
• Rilke's poetry highly influenced the life and writings of Etty Hillesum.
• The Iranian modernist writer Sadegh Hedayat was deeply moved by Rilke's meditations on death.
• Chilean novelist Germán Marín's trilogy Un animal mudo levanta la vista is named for a verse in the eighth Duino Elegy.
• Rilke's "Sonnets to Orpheus" was inspiration for W. H. Auden's Journey to a War, published in 1939.
• Rilke was mentioned in Tennessee William's "The Two-Character Play"
• The relationship of Rilke and Clara Westhoff and her early death is the subject Adrienne Rich's poem, 'Paula Becker to Clara Westhoff'. As the epigraph states, 'Paula Becker 1876-1907 Clara Westhoff 1878-1954 became friends at Worpswede, an artist's colony near Bremen, Germany, summer 1899. In January 1900, spent a half-year together in Paris, where Paula painted and Clara studied sculpture with Rodin. In August they returned to Worpswede, and spent the next winter together in Berlin. In 1901, Clara married the poet Rainer Maria Rilke; soon after, Paula married the painted Otto Modersohn. She died in a hemorrhage after childbirth, murmuring, What a shame!: Dream of a Common Language, Norton
• The title of Laying out the Body by Lucien Jenkins Seren Books, 1989 is taken from Rilke's 'Leichen-Wäsche', and that poem is translated within the collection, which also contains other work by Rilke.
• Jane Fonda quotes Rilke numerous times in her autobiography 'My Life So Far.'
• In Milan Kundera's novel "Immortality" Rilke is called to the Eternal Trial of Goethe, relating to Goethe's treatment of Bettina, and Kundera quotes a passage from The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge as Rilke's testimony.
• Maxine Hong Kingston refers to Rilke several times in her book Tripmaster Monkey.
• The novel Lost Son by M. Allen Cunningham (2007) tells the story of Rilke's life from birth to age 42.
• A Rose for Ecclesiastes, a 1963 story by Roger Zelazny, features the main character quoting Rilke's poem "Spanish Dancer."
• The title and basic idea of Predrag Matvejevic's "The Other Venice" (2002, English translation 2007) was taken from Rilke's "Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge."
• The Triestine main character in Susanna Tamaro's "Anima Mundi" (1997, English translation 2007) refers to the fundamental influence of "The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge" and "The Duino Elegies" in his life.
• In Amitav Ghosh's "The Hungry Tide", a major character (Nirmal) is a fan of Rilke's verses, and excerpts feature prominently in the text.

Television

• During several episodes of the TV show "Beauty and the Beast," starring Ron Perlman and Linda Hamilton; Rilke's poems were quoted many times.
• Rilke was quoted by Lex Luthor in Smallville, Season Three, in the episode "Legacy", where Lex said, "It's like the German poet Rilke said - 'a person isn't who they are during the last conversation you had with them - they're who they've been throughout your whole relationship'."

Film

• Wim Wenders cites Rilke as the inspiration behind his angels in Wings of Desire.
• Rilke's poem The Panther is quoted in the 1990 film Awakenings (based on the 1973 book of the same name by neurologist and author Oliver Sacks), expressing the emotional undertone of the story.
• In the 1993 movie Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, actress Whoopi Goldberg refers to Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet.
• Rilke is quoted in Kissing Jessica Stein by a woman looking for a woman in a personal ad. This quote is what moves the main character, Jessica, to answer the ad, despite her presumed heterosexuality.
• Rilke's poem "Archaic Torso of Apollo" is quoted by Miriam, played by Gena Rowlands, in Woody Allen's 1988 film Another Woman.
• Rilke's poem You Who Never Arrived is quoted by Faith, played by Marisa Tomei, in Norman Jewison's 1994 film Only You.
• Rilke is referenced pejoratively in the film Igby Goes Down when Igby, played by Kieran Culkin says, "Every Christmas, some asshole gives me this copy of Young Poet with this patronizing note on the flap about how it's supposed to change my life."
• "Rain", the Juliette Lewis character in Woody Allen's "Husbands and Wives" is named after Rilke.
• "For the sake of a single poem" an animated short by Shamik Majumdar (India 1999, National Institute of Design) is based on an excerpt from Rilke's book, the Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge.
• Rilke's quote "For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, [...] the work for which all other work is but preparation" is quoted before the end credits in Katherine Brooks's OUTFEST award winning 2006 film Loving Annabelle.

Music

• The indie rock band Rainer Maria takes its name from Rilke, and at least some of their merchandise bears the poet's image.
• The Cocteau Twins song "Rilkean Heart", on the 1996 album Milk and Kisses, is an homage to Jeff Buckley who was a lifelong lover of Rilke's work.
• The British composer Oliver Knussen has set texts of Rainer Maria Rilke to music in his unaccomapanied 'Rilke songs' and in 'Requiem:Songs for Sue'.
• The Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich set several of Rilke's poems to music in his Symphony No. 14.
• The American contemporary composer Morten Lauridsen set five of Rilke's French-language "Rose" poems to music in a choral piece titled "Les Chansons des Roses."
• The contemporary Danish composer Per Nørgård has set the Rilke sonnet to Orpheus "Singe die Gärten" as the second and final movement of his 3rd symphony.
• The contemporary Norwegian composer Arne Nordheim has set Rilke's "Todeserfahrung" in his Wirklicher Wald.
• In 2006, Pianist Brad Mehldau wrote a cycle of art songs for soprano and piano based on seven poems from Rilke's "The Book of Hours: Love Poems to God." Mehldau premiered the work with Renée Fleming at Carnegie Hall in 2006, which was recorded and released on the album "Love Sublime."
• The German composer Paul Hindemith set Six Chansons, 6 pieces for a cappella choir, of the French poetry by Rilke (1939), as well as the imposing German language song cycle Das Marienleben (1922, revised 1948).
• Composer Sofia Gubaidulina, a great admirer of Rilke's work, includes the beginning of "Vom Tode Mariä I" (Derselbe große Engel, welcher einst) at the end of her piece Stufen.
• Robert Hunter (lyricist), best known for his work with The Grateful Dead, translated The Duino Elegies[2] and Sonnets to Orpheus[3]. The Sonnets translation is a rhymed translation. He also recorded readings of his translations, the Duino Elegies recording was made with keyboardist Tom Constanten.
• Indie rock group CocoRosie's song Terrible Angels mentions Rilke along with Sigmund Freud and Jim Morrison.
• Contemporary rock group Sixpence None the Richer's song entitled "Still Burning" was influenced by Rilke's imagery of the heart as a hand.
• Chicago jazz vocalist Kurt Elling combined a Rilke poem with a melody from the Dave Brubeck Quartet to form his song "Those Clouds Are Heavy, You Dig?"
• The American country music songwriter and vocalist, Ray Wylie Hubbard, quotes Rilke in his song "The Messenger."
• Martyn Bates and Anne Clark set poems by Rilke to music on the album "Just After Sunset"

Art

• Fragments of Rilke's poetry are inscribed in certain paintings by Cy Twombly.

Religion

• Rilke's poem "You, Neighbour God" is included in the most commonly used edition of Liturgy of the Hours.
• Rilke's poetry is often referenced in the writings of contemporary spiritual teachers such as Jack Kornfield and Stephen Levine.
• Rilke had a high opinion of Islam. This can be read (in German) in his letters. A sample of his thoughts about the angels of islam (referring to Rilke's 'own' angels) can be found in : Rilke's Duino angels and the angels of Islam.(Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies)(Critical Essay), Publication Title: Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, Author: Campbell, Karen J.

Selection of works

Complete works

• Rainer Maria Rilke, Sämtliche Werke in 12 Bänden (Complete Works in 12 Volumes), published by Rilke Archive in association with Ruth Sieber-Rilke, supplied by Ernst Zinn. Frankfurt am Main (1976)
• Rainer Maria Rilke, Werke (Works). Edition in four volumes with commentary and supplementary volume, published by Manfred Engel, Ulrich Fülleborn, Dorothea Lauterbach, Horst Nalewski and August Stahl. Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig (1996 and 2003)

Volumes of poetry

• Leben und Lieder (Life and Songs) (1894)
• Larenopfer (Lares' Sacrifice) (1895)
• Traumgekrönt (Dream-Crowned) (1897)
• Advent (Advent) (1898)
• Mir zur Feier (To me Only Celebration) (1909)
• Das Stunden-Buch (The Book of Hours)
  • Das Buch vom mönchischen Leben (The Book of Monastic Life) (1899)
  • Das Buch von der Pilgerschaft (The Book of Pilgrimage) (1901)
  • Das Buch von der Armut und vom Tode (The Book of Poverty and Death) (1903)
• Das Buch der Bilder (The Book of Images) (4 Parts, 1902-1906)
• Neue Gedichte (New Poems) (1907)

Prose

• Geschichten vom Lieben Gott (Stories of God) (Collection of narrations, 1900)
• Auguste Rodin (1903)
• Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke (The Lay of the Love and Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke) (Lyric narration, 1906)
• Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge (The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge) (Novel, 1910)

Letters

Collected letters

• Gesammelte Briefe in sechs Bänden (Collected Letters in Six Volumes), published by Ruth Sieber-Rilke and Carl Sieber. Leipzig (1936-1939)
• Briefe (Letters), published by the Rilke Archive in Weimar. Two volumes, Wiesbaden (1950, reprinted 1987 in single volume).
• Briefe in Zwei Bänden (Letters in Two Volumes) (Horst Nalewski, Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1991)

Other volumes of letters

• Briefe an Auguste Rodin (Insel Verlag, 1928)
• Briefwechsel mit Marie von Thurn und Taxis, two volumes, edited by Ernst Zinn with a forward by Rudolf Kassner (Editions Max Niehans, 1954)
• Briefwechsel mit Thankmar von Münchhausen 1913 bis 1925 (Suhrkamp Insel Verlag, 2004)
• Briefwechsel mit Rolf von Ungern-Sternberg und weitere Dokumente zur Übertragung der Stances von Jean Moréas (Suhrkamp Insel Verlag, 2002)

Translations

Selections

• The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, ed. and trans. Stephen Mitchell, Introduction by Robert Hass (Vintage; Reissue edition March 13, 1989)
• Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, ed. and trans. Robert Bly New York, 1981)
• The Unknown Rilke, trans. Franz Wright (Oberlin College Press, expanded ed. 1990) ISBN 0-932440-56-8
• The Book of Fresh Beginnings: Selected Poems, trans. David Young (Oberlin College Press, 1994) ISBN 0-932440-68-1
• The Essential Rilke, ed. and trans. Galway Kinnell and Hannah Liebmann (Hopewell, NJ, 1999)
• Uncollected Poems, trans. Edward Snow (North Point Press, New York, 1966)
• Two Prague Stories, trans. Isabel Cole (Vitalis, Český Těšín, 2002)
• Pictures of God: Rilke's Religious Poetry, ed. and trans. Annemarie S. Kidder (Livonia, MI 2005)
• Duino Elegies, Sonnets to Orpheus, Letters to a young poet: Box set, ed. and trans. Stephen Mitchell

Duino Elegies

• Duineser Elegien: Elegies from the Castle of Duino, trans. V. Sackville-West (Hogarth Press, London, 1931)
• Duino Elegies, trans. J.B. Leishman and Stephen Spender (W. W. Norton, New York, 1939)
• Duino Elegies, trans. Jessie Lemont (Fine Editions Press, New York, 1945)
• Duineser Elegien: The Elegies of Duino, trans. Nora Wydenbruck (Amandus, Vienna, 1948
• Duinesian Elegies, trans. Elaine E. Boney (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1975)
• Duino Elegies, trans. David Young (W. W. Norton, New York, 1978) ISBN 0-393-30931-2
• "Duino Elegies," trans. Gary Miranda (Azul Editions, Falls Church, VA, 1996) ISBN 11-885214-07-3
• Duino Elegies, trans. Robert Hunter w/ block prints by Mareen Hunter (Hulogosi Press, 1989)

Sonnets to Orpheus

• Sonnets to Orpheus, trans. with notes and commentary J.B. Leishman (Hogarth Press, London, 1936)
• Sonnets to Orpheus, trans. C. F. MacIntyre, (U.C. Berkeley Press, 1961)
• Sonnets to Orpheus, trans. M.D. Herder Norton (W. W. Norton, New York, 1962)
• Sonnets to Orpheus, trans. Jessie Lemont (Fine Editions PRess, New York, 1945)
• Sonnets to Orpheus, trans. with notes Stephen Mitchell (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1985)
• Sonnets to Orpheus, trans. Willin Barnstone (Shambahala, Boston, 2004)
• Sonnets to Orpheus, trans. Leslie Norris and Alan Keele (ed. Lucien Jenkins) (Camden House, Inc 1989)
• Sonnets to Orpheus, trans. Robert Hunter
• Orpheus, trans. Don Paterson (Faber, 2006)

Other works

• Stories of God, trans. M.D. Herter Norton (W. W. Norton, New York, 1932)
• Letters to a Young Poet, trans. M.D. Herter Norton (W.W. Norton, New York, 1934) ISBN 0-393-31039-6
• Poems from The Book of Hours trans. Babette Deutsch (New Directions, New York, 1941)
• The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, trans. M.D. Herter Norton (W.W. Norton, New York, 1949) ISBN 0-393-30881-2
• The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, trans. Stephen Mitchell (New York, 1983)
• The Lay of the Love and Death of Cornet Christophe Rilke, trans. Stephen Mitchell (Graywolf Press, 1985) ISBN 0-915308-77-0
• The Book of Hours: Prayers to a Lowly God, trans. Annemarie S. Kidder (Evanston, 2001)
• Larenopfer, trans. and commentary by Alfred de Zayas, with drawings by Martin Andrysek (Red Hen Press, Los Angeles, 2005)

Books on Rilke

Biographies

• Ralph Freedman, Life of a Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke, New York 1996.
• Donald Prater, A Ringing Glass: The Life of Rainer Maria Rilke, Oxford University Press, 1994
• Paul Torgersen, Dear Friend: Rainer Maria Rilke and Paula Modersohn-Becker, Northwestern University Press, 1998.

Studies

• A Companion to the Works of Rainer Maria Rilke, ed. Erika A and Michael M. Metzger, Rochester 2001.
• Rilke Handbuch: Leben - Werk - Wirkung, ed. Manfred Engel and Dorothea Lauterbach, Stuttgart and Weimar 2004.
• Mood, John J. L. Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties. (New York: W. W. Norton 1975, reissue 2004) ISBN 0-393-31098-1.
• Mood, John. Rilke on Death and Other Oddities. Philadelphia: Xlibris, 2006. ISBN 1-4257-2818-9.

References

1. ^ Nathan Ausubel, A Treasure of Jewish Poetry From Biblical Times to the Present, Crown Publishers, Inc, New York, 1957, p.453
2. ^ Anna A. Tavis. Rilke's Russia: A Cultural Encounter. Northwestern University Press, 1997. ISBN 0-8101-1466-6. Page 1.

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Rainer Maria Rilke

• Biography in English
• More than 200 poems in English translation
• Twelve selected poems in English and German
• Quotes
• Works by Rainer Maria Rilke at Project Gutenberg
• International Rilke Association (in German)
• Rilke site (in German)
• All Poems and Books of R. M. Rilke in German with titles index, word dictionary, and text search
• Die Gedichte von Rainer Maria Rilke
• Duineser Elegien
• Rilke's German language sonnets
• Audio discussion of seven of the "New Poems"
• The Big Three: Rilke's correspondence with Tsvetayeva and Pasternak

Persondata
NAME	Rilke, Rainer Maria
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Austrian poet and novelist
DATE OF BIRTH	December 4, 1875
PLACE OF BIRTH	Prague, Bohemia
DATE OF DEATH	December 29, 1926
PLACE OF DEATH	Switzerland

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