Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke
Photograph of Rilke, circa 1900.
Born	4 December 1875(1875-12-04) Prague, Bohemia, Austria–Hungary
Died	29 December 1926 (aged 51) Montreux, Switzerland
Occupation	poet, novelist
Nationality	Austrian
Writing period	1894 - 1925
Influences J. P. Jacobsen, Lou Andreas-Salomé, Auguste Rodin, Cézanne, Leopardi, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Leconte de Lisle
Influenced Martin Heidegger, Shannon Bramer, William H. Gass, Erica Darke

Rainer Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926) was a Bohemian-Austrian poet and art critic. He is considered one of the most significant poets in the German language. His haunting images 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. Among English-language readers, his best-known work is 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, capital of Bohemia (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now the Czech Republic). His childhood and youth in Prague were not especially happy. 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 family, the Entz-Kinzelbergers, who lived in a house on the Herrengasse (Panská) 8, where René also spent many of his early years.

The relationship between Phia and her only son was colored by her mourning for a prior child, a daughter, who had died after only a week of life. 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.^[1] The parents' marriage fell apart in 1884.

His parents pressured the poetically and artistically talented 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 woman of letters Lou Andreas-Salomé (1861-1937). (Rilke changed his first name from "René" to the more masculine Rainer at Lou's urging.) His 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. Having 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 Saint 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. below). It was here that he got to know the sculptor 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

Paula Modersohn-Becker. Rainer Maria Rilke, 1906

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, also lecturing and writing a long essay on Rodin and his work. Rodin taught him the value of objective observation, and under this influence Rilke dramatically transformed his poetic style from the subjective and sometimes incantatory language of his earlier work into something quite new in European literature. The result was the New Poems, famous for the 'thing-poems' expressing Rilke's rejuvenated artistic vision. The poems of the New Poems and New Poems: The Other Part are highly wrought, using language and poetic form as a shaped and shaping material; to this extent the poems are often said to be 'things' in themselves. 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 because of 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 9 June 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 11 June 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 his work on the Duino Elegies once again. 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 mid-1921 was he able to find a permanent residence in the Chateau de Muzot in the commune of Veyras, close to Sierre in Valais. In an intense creative period, Rilke completed the Duino Elegies within several weeks in February 1922. Before and after, Rilke rapidly wrote both parts of the poem cycle Sonnets to Orpheus containing 55 entire sonnets. Both works together have often been taken as constituting the high points of Rilke's work. In May 1922, Rilke's patron Werner Reinhart bought and renovated Muzot so that Rilke could live there rent-free.^[3]

During this time, Reinhart introduced Rilke to his protégé, the Australian violinist Alma Moodie.^[4] Rilke was so impressed with her playing that he wrote in a letter: What a sound, what richness, what determination. That and the "Sonnets to Orpheus", those were two strings of the same voice. And she plays mostly Bach! Muzot has received its musical christening....^[5][6][7]

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 the abundant 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 buried on 2 January 1927 in the Raron cemetery to the west of Visp.

Rilke's grave

Rilke had chosen as his own epitaph this poem:

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

Rose, oh pure contradiction, delight
of being no one's sleep under so
many lids.

Rilke's literary style

Figures from Greek mythology (e.g., Apollo, Hermes, Orpheus) recur as motifs in his poems and are depicted in original interpretations (e.g., in the poem Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes, Rilke's Eurydice, numbed and dazed by death, does not recognize her lover Orpheus, who descended to hell to recover her). Other recurring 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., in his epitaph, the rose is a symbol of sleep -- rose petals are reminiscent of closed eye lids).

Rilke's little-known 1898 poem, "Visions of Christ" depicted Mary Magdalene as the mother to Jesus' child.^[8][9]

Quoting Susan Haskins:

It was Rilke's explicit belief that Christ was not divine, was entirely human, and deified only on Calvary, expressed in an unpublished poem of 1893, and referred to in other poems of the same period, which allowed him to portray Christ's love for Mary Magdalene, though remarkable, as entirely human.^[10]

Rilke's influence

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• 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 ranks Rilke in the German poetic tradition as second only to Friedrich Hölderlin.
• 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.
• The Rainer Maria Rilke Foundation in Sierre was established in 1986 to promote the work of the poet.

Literature

• Rilke has also been celebrated in Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, William Gaddis' voluminous novel The Recognitions, and William H. Gass' epic, controversial novel The Tunnel, in which the main character makes repeated reference to his interest in Rilke's poetry. Rilke is also referred to in Julia Alvarez's novel How the García Girls Lost Their Accents.^{[citation needed]}
• 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.
• Colin Wilson mentions Rilke's work numerous times in The Outsider.
• 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.^{[citation needed]}
• Rilke's "Sonnets to Orpheus" was inspiration for W. H. Auden's "Journey to a War," published in 1939.
• The relationship of Rilke and Clara Westhoff and her early death is the subject Adrienne Rich's poem "Paula Becker to Clara Westhoff".^{[citation needed]}
• The title of Riding with Rilke: Reflections on Motorcycles and Books by Canadian author and academic Ted Bishop is in reference to Rilke, who is mentioned briefly in the book.
• 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.
• 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 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.
• Philip Roth's 1972 novella The Breast concludes with Rilke's poem "Archaic Torso of Apollo." The main character, an English professor, believes that his story will "illuminate these great lines for those of you new to the poem."
• In Shiver, a 2009 story written by Maggie Stiefvater, one of the main characters quotes Rilke several times throughout the novel.
• In Roberto Bolaño's novel 2666, working in the office of Mr. Bubis, Benno von Archimboldi's publisher, is "Rainer Maria, the store-room attendant, who, despite his youth, had already been an expressionist poet, a symbolist, and a decadent" (p. 814), though due to the chronology (post WWII) this couldn't be the 'real' Rilke.
• Author Mark Z. Danieleski quotes Rilke many times in his novel House of Leaves.

Film

• Wim Wenders cites Rilke as the inspiration behind his angels in Wings of Desire.^{[citation needed]}
• 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, which prompts the main character, Jessica, to answer the ad.
• 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.
• 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 the 2006 film Loving Annabelle. Rilke's poem "Buddha in Glory" is read in one scene.
• In the 2008 film Synecdoche, New York, Caden awakens on the first day of fall to a full reading of Stephen Mitchell's English translation of Rilke's "Autumn Day" on his clock radio.
• A part of Rilke's fourth letter from Letters to a Young Poet is quoted at the end of the 2003 documentary Broken Limbs: Apples, Agriculture and the New American Farmer.

Music

• The indie rock band Rainer Maria takes its name from Rilke, and some of their merchandise bears the poet's image.
• The Cocteau Twins's 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 Swiss composer Frank Martin (1890-1974) set Rilke's prose "Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke" (The lay of the love and death of Cornet Christopher Rilke) to an orchestral song cycle, premiered in February 1945. Viktor Ullmann, an Austrian composer, also set this prose to music.
• The British composer Oliver Knussen (b.1952) has set texts of Rainer Maria Rilke to music in his unaccompanied Rilke songs and in Requiem: Songs for Sue.
• The Trieste-based British composer Baron Raffaello de Banfield Tripcovich (1922-2008) set several poems of Rilke for soprano and large orchestra, including 'Serale' and 'Liebeslied' (1968), 'Der Tod des Geliebten' and 'Der Sturm' (1972), and 'Four Rilke songs' (1986).
• The Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) set several of Rilke's poems to music in his Symphony No. 14.
• The American contemporary composer Morten Lauridsen (b. 1943) 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 (b. 1932) 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 (b.1931) 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 (1895-1963) 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 (b.1931), 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, best known for his work with The Grateful Dead, translated The Duino Elegies^[11] and Sonnets to Orpheus.^[12] 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.
• 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."
• Band Eyeless in Gaza singer Martyn Bates worked with Anne Clark set poems by Rilke to music on the album Just After Sunset in 2002.
• The composer Harrison Birtwistle (b. 1934) has set some of the Sonnets to Orpheus in his piece Orpheus Elegies for oboe, harp and counter-tenor.
• The German composer Bertold Hummel wrote 1980 a song for voice and piano after the famous poem Autumn Day by Rilke.^[13]
• The Danish composer Paul von Klenau (1883-1946) composed a song cycle on "Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke" (The lay of the love and death of cornet Christopher Rilke) for baritone and orchestra, during the years 1918-1919.
• Austrian composer Anton Webern's Op. 8 (1910), Zwei Lieder nach Gedichten von Rainer Maria Rilke, sets two poems by Rilke for soprano and chamber ensemble: "Du, der ich's nicht sage" ("You, whom I am not telling") and "Du machst mich allein" ("You make me alone").
• The Austrian composer Alban Berg (1885-1935) set several of Rilke's poems, including "Traumgekrönt" (Das war der Tag der weißen Chrysanthemen) ("Crowned in a dream"), the fourth of Berg's Seven Early Songs.
• Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) set a number of Rilke's poems, including three of the Four Lieder for Voice and Orchestra, Op.22 (1913/16): "Alle, welche dich suchen" (from Das Stundenbuch - Das Buch von der Pilgerschaft), "Mach mich zum Wächter deiner Weiten" (from Das Stundenbuch - Das Buch von der Armut und dem Tode), and "Vorgefühl" (from Das Buch der Bilder).

Art

• Fragments of Rilke's poetry are inscribed in certain paintings by Cy Twombly.
• In 1968, American artist Ben Shahn illustrated a set of verses from Rilke's The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge called For the Sake of a Single Verse...

Religion

• Rilke's poem "You, Neighbour God" is included in the most commonly used edition of Liturgy of the Hours.

Other

• Rilke's "At present you need to live the question" was used as an extended essay prompt option on the University of Chicago's supplement to the Common Application in 2008.

• Rilke's line from Duino Elegies "ein jeder Engel ist schrecklich" -- in English, "every angel is terrifying" -- was quoted in Audrey Niffenegger's best seller The Time Traveler's Wife.

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, edited by Ernst Zinn. Frankfurt am Main (1976)
• Rainer Maria Rilke, Werke (Works). Annotated edition in four volumes with supplementary fifth 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)
• Duineser Elegien (Duino Elegies) (1922)
• Sonette an Orpheus (Sonnets to Orpheus) (1922)

Prose

• Geschichten vom Lieben Gott (Stories of God) (Collection of tales, 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 story, 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

• Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies and The Sonnets To Orpheus translated by A. Poulin, Jr. (Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1975) ISBN 0-395-25058-7
• The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, ed. and trans. Stephen Mitchell, Introduction by Robert Hass (Vintage; Reissue edition 13 March 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, 1996)
• The Poetry of Rilke, trans. Edward Snow (North Point Press, New York, 2009)
• 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 885214-07-3
• Duino Elegies, trans. Robert Hunter w/ block prints by Mareen Hunter (Hulogosi Press, 1989)]^[14]
• Duino-Elegieë trans. H.J. Pieterse from German to Afrikaans (Protea, Pretoria, 2007) ISBN 978-1-86919-151-1

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. with notes and commentary Edward Snow (North Point Press, New York, 2004)ISBN: [0865477213]
• Sonnets to Orpheus, trans. Willis Barnstone (Shambhala Publications, Boston, 2004)
• Sonnets to Orpheus, trans. Leslie Norris and Alan Keele (ed. Lucien Jenkins) (Camden House, Inc 1989)
• Sonnets to Orpheus, trans. Robert Hunter^[15]
• Orpheus, trans. Don Paterson (Faber, 2006)

Other works

• Stories of God, trans. M.D. Herter Norton (W. W. Norton, New York, 1932) ISBN 0-393-30882-0
• Stories of God, trans. Michael H. Kohn (Shambhala, Boston, 2003) ISBN 978-1-59030-038-1
• Stories of God, trans. Various, edited by Jack Beacham (Aventure Works, Hudson, Ohio, 2009) ISBN 1-4392-2561-3
• 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, 2nd revised and enlarged edition with a preface by Ralph Freedman, 2008)
• Rainer Maria Rilke's The Book of Hours: A New Translation with Commentary, trans. Susan Ranson, edited with an introduction and notes by Ben Hutchinson (Camden House, New York/Boydell & Brewer Ltd, Woodbridge, UK, 2008) ISBN 978-1-57113-380-9
• Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God; translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy; New York: Riverhead Books(1996); ISBN 1-59448-156-3

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.
• Goldsmith, Ulrich, ed. (1980). Rainer Maria Rilke, a verse concordance to his complete lyrical poetry. Leeds: W.S. Maney.
• 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.
• Schwarz, Egon. Poetry and politics in the works of Rainer Maria Rilke. Frederick Ungar, 1981. ISBN 9780804428118.

Mood, John. 'A New Reading of Rilke's "Elegies": Affirming the Unity of "life-AND-death"'. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2009 ISBN 978-0-7734-3864-4.

See also

• Baladine Klossowska

References

• [3]

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Rainer Maria Rilke

• "A Year with Rilke", a quote a day for 2010!
• "Poems from the Book of Hours," complete text
• Biography in English
• Quotations
• English translations of Rilke's Autumn Day, Love Song, and The Panther
• English translations of Geschichten vom lieben Gott (Stories of God) W.W.Norton & Company, Shambhala Publications, Inc., and Aventure Works, Inc.
• Works by Rainer Maria Rilke at Project Gutenberg
• Poems, drama and prose writing by Rilke (in German)
• 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
• Rilke's Buddha in der Glorie in German with a translation by Ana Elsner
• Rainer Maria Rilke at Find a Grave
• Angels to Radios: On Rainer Maria Rilke, By Ange Mlinko
• Some of his poems in English