Influenced by Hegel and Nietzsche, and inspired by stays in Italy and France, as well as travels to Russia, Spain, and North Africa, Rainer Maria Rilke nevertheless sought desperately to be original. He rejected all -idees recues, - whether they were of God, reality, or literature, instead creating his own absolute. He searched for the -real, - re-formed German poetry, and revolutionized Western narrative prose with Malte Laurids Brigge. While Rilke s work is marked by two cesuras, after which it displays important advances in diction and the figuration of verbal icons, it becomes ever more...