Written with astonishing rapidity in two weeks of February 1922, when Rilke was finally completing the Duino Elegies that had occupied him intermittently for a decade, Sonnets to Orpheus is a series of fifty-five brilliant and affirmative songs. It is in a sense a spontaneous creative dividend generated by a larger work. Because the sonnets were written only four years before Rilke's death, they belong properly to his final and philosophic period, and offer a sharp and striking contrast to the less mystical Das Buch der Bilder and Neue Gedichte.
Rainer Maria...

Begun in 1912 at the castle of Duino near Trieste, these ten Elegies were finally completed, after a decade of sporadic and protracted creation, at the Chateau Muzot in the Swiss Valais. Rilke considered them his greatest achievement, and, as MacIntyre suggests, they are "among the great and unforgettable poetry of the world."
Rainer Maria Rilke was one of Germany's most important poets. His influences include the paintings of the Worpswedders and the French Impressionists, the sculpture of Rodin (to whom he was both friend and secretary), and the poetry of Baudelaire, Verlaine, Mallarme,...

These poems, selected from Das Buch der Bilder and the two parts of Neue Gedichte, show Rilke's deep concern with sculpture and painting. Written in his less mystical period (1900-1908), the poems exhibit Rilke's particular artistic and poetic power.

Rainer Maria Rilke was one of Germany's most important poets. His influences include the paintings of the Worpswedders and the French Impressionists, the sculpture of Rodin (to whom he was both friend and secretary), and the poetry of Baudelaire, Verlaine, Mallarme, and other symbolists. His poetry is innovative, enigmatic, and...

The leading poet of French symbolism, Stephane Mallarme has exercised an enormous influence both on French and on English and American avant-garde writers. In this volume C. F. MacIntyre has translated forty-three of his poems, including the "Ouverture" and "Scene" from Herodiade, which was to have been a drama in verse, and the well-known L'Apres-midi d'un faune, for which Debussy composed his orchestral prelude. The French text faces the English translations, which are both true to the original and poetic.
Indeed, as MacIntyre suggests, Debussy is probably "one of the best...

The influential French poet, Symbolist leader, and Decadent Paul Verlaine (18441896) was recognized as a groundbreaking writer even in his own lifetimehis stylistic innovations brought a new musicality to French poetry and paved the way for free verse and other twentieth-century techniques and experiments. This selection of poems, with the French text en face, provides a comprehensive selection of Verlaine s verse together with a lucid introduction illuminating his life and works."

Whether viewed as an influence or in and for themselves, the Symbolists are a tantalizing group. Paralleling similar movements in art and music, their intensely personal poetry leans more heavily on oblique suggestions and evocation than on overt statement. It sets its perceptions, intuitive and nonrational, squarely against intellectual and scientific thinking--and this with a music that is flexible, intrepid, and subtle, sometimes even dissonant and jazzy. But the poetry itself is the movement's best definition.

Here with bilingual text en face, an introduction, and illuminating notes,...