Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angelic orders? and even if one of them pressed me suddenly to his heart: I'd be consumed in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we can just barely endure, and we stand in awe of it as it coolly disdains to destroy us. Every angel is terrifying. -from "The First Elegy"
Over the last fifteen years, in his two volumes of New Poems as well as in The Book of Images and Uncollected Poems, Edward Snow has...
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angelic orders? and even if one of them pressed me suddenly to his heart: I'd b...
The formative work of the legendary poet who sought to write "not feelings but things I had felt"
When Rainer Maria Rilke arrived in Paris for the first time in September 1902, commissioned by a German publisher to write a monograph on Rodin, he was twenty-seven and already the author of nine books of poems. His early work had been accomplished, but belonged tonally to the impressionistic, feeling-centered world of a late-nineteenth-century aesthetic.
Paris was to change everything. Rilke's interest in Rodin deepened and his enthusiasm for the sculptor's "art of living surfaces" set...
The formative work of the legendary poet who sought to write "not feelings but things I had felt"
When Rainer Maria Rilke arrived in Paris for th...
Rilke's prayerful responses to the french master's beseeching art
For a long time nothing, and then suddenly one has the right eyes.
Virtually every day in the fall of 1907, Rainer Maria Rilke returned to a Paris gallery to view a Cezanne exhibition. Nearly as frequently, he wrote dense and joyful letters to his wife, Clara Westhoff, expressing his dismay before the paintings and his ensuing revelations about art and life.
Rilke was knowledgeable about art and had even published monographs, including a famous study of Rodin that inspired his New...
Rilke's prayerful responses to the french master's beseeching art
For a long time nothing, and then suddenly one has the right eyes...
Breathing, you invisible poem World-space in pure continuous interchange with my own being. Equipose in which I rhythmically transpire.
Written only four years before Rilke's death, this sequence of sonnets, varied in form yet consistently structured, stands as the poet's final masterwork. In these meditations on the constant flux of our world and the ephemerality of experience, Rilke envisions death not only as one among many of life's transformations but also as an ideally receptive state of being. Because Orpheus has visited the realm of death and returned to the living,...
Breathing, you invisible poem World-space in pure continuous interchange with my own being. Equipose in which I rhythmically transpire.
Two Stories of Prague signifies the maturation of a poet and of a people. Although most readers know Rilke as a mature, cosmopolitan poet, here we can discern a young writer self-consciously exploring his development as a man and his emergence as an artist. Angela Esterhammer writes that in symbolic, stylistic, and biographical terms these stories "record the process by which Rilke fashions himself into an independent, empowered individual."
Two Stories of Prague signifies the maturation of a poet and of a people. Although most readers know Rilke as a mature, cosmopolitan poet, here we can...
Rainer Maria Rilke Thomas F. Cleary Michael H. Kohn
Composed in 1899 when Rilke was only twenty-three, the interconnected tales of "Stories of God " were inspired by a trip to Russia the young poet had made the year previously. It is said that the vastness of the Russian landscape and the profound spirituality he perceived in the simple people he met led him to an experience of finding God in all things, and to the conviction that God seeks to be known by us as passionately as we might seek to know God. All the great themes of Rilke's later powerful and complex poetry can be found in the "Stories of God ," yet their charming, folktale-like...
Composed in 1899 when Rilke was only twenty-three, the interconnected tales of "Stories of God " were inspired by a trip to Russia the young poet had ...
A FINALIST FOR THE PEN/WEST TRANSLATION AWARD The 100th Anniversary Edition of a global classic, containing beautiful translations along with the original German text.
While visiting Russia in his twenties, Rainer Maria Rilke, one of the twentieth century's greatest poets, was moved by a spirituality he encountered there. Inspired, Rilke returned to Germany and put down on paper what he felt were spontaneously received prayers. Rilke's Book of Hours is the invigorating vision of spiritual practice for the secular world, and a work that seems remarkably prescient...
A FINALIST FOR THE PEN/WEST TRANSLATION AWARD The 100th Anniversary Edition of a global classic, containing beautiful translations along with t...
The period here covered reflects all the great experiences of Rilke's early adult life: his difficult beginnings, his relationships with Lou Andreas-Salome and with his wife Clara, his two journeys to Russia, his contact with the Worpswede artists, the influence of Paris, the revelation of Cezanne. Many of the letters are psychologically revealing; many touch upon characteristic themes, or freshly transcribe experience that sooner or later passes into the poetry.
The period here covered reflects all the great experiences of Rilke's early adult life: his difficult beginnings, his relationships with Lou Andreas-S...
There are important letters here to Muzot, Lou Andreas-Salome, to Princess Marie of Thurn and Taxis Hohenlohe, and many others. The most significant of the Wartime Letters: 1914-1921 are also included. An Introduction briefly traces the development of Rilke's work during these years; the Notes provide the necessary framework of biographical details and point up significant references to the poetry.
There are important letters here to Muzot, Lou Andreas-Salome, to Princess Marie of Thurn and Taxis Hohenlohe, and many others. The most significant o...