Books by Rainer Maria Rilke

Book SynopsisA superb new (and complete) translation of Rilke's luminously lyrical early book of poems, with scholarly introduction and commentary. Rainer Maria Rilke is arguably the most important modern German-language poet. His New Poems, Duino Elegies, and Sonnets to Orpheus are pillars of 20th-century poetry. Yet his earlier verse is less known. The Bookof Hours, written in three bursts between 1899 and 1903, is Rilke's most formative work, covering a crucial period in his rapid ascent from fin-de-siècle epigone to distinctive modern voice. The poems document Rilke'stour of Russia with Lou Andreas-Salomé, his hasty marriage and fathering of a child in Worpswede, and his turn toward the urban modernity of Paris. He assumes the persona of an artist-monk undertaking the Romantics' journey into the self, speaking to God as part transcendent deity, part needy neighbor. The poems can be read simply for their luminous lyricism, captured in Susan Ranson's superb new translation, which reproduces the music of the original German with impressive fluidity. An in-depth introduction explains the context of the work and elucidates its major themes, while the poem-by-poem commentary is helpful to the student and the general reader. A translator's note treating the technical problems of rhythm, meter, and rhyme that the translator of Rilke faces completes the volume. Susan Ranson is the co-translator, with Marielle Sutherland, of Rainer Maria Rilke, Selected Poems (Oxford World's Classics, 2011). Ben Hutchinson is Reader in Modern German at the University of Kent, UK.Trade ReviewWhether we see this collection of poems as an example of personal devotional musing or read it as the 'seed of Rilke's subsequent development,' it is well worth our attention. This is a lively and insightful work of criticism, scholarship, and creative translation. * MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW *One of the pillars of 20th-century poetry, Rilke (1875-1926) was born in Prague, spent his life in Paris, Russia, and Germany, and died and was buried in Switzerland. He merits repeated studies, interpretations, and translations, and this one of his three-volume Stundenbuch (1899, 1901, 1903) is among the finest.... In his thorough introduction, Hutchinson ... casts these poems in a new light, adding depth to them as presented in previous editions. * CHOICE *[The translator] anticipates the critical reader.and responds creatively to the huge challenge.There are fascinating reflections of the poet-translator on technical matters.as well as rhyme and rhythm.... Ben Hutchinson's introduction and detailed notes provide an academic insight and context. * BROWN BOOK *The whole collection is newly translated here in fine, faithful versions by Susan Ranson, who captures the sonorities of the verse with apparent ease and handles the difficulties of Rilke's over-fondness for rhyme very judiciously. * TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT *Ranson ... recognizes the ambiguity which pervades the original, and has tried to find a balance between faithfully reproducing ambituigies and 'recognizing some duty of clarity to the reader. * TRANSLATION AND LITERATURE *Table of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgments Introduction by Ben Hutchinson Translator's Note by Susan Ranson Das Stunden-Buch / The Book of Hours Erstes Buch: Das Buch vom mönchischen Leben First Book: The Book of Monkish Life Zweites Buch: Das Buch von der Pilgerschaft Second Book: The Book of Pilgrimage Drittes Buch: Das Buch von der Armut und vom Tode Third Book: The Book of Poverty and Death Commentary and Notes: First Book, Second Book, Third Book Index of English First Lines Index of German First Lines

Read more less

Book SynopsisRomano Guardini described Rainer Maria Rilke as the “poet who had things of such importance to say about the end of our own age [and] was also a prophet of things to come.” The complexity of Rilke is, then, “highly relevant to modern Man.” Decades after Guardini’s assessment, the reader who rediscovers Rilke will find a depth of mind and soul that display a profundity the post-modern reader only thinks he possesses. In an expanded collection of Rilke’s sonnets, Rick Anthony Furtak not only makes this lyrical masterpiece accessible to the English reader, but he proves himself a master of sorts as well. His introduction that elaborates on Rilke’s marriage of vision and voice, intention and enigma, haunted companionship and abandonment is a stand-alone marvel for the reader. Furtak’s praised translation of Sonnets to Orpheus (University of Chicago Press, 2008) is surpassed in this much broader collection of verse that also includes the original German text. It is Furtak’s great achievement that Rilke resonates with the contemporary reader, who uncertain and searching wants to believe that the vision of existence can mirror much more than his own consciousness. In his feat of rendering Rilke in English, contextualizing the philosophical meanings of verse, and presenting literary romanticism, Furtak provides a formidable contribution to the vindication of true poetic voice.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisA new translation of Rilke's groundbreaking volume, following the formal properties of the original poems, especially meter and rhyme, as closely as English allows. Rainer Maria Rilke, the most famous (and important) German language poet of the twentieth century - a master to be ranked with Goethe and Heine - wrote the New Poems of 1907 and 1908 in transition from his late-nineteenth-century style. They mark his appearance as a lyrical, metaphysical poet of the modernist sensibility, often using traditional forms like the sonnet to explore the inner essence, the deep heart, of things - often, quite literally, things. Influenced by his time spent as Rodin's secretary, Rilke turned to quotidian life and sought to artistically redeem it in all its possibilities. His exquisite use of meter and rhyme marks him as a "formalist" and yet a contemporary of Eliot and the later Yeats, so this translation follows, as closely as English allows, the formal properties of the original poems, in a line-for-line version, while trying to capture the spare diction and direct idiomsof modernism. Len Krisak is a recipient of the Richard Wilbur, Robert Penn Warren, and Robert Frost prizes in poetry. He has published more than five hundred poems, including translations from the Latin, Greek, Spanish, Italian, Russian, and German.Trade ReviewKrisak's translation of the New Poems offers readers a fresh opportunity to consider not only Rilke's poetry but also Rilke himself. * JOURNAL OF AUSTRIAN STUDIES *[Rilke's poetic project] was an ongoing, constantly shifting enterprise, a significant stage of which is rendered admirably in Len Krisak's new bilingual edition of New Poems . . . . The poems themselves [are] rendered . . . with careful attention to the experience of the original. . . . [This is] a sober and meticulous translation, which allows the poems' light to shine . . . by seeking out its source in the words themselves. -- Jack Hanson * PN REVIEW *Though not the first to render Rilke's work into English, Krisak-in striving especially to imitate Rilke's form, rhymes, and meter-succeeds in conveying both the force and subtleties of the original. . . . Highly recommended. * CHOICE *Table of ContentsPart II. Der neuen Gedichte anderer Teil / New Poems: The Other Part Translator's preface by Len Krisak Introduction by George C. Schoolfield Part I. Neue Gedichte / New Poems Part II. Der neuen Gedichte anderer Teil / The New Poems: The Other Part Index of Titles and First Lines in German Index of Titles and First Lines in English

Read more less

Book SynopsisA new translation of Rilke's great work with close readings of each of the ten elegies elucidating how their poetic attributes constitute their meaning. Rilke continues to be the most read and discussed German poet of the modern period. The Duino Elegies, together with the Sonnets to Orpheus, remain his greatest achievement. The themes of the ten elegies - and the conceptual world unique to Rilke from which they emerge - can best be understood through their poetic form: their imagery and neologistic formations, their angular syntax, their abrupt changes of tone and linguistic register, their use of multiple personae and speaking voices, and the often-ironic self-presentation of the author. Commentators, however, have often treated these features as mere formal devices that we can somehow see through to get to what really matters, that is, to what Rilke has to say about the human condition or the meaning of life, to his philosophy or worldview. On the contrary, they are constitutive of meaning in the elegies, and understanding them is crucial to our experience of reading Rilke's work. The purpose of this book is to make such features visible and to explain them to the reader as clearly as possible. This is the first full-length book in English devoted to the elegies in over thirty years. It offers an entirely new translation of each elegy, paired with the original German text, and a close reading of each.Table of ContentsContents Acknowledgments Note on the Translation Works Frequently Cited Introduction Elegy 1 Elegy 2 Elegy 3 Elegy 4 Elegy 5 Elegy 6 Elegy 7 Elegy 8 Elegy 9 Elegy 10 Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisRainer Maria Rilke offers a compelling portrait of Parisian life, art, and culture at the beginning of the 20th century In 1902, the young German poet Rainer Maria Rilke travelled to Paris to write a monograph on the sculptor Auguste Rodin. He returned many times over the course of his life, by turns inspired and appalled by the city's high culture and low society, and his writings give a fascinating insight into Parisian art and culture in the last century. This book brings together Rilke's sublime poetic meditations on existence Notes on the Melody of Things and the first English translation of Rilke's experiences in Paris as observed by his French translator Maurice Betz.

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn 1931, Virginia and Leonard Woolf's Hogarth Press published a small run of a beautiful edition of Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies, in English translation by the writers Vita and Edward Sackville-West. This marked the English debut of Rilke's masterpiece, which would eventually be rendered in English over 20 times, influencing countless poets, musicians and artists across the English-speaking world. Published for the first time in 90 years, the Sackville-Wests' translation is both a fascinating historical document and a magnificent blank-verse rendering of Rilke's poetry cycle. Featuring a new introduction from critic Lesley Chamberlain, this reissue casts one of European literature's great masterpieces in fresh light.Trade Review'The deepest mysteries of existence embodied in the most delicate and precise images. For me, the greatest poetry of the 20th century' - Philip Pullman

Read more less

Book SynopsisRainer Maria Rilke developed one of the most singular poetic styles of the twentieth century. Visionary yet always anchored in the real world, his poems give profound expression to fundamental questions of love and death, of the chaos of the modern world as well as the spiritual consolation of art and nature. Change Your Life draws from across Rilke's career to offer a comprehensive view of his most essential poetry, featuring major selections from the great Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus alongside less frequently anthologised work. In these dazzling new translations by acclaimed poet Martyn Crucefix, Rilke's poems beguile with fresh insight and mystery.

Read more less

Book SynopsisAn intimate glimpse into the life and letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, one of the most important poets of the twentieth century. In July 1921, displaced European poet Rainer Maria Rilke sequestered himself in the chateau of Muzot, a thirteenth-century medieval tower perched in the vineyards above the town of Sierre in the Canton Valais, Switzerland. In this sun-flooded landscape of the Rhone Valley, he found beguiling echoes of Spain and his beloved Provence. Here, the Duino Elegies were famously completed and the Sonnets to Orpheus followed. During this time, Rilke's correspondence also bloomed, and Letters around a Garden collects some of those letters together into English for the first time. One intriguing exchange from 1924 to 1926 was with a young aristocratic Swiss woman Antoinette de Bonstetten, a passionate horticulturist who had been recommended as a potential advisor for the redesign and upkeep of the Muzot rose garden. In twenty-two precious letters originally written

Read more less

Book SynopsisRainer Maria Rilke's work spans the divide between turn-of-the-century Europe's decadence and its post First World War revolutionary modernism, always struggling to develop, to seek and reach beyond itself. This selection of poems from throughout Rilke's creative output is arranged chronologically, placing poems of similar themes and / or modes of expression close to one another, making bed-fellows of poems rarely seen together. Each poem is to a greater or lesser extent conscious of others. The aim is to illuminate the underlying themes which Rilke said he had arrived at very early in his life. In his powerful new translation, skilfully shaped into current English, Ian Crockatt succeeds in catching Rilke's blend of crafted sensuality and inward-focused spiritual searching, while his comprehensive introduction and notes to this selection are both informative and enlightening.Table of ContentsIntroduction / 9, The Ribbon / 23, I Love my Nature's Darkest Hours / 23, Entrance / 25, Early Apollo / 25, The Fountain / 27, A Tree Rises! - O Pure Transcendence! / 27, The Gazelle / 29, Spanish Dancer / 31, Birth of Venus / 31, Exposed on the Mountains of the Heart / 37, 'We must die because we know them' / 37, You, Whom I Knew Like a Flower / 39, Washing the Corpse / 41, Requiem for a Friend (extract) / 43, Death / 51, Lament / 53, And It Was a Girl, Almost / 53, Orpheus. Euridice. Hermes / 55, The Tower / 61, Encounter in the Chestnut Avenue / 63, O This is the Animal That Cannot Be / 65, You, Never-arriving One / 67, Love Song / 69, The Abduction / 69, Leda / 71, Parting / 73, The Convalescent / 73, Christ's Descent into Hell / 75, Duino Elegies: The First Elegy / 77, On the Verge of Night / 83, To Music / 83, Gong / 85, A God Can Do It. But You Tell Me How / 87, The Solitary / 89, You See, I Want a Lot / 89, Portrait / 91, Duino Elegies: The Fourth Elegy / 93, The Asylum Garden / 97, Look at the Flowers / 99, O Lacrimosa / 101, Be Ahead of All Parting / 103, The Red Scarf / 105, Notes / 106, iographical Notes / 112,

Read more less

Book SynopsisBrand new English translations of this classic cycle of poems by Rilke dedicated to Orpheus

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisA fresh, modern translation of one of Rilke's most beloved poem sequences.

Read more less

Book Synopsis“Rilke''s voice from the last tumultuous young century reaches tenderly into ours. But his lush German is a language of its own. Mark Burrows has a rare gift to coax it faithfully into English. I am delighted, and so very grateful for this book.” —Krista Tippett, host of “On Being”On the centennial of the first appearance (1923) of Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus, award-winning translator Mark Burrows reveals their depth and meaning with a brilliant new introduction and translation.This new translation captures the lyric beauty of Rilke''s poems, honoring their syntactic peculiarities and grammatical complexities as few translators have dared to do. Burrows’ versions maintain the essential strangeness of language and abruptness of metaphor by which the sonnets attain their distinctive character in German. Burrows'' approach replicates what one reviewer describes as the poems’ “dazzling obscurity,” refusing to resolve the deliberate difficulties Rilke’s formulations present. The effect invites readers to linger with these sonnets, allowing themselves to be shaped in their encounter with them.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less