Books by Rainer Maria Rilke

Letters to a Young Poet

by Rainer Maria Rilke

The ten letters collected here are arguably the most famous and beloved letters of our century. Written when Rainer Maria Rilke was himself still a young man with most of his greatest work before him, they are addressed to a student who had sent Rilke some of his work, asking for advice about becoming a writer. The two never met, but over a period of several years Rilke wrote him these ten letters, which have been enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of readers for what Stephen Mitchell calls the "vibrant and deeply felt experience of life" that informs them.

Letters to a Young Poet

by Rainer Maria Rilke

In 1903, a student at a military academy sent some of his verses to a well-known Austrian poet, requesting an assessment of their value. The older artist, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926), replied to the novice in this series of letters — an amazing archive of remarkable insights into the ideas behind Rilke's greatest poetry. The ten letters reproduced here were written during an important stage in Rilke's artistic development, and they contain many of the themes that later appeared in his best works. The poet himself afterwards stated that his letters contained part of his creative genius, making this volume essential reading for scholars, poetry lovers, and anyone with an interest in Rilke, German poetry, or the creative impulse.

Letters to a Young Poet

by Rainer Maria Rilke

In 1902, a nineteen-year-old aspiring poet named Franz Kappus wrote to Rainer Maria Rilke, then twenty-six, seeking advice on his poetry. Kappus, a student at a military academy in Vienna similar to the one Rilke had attended, was about to embark on a career as an officer, for which he had little inclination. Touched by the innocence and forthrightness of the student, Rilke responded to Kappus’ letter and began an intermittent correspondence that would last until 1908.

Letters to a Young Poet collects the ten letters that Rilke wrote to Kappus. A book often encountered in adolescence, it speaks directly to the young. Rilke offers unguarded thoughts on such diverse subjects as creativity, solitude, self-reliance, living with uncertainty, the shallowness of irony, the uselessness of criticism, career choices, sex, love, God, and art. Letters to a Young Poet is, finally, a life manual. Art, Rilke tells the young poet in his final letter to him, is only another way of living.

With the same artistry that marks his widely acclaimed translations of Kafka’s The Castle and Amerika: The Missing Person, Mark Harman captures the lyrical and spiritual dimensions of Rilke’s prose. In his introduction, he provides biographical contexts for the reader and discusses the challenges of translating Rilke. This lovely hardcover edition makes a perfect gift for any young person starting out in life or for those interested in finding a clear articulation of Rilke’s thoughts on life and art.

Letters to a Young Poet

by Rainer Maria Rilke

When a young student at a military academy mails some of his poetry to the great poet Rainer Maria Rilke, seeking advice, he initiates years of correspondence, during which Rilke expresses his most personal insights into the artist’s relationship with life, the interior needs of the individual growing towards maturity, and how the impulse to artistic creation can and should be a source of abiding and developing happiness even for those who cannot become artists.

Written in Rilke’s early, struggling years, Letters to a Young Poet is a work of beauty and urgency. Its discussion of the young soldier’s difficulties in finding his identity and vocation, mirrored in Rilke’s own life, have resonated with generations of readers for over a century, and it stands as one of the most beloved and widely read sets of letters in the world.

This new translation by Søren Filipski is both accurate and fluid, capturing the intense, rhapsodic energy of Rilke’s writing as well as the precision of his ideas.

The Poet's Guide to Life: The Wisdom of Rilke

by Rainer Maria Rilke

“You have to live life to the limit, not according to each day but by plumbing its depth.”
–RAINER MARIA RILKE

In this treasury of uncommon wisdom and spiritual insight,the best writings and personal philosophies of one of the twentieth century’s greatest poets, Rainer Maria Rilke, are gleaned by Ulrich Baer from thousands of pages of never-before translated correspondence.

The result is a profound vision of how the human drive to create and understand can guide us in every facet of life. Arranged by theme–from everyday existence with others to the exhilarations of love and the experience of loss, from dealing with adversity to the nature of inspiration, here are Rilke’s thoughts on how to live life in a meaningful way:

Life and Living: “How good life is. How fair, how incorruptible, how impossible to deceive: not even by strength, not even by willpower, and not even by courage. How everything remains what it is and has only this choice: to come true, or to exaggerate and push too far.”

Art: “The work of art is adjustment, balance, reassurance. It can be neither gloomy nor full of rosy hopes, for its essence consists of justice.”

Faith: “I personally feel a greater affinity to all those religions in which the middleman is less essential or almost entirely suppressed.”

Love: “To be loved means to be ablaze. To love is: to shine with inexhaustible oil. To be loved is to pass away; to love is to last.”

Intimate, stylistically masterful, brilliantly translated, and brimming with the wonder and passion of Rilke, The Poet’s Guide to Life is comparable to the best works of wisdom in all of literature and a perfect book for all occasions.

Letters on Life: New Prose Translations (Modern Library Classics)

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Gleaned from Rainer Maria Rilke’s voluminous, never-before-translated correspondence, this volume offersthe best writings and personal philosophy of one of the twentieth century’s greatest poets. The result is a profound vision of how the human drive to create and understand can guide us in every facet of life. Arranged by theme–from everyday existence with others to the exhilarations of love and the experience of loss, from dealing with adversity to the nature of inspiration–here are Rilke’s thoughts on how to infuse everyday life with beauty, wonder, and meaning.
Intimate, stylistically masterful, brilliantly translated and assembled, and brimming with the passion of Rilke,Letters on Life is a font of wisdom and a perfect book for all occasions.

Sonnets to Orpheus

by Rainer Maria Rilke

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, his lyre, a unifying presence in these poems, is an emblem of fluidity and musical transcendence. And Eurydice, condemned to Hades as a result of Orpheus's backward glance, becomes in Rilke's universe a mythical figure of consolation and hope.

Edward Snow, in his translations of New Poems, The Book of Images, Uncollected Poems, and Duino Elegies, has emerged as Rilke's most able English-language interpreter. Adhering faithfully to the intent of Rilke's German while constructing nuanced, colloquial poems in English, Snow's Sonnets to Orpheus should serve as the authoritative translation for years to come.

Sonnets to Orpheus

by Rainer Maria Rilke

One of the literary masterpieces of the century, this translation is now presented with facing-page German. To Rilke himself the Sonnets to Orpheus were "perhaps the most mysterious in the way they came up and entrusted themselves to me, the most enigmatic dictation I have ever held through and achieved; the whole first part was written down in a single breathless act of obedience, between the 2nd and 5th of February, without one word being doubtful or having to be changed." With facing-page German.

Sonnets to Orpheus

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke’s fifty-five Sonnets to Orpheus were written over a few days in an astonishing burst of inspiration. Described by Rilke himself as “a spontaneous inner dictation,” the sequence is among the most famous works of modernist literature, and Christiane Marks’s fresh new translations succeed in evoking Rilke’s music―often sacrificed in translation―opening a new window on these poems, for old and new Rilke lovers alike. The result of nearly two decades of memorization, research, and fine-tuning, Marks’s translations, only the second by a woman and the first by a native German speaker, recapture Rilke’s astonishingly contemporary, often colloquial style.

Letters: Summer 1926 (New York Review Books Classics)

by Susan Sontag, Rainer Maria Rilke, Marina Tsvetayeva, Boris Leonidovich Pasternak

Edited by Yevgeny Pasternak, Yelena Pasternak, and Konstantin M. Azadovsky

The summer of 1926 was a time of trouble and uncertainty for each of the three poets whose correspondence is collected in this moving volume. Marina Tsvetayeva was living in exile in France and struggling to get by. Boris Pasternak was in Moscow, trying to come to terms with the new Bolshevik regime. Rainer Maria Rilke, in Switzerland, was dying. Though hardly known to each other, they began to correspond, exchanging a series of searching letters in which every aspect of life and work is discussed with extraordinary intensity and passion. Letters: Summer 1926 takes the reader into the hearts and minds of three of the twentieth century's greatest poets at a moment of maximum emotional and creative pressure.

Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

by Rainer Maria Rilke, Anita Barrows

At the beginning of this century, a young German poet returned from a journey to Russia, where he had immersed himself in the spirituality he discovered there. He "received" a series of poems about which he did not speak for a long time - he considered them sacred, and different from anything else he ever had done and ever would do again. This poet saw the coming darkness of the century, and saw the struggle we would have in our relationship to the divine. The poet was Rainer Maria Rilke, and these love poems to God make up his Book of Hours.

Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

by Rainer Maria Rilke, Anita Barrows

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 today, one hundred years after it was written.
Rilke's Book of Hours shares with the reader a new kind of intimacy with God, or the divine—a reciprocal relationship between the divine and the ordinary in which God needs us as much as we need God. Rilke influenced generations of writers with his Letters to a Young Poet, and now Rilke's Book of Hours tells us that our role in the world is to love it and thereby love God into being. These fresh translations rendered by Joanna Macy, a mystic and spiritual teacher, and Anita Barrows, a skilled poet, capture Rilke's spirit as no one has done before.

LARENOPFER

by Rainer Maria Rilke

René Maria Rilke was born in Prague on 4 December 1875 and died near Montreux in Switzerland, on 29 December 1926. The foremost lyric German poet of the last century, he is remembered primarily for his Duino Elegies, the Sonnets to Orpheus, the Neue Gedichte, the Buch der Bilder and the Stundenbuch. Although his mature poetry has been translated into many languages, his early poetry remains accessible only in the original German. This translation of the Larenopfer, or offerings to the household god Lar, are songs that Rilke sings to his hometown Prague and to his beloved Bohemia, short poems on the parks, fountains, churches, bridges and palaces of Prague, not forgetting Rabbi Löw s legends, the Jewish cemetery, the Thirty Years War and, of course, young love. This cycle of 90 poems offers the reader a unique view into Rilke s fascinating world, the turn-of-the-century atmosphere of Prague, then the third largest city in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Here a young German of the settled bourgeoisie shows great appreciation of contemporary Czech literary works and enthusiasm for the cause of Czech cultural identity. The book therefore possesses not only literary merit but is also of considerable sociological and historical interest.

Letters to a Young Poet (Penguin Classics)

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke’s powerfully touching letters to an aspiring young poet.

At the start of the twentieth century, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a series of letters to a young officer cadet, advising him on writing, love, sex, suffering, and the nature of advice itself. These profound and lyrical letters have since become hugely influential for generations of writers and artists of all kinds, including Lady Gaga and Patti Smith. With honesty, elegance, and a deep understanding of the loneliness that often comes with being an artist, Rilke’s letters are an endless source of inspiration and comfort. Lewis Hyde’s new introduction explores the context in which these letters were written and how the author embraced his isolation as a creative force. This edition also includes Rilke’s later work The Letter from the Young Worker.

For more than 80 years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (Penguin Classics)

by Rainer Maria Rilke

A masterly new translation of one of the first great modernist novels

In the only novel by one of the German language's greatest poets, a young man named Malte Laurids Brigge lives in a cheap room in Paris while his belongings rot in storage. Every person he sees seems to carry their death with them, and with little but a library card to distinguish him from the city's untouchables, he thinks of the deaths, and ghosts, of his aristocratic family, of which he is the sole living descendant. Suffused with passages of lyrical brilliance, Rilke's semi-autobiographical novel is a moving and powerful coming-of-age story.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Letters to a Young Poet (A Penguin Classics Hardcover)

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Rilke's powerfully touching letters to an aspiring young poet, now available in a beautiful hardcover Penguin edition

At the start of the twentieth century, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a series of letters to a young officer cadet, advising him on writing, love, sex, suffering, and the nature of advice itself. These profound and lyrical letters have since become hugely influential for generations of writers and artists of all kinds, including Lady Gaga and Patti Smith. With honesty, elegance, and a deep understanding of the loneliness that often comes with being an artist, Rilke's letters are an endless source of inspiration and comfort. Lewis Hyde's new introduction explores the context in which these letters were written and how the author embraced his isolation as a creative force.

This edition also includes Rilke's later work The Letter from the Young Worker.

Duino Elegies & The Sonnets to Orpheus: A Dual-Language Edition (Vintage International)

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Available for the first time in a single volume, Ranier Maria Rilke’s two most beloved sequences of poems rendered by his most faithful translator. Rilke is unquestionably the twentieth century’s most significant and compelling poet of romantic transformation and spiritual quest. His poems of ecstatic identification with the world exert perennial fascination. In Stephen Mitchell’s versions of Rilke’s two greatest masterpieces readers will discover an English rendering that captures the lyric intensity, fluency, and reach of his poetry. Stephen Mitchell adheres impeccably to Rilke’s text, to his formal music, and to the complexity of his thought; at the same time, Mitchell’s work has authority and power as poetry in its own right.

Rainer Maria Rilke and Lou Andreas-Salomé: The Correspondence

by Rainer Maria Rilke, Lou Andreas-Salome

The complete extant correspondence between a key fin-de-siècle intellectual and one of the most revered poets of the twentieth century. He would become one of the most important poets of the twentieth century; she was the über-muse of Europe's turn-of-the-century thinkers and artists. In this never-before-translated collection of letters spanning almost thirty years, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke and Lou Andreas-Salomé, a writer and intellectual fourteen years his senior, pen a relationship that moves from that of lovers to that of mentor and protégé, to that of deepest personal and literary allies. From the time of their first meeting and consequent affair to Rilke's death in 1926, Rilke and Salomé reeled through extremes of love, pain, annoyance, desire, and need―yet guided each other in one of the most fruitful artistic exchanges in twentieth-century literature. Despite illness, distance, and emotional and psychological pain, they managed to cultivate, through strikingly honest prose, an enduring and indispensable friendship, a decades-long heartfelt dialogue that encompassed love, art, and the imagination.

Duino Elegies

by Rainer Maria Rilke, David Young

Named after the Castle of Duino on a rocky headland of the Adriatic, the Duino Elegies speak in a voice that is both intimate and majestic on the mysteries of human life and our attempt, in the words of the translator, to use our self-consciousness to some advantage: to transcend, through art and the imagination, our self-deception and our fear.

Duino Elegies

by Rainer Maria Rilke, David Young

One of the literary masterpieces of the century, this translation is now presented with facing-page German. We have a marvelous, almost legendary, image of the circumstances in which the composition of this great poem began. Rilke was staying at a castle (Duino) on the sea near Trieste. One morning he walked out on the battlements and climbed down to where the rocks dropped sharply to the sea. From out of the wind, which was blowing with great force, Rilke seemed to hear a voice: Wer, wenn ich schriee, horte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen? (If I cried out, who would hear me up there, among the angelic orders?). He wrote these words, the opening of the first Duino Elegy, in his notebook, then went inside to continue what was to be his major work and one of the literary masterpieces of the century.

Letters to a Young Poet (Shambhala Pocket Classics)

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Rilke's timeless letters about poetry, sensitive observation, and the complicated workings of the human heart.
Born in 1875, the great German lyric poet Rainer Maria Rilke published his first collection of poems in 1898 and went on to become renowned for his delicate depiction of the workings of the human heart. Drawn by some sympathetic note in his poems, young people often wrote to Rilke with their problems and hopes. From 1903 to 1908 Rilke wrote a series of remarkable responses to a young, would-be poet on poetry and on surviving as a sensitive observer in a harsh world. Those letters, still a fresh source of inspiration and insight, are accompanied here by a chronicle of Rilke's life that shows what he was experiencing in his own relationship to life and work when he wrote them.

Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties: Translations and Considerations

by Rainer Maria Rilke

An anthology of Rilke's strongest poetry and prose for both aficionados and new readers. Here is a mini-anthology of poetry and prose for both aficionados and those readers discovering Rainer Maria Rilke for the first time. John J. L. Mood has assembled a collection of Rilke's strongest work, presenting commentary along with the selections. Mood links into an essay passages from letters that show Rilke's profound understanding of men and women and his ardent spirituality, rooted in the senses.

Combining passion and sensitivity, the poems on love presented here are often not only sensual but sexual as well. Others pursue perennial themes in his work―death and life, growth and transformation. The book concludes with Rilke's reflections on wisdom and openness to experience, on grasping what is most difficult and turning what is most alien into that which we can most trust.

Rilke and Andreas-Salomé: A Love Story in Letters

by Rainer Maria Rilke, Lou Andreas-Salome

"Immensely readable...a significant piece of scholarship."―Fred Volkmer, New York Sun He would become one of the most important poets of the twentieth century; she a muse of Europe's fin-de-siècle thinkers and artists. In this collection of letters, a finalist for the PEN USA translation award, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke and Lou Andreas-Salomé, a writer and intellectual fourteen years his senior, pen a relationship that spans thirty years and shifting boundaries: as lovers, as mentor and protégé, and as deep personal and literary allies.

Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge: A Novel

by Rainer Maria Rilke

A stunning, revelatory new translation of the only novel by one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century, from one of “the most trustworthy and exhilarating of Rilke’s contemporary translators” (Michael Dirda, Washington Post).
A groundbreaking masterpiece of early European modernism originally published in 1910, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge unspools the vivid reflections of the titular young Danish nobleman and poet. From his Paris garret, Brigge records his encounters with the city and its outcasts, muses on his family history, and lays bare his earliest experiences of fear, tenderness, and desolation.
With a poet’s feel for language and a keen instinct for storytelling, Rainer Maria Rilke forges a dazzlingly fractured coming-of-age narrative, kaleidoscopic in its alternation of vivid present encounters and equally alive memories of childhood. Strikingly contemporary, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge reveals a writer metabolizing his own experiences to yield still-essential questions about fiction and reality, empathy and psychosis, and―above all―life, love, and death.
In a fascinating introduction, award-winning translator Edward Snow explores the overlaps between Rilke’s experiences and those of his protagonist, and shows with granular attention the novel’s capacity for nuance and sympathy. Snow’s exquisite translation captures as never before the astonishing cadences and musical clarity of the poet’s prose. It reveals The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge as an urgent contemporary achievement, more than one hundred years after it was written.

Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge: A Novel

by Rainer Maria Rilke

A stunning, revelatory new translation of the only novel by one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century, from one of “the most trustworthy and exhilarating of Rilke’s contemporary translators” (Michael Dirda, Washington Post).
A groundbreaking masterpiece of early European modernism originally published in 1910, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge unspools the vivid reflections of the titular young Danish nobleman and poet. From his Paris garret, Brigge records his encounters with the city and its outcasts, muses on his family history, and lays bare his earliest experiences of fear, tenderness, and desolation.
With a poet’s feel for language and a keen instinct for storytelling, Rainer Maria Rilke forges a dazzlingly fractured coming-of-age narrative, kaleidoscopic in its alternation of vivid present encounters and equally alive memories of childhood. Strikingly contemporary, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge reveals a writer metabolizing his own experiences to yield still-essential questions about fiction and reality, empathy and psychosis, and―above all―life, love, and death.
In a fascinating introduction, award-winning translator Edward Snow explores the overlaps between Rilke’s experiences and those of his protagonist, and shows with granular attention the novel’s capacity for nuance and sympathy. Snow’s exquisite translation captures as never before the astonishing cadences and musical clarity of the poet’s prose. It reveals The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge as an urgent contemporary achievement, more than one hundred years after it was written.

The Dark Interval: Letters on Loss, Grief, and Transformation (Modern Library Classics)

by Rainer Maria Rilke

From the writer of the classic Letters to a Young Poet, reflections on grief and loss, collected and published here in one volume for the first time.

“A great poet’s reflections on our greatest mystery.”—Billy Collins

“A treasure . . . The solace Rilke offers is uncommon, uplifting and necessary.”—The Guardian

Gleaned from Rainer Maria Rilke’s voluminous, never-before-translated letters to bereaved friends and acquaintances, The Dark Interval is a profound vision of the mourning process and a meditation on death’s place in our lives. Following the format of Letters to a Young Poet, this book arranges Rilke’s letters into an uninterrupted sequence, showcasing the full range of the great author’s thoughts on death and dying, as well as his sensitive and moving expressions of consolation and condolence.

Presented with care and authority by master translator Ulrich Baer, The Dark Interval is a literary treasure, an indispensable resource for anyone searching for solace, comfort, and meaning in a time of grief.

Praise for The Dark Interval

“Even though each of these letters of condolence is personalized with intimate detail, together they hammer home Rilke’s remarkable truth about the death of another: that the pain of it can force us into a ‘deeper . . . level of life’ and render us more ‘vibrant.’ Here we have a great poet’s reflections on our greatest mystery.”—Billy Collins

“As we live our lives, it is possible to feel not sadness or melancholy but a rush of power as the life of others passes into us. This rhapsodic volume teaches us that death is not a negation but a deepening experience in the onslaught of existence. What a wise and victorious book!”—Henri Cole

Letters to a Young Poet (Modern Library)

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet are arguably the most famous and beloved letters of the twentieth century. Written when the poet was himself still a young man, with most of his greatest work before him, they were addressed to a student who had sent Rilke some of his own writing, asking for advice on becoming a writer. The two never met, but over a period of several years Rilke wrote him these ten letters, which have been cherished by hundreds of thousands of readers for what Stephen Mitchell calls in his Foreword the "vibrant and deeply felt experience of life" that informs them. Eloquent and personal, Rilke’s meditations on the creative process, the nature of love, the wisdom of children, and the importance of solitude offer a wealth of spiritual and practical guidance for anyone. At the same time, this collection, in Stephen Mitchell’s definitive translation, reveals the thoughts and feelings of one of the greatest poets and most distinctive sensibilities of the twentieth century.

Rilke: Poems (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets Series)

by Rainer Maria Rilke

The Everyman's Library Pocket Poets hardcover series is popular for its compact size and reasonable price which does not compromise content. Poems: Rilke contains poems from The Book of Images; New Poems; Requiem for a Friend; Poems, 1906-1926; French Poems; The Life of Mary; Sonnets to Orpheus; The Duino Elegies; Letters to a Young Poet; and an index of first lines.

Poems from the Book of Hours

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Product Description

A beautiful bilingual gift book of poems: selections from Rilke’s legendary masterpiece, The Book of Hours, with a new introduction by Ursula K. Le Guin. Although The Book of Hours is the work of Rilke's youth, it contains the germ of his mature convictions. Written as spontaneously as received prayers, these poems celebrate a God who is not the Creator of the Universe but is rather humanity itself, and, above all, that most intensely conscious part of humanity, the artist. Babette Deutsch's classic translations capture the rich harmony and suggestive imagery of the originals, allowing interpretations both religious and philosophical and transporting the reader to new heights of inspirations and musicality.


Review

"Rilke made the sturdy sonnet, recast the sonorous song. He quickened the German language itself."
― Rika Lesser, The Nation

"If Rilke cut himself shaving, he would bleed poetry."
― Stephen Spender, The New York Review of Books

About the Author

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926), the author of Sonnets to Orpheus and Letters to a Young Poet, was one of the greatest poets of the German language.

Babette Deutsch (1859–1982) was a poet, critic, and novelist, as well as a translator.

Poems from the Book of Hours

by Rainer Maria Rilke

A beautiful bilingual gift book of poems: selections from Rilke’s legendary masterpiece, The Book of Hours, with a new introduction by Ursula K. Le Guin. Rilke’s Book of Hours falls into three parts: The Book of Monkish Life (1899), The Book of Pilgrimage (1901), and The Book of Poverty and Death (1903). Although these poems were the work of Rilke’s youth, they contain the germ of his mature convictions. Written as spontaneously received prayers, they celebrate a God who is not the Creator of the Universe, but seems to be rather humanity itself, and, above all, that most intensely conscious part of humanity, the artist. This exquisite gift edition contains Babette Deutsch’s classic translations, which capture the rich harmony and suggestive imagery of the originals, allowing interpretations both religious and philosophical, and transporting the reader to new heights of inspiration and musicality.

Poems from the Book of Hours (New Directions Paperbook)

by Rainer Maria Rilke

One of the most powerful poetry collections of the twentieth century, now in a beautiful new edition Although The Book of Hours is the work of Rilke’s youth, it contains the germ of his mature convictions. Written as spontaneously received prayers, these poems celebrate a God who is not the Creator of the Universe but rather humanity itself and, above all, that most intensely conscious part of humanity, the artist. Babette Deutsch’s classic translations―born from “the pure desire to sing what the poet sang” (Ursula K. Le Guin)―capture the rich harmony and suggestive imagery of the originals, transporting the reader to new heights of inspiration and musicality.

Sonnets to Orpheus (English and German Edition)

by Rainer Maria Rilke

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, his lyre, a unifying presence in these poems, is an emblem of fluidity and musical transcendence. And Eurydice, condemned to Hades as a result of Orpheus's backward glance, becomes in Rilke's universe a mythical figure of consolation and hope.

Edward Snow, in his translations of New Poems, The Book of Images, Uncollected Poems, and Duino Elegies, has emerged as Rilke's most able English-language interpreter. Adhering faithfully to the intent of Rilke's German while constructing nuanced, colloquial poems in English, Snow's Sonnets to Orpheus should serve as the authoritative translation for years to come.

Duino Elegies: A New and Complete Translation

by Rainer Maria Rilke

A new translation of Rilke’s classic elegies―ten mystical, radiant poems that bring together the beautiful and the sacred.
Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies are one of the great literary masterpieces of the twentieth century. Begun in 1912 while the poet was a guest at Duino Castle on the Adriatic Sea and completed in a final bout of feverish inspiration in 1922, the ten elegies survey the mysteries of consciousness, whether human or animal, earthly or divine. Poet and translator Alfred Corn brings us closer to Rilke’s meaning than ever before and illuminates the elegies’ celebration of life and love. Also included are a critical introduction exploring the nuances of the translation, several thematically linked lyrics, and two of the “Letters to a Young Poet” to complete the volume.

Letters to a Young Poet: The Norton Centenary Edition

by Rainer Maria Rilke

A gorgeous edition of one of the most beloved classics of the twentieth century, published in celebration of W. W. Norton’s 100th anniversary.
This slim volume of letters from the poet and mystic, Rainer Maria Rilke, to a nineteen-year-old cadet and aspiring poet named Franz Xaver Kappus, has touched millions of readers since it was first published in English in 1934. The translator, Mary Dows Herter Norton―a polymath extraordinaire with expertise in music, literature, and science, and who, along with her husband, William Warder Norton, founded the company that bears his name―played a crucial role in elevating Rilke’s reputation in the English-speaking world.
This Norton Centenary Edition commemorates Norton, known as “Polly” to friends and colleagues, and the 100th anniversary of the publishing company she co-founded. An admiring foreword by Damion Searls―himself a recent translator of Rilke’s Letters―celebrates Polly’s stylistic achievement, and an afterword by Norton’s President, Julia A. Reidhead, honors her commitment to maintaining W. W. Norton & Company’s independence.
This handsome new edition of a beloved classic brings Rilke’s enduring wisdom about life, love, and art to a new generation, in the translation that first introduced him to the English-speaking world. 2 illustrations

The Book of Hours

by Rainer Maria Rilke, Kevin Jackson

A gorgeous new translation of one of the strongest inaugural works in twentieth century poetry.
Long hailed as a masterwork of modern German literature, The Book of Hours (1905) marks the origin of Rainer Maria Rilke’s distinctive voice and vision―where clarity of diction meets unexpected imagery and first-person poetry discovers its full lyric possibility. In these audacious poems, a devout but candid speaker addresses an ultimately unknowable deity, passing through love, fear, guilt, anger, bewilderment, loneliness, tenderness, and exaltation in his search for meaning.
In this dual-language edition, Edward Snow, “the most trustworthy and exhilarating of Rilke’s contemporary translators” (Michael Dirda, Washington Post), makes Rilke’s achievement accessible as never before in English. Snow retains a striking fidelity to the German text while also conveying the captivating psychological presence that animates Rilke’s best poems.

The Book of Hours

by Rainer Maria Rilke, Kevin Jackson

Throughout history, most people have lived by the celestial clock of night and day, and by the biological clock of hunger and thirst. Alongside civilization developed the astonishing idea that the day might be divided and subdivided into regular units of time, each with their appropriate behaviors and endeavors.
Since the monastic era in the West, this organization by hours has become so entrenched that time as we perceive it has come almost to seem uncaused, a fact of nature. Now Kevin Jackson restores its strangeness and richness. From the structure of the working day to the imposition of curfews, from the scheduling of public events to the content of etiquette, in a manner no less remarkable for being rarely remarked, the hours give a meaning to our days. Here then are the hours, from dawn to Eliot's "uncertain hour before dawn" by way of elevens and the lunch hour, the hours for siesta, vespers and the witching hour.

The Book of Hours

by Rainer Maria Rilke, Kevin Jackson

Long hailed as a masterwork of modern German literature, The Book of Hours (1905) marks the origin of Rainer Maria Rilke's distinctive voice and vision--where clarity of diction meets unexpected imagery and first-person poetry discovers its full lyric possibility. In these audacious poems, a devout but candid speaker addresses an ultimately unknowable deity, passing through love, fear, guilt, anger, bewilderment, loneliness, tenderness, and exaltation in his search for meaning.

In this dual-language edition, Edward Snow, "the most trustworthy and exhilarating of Rilke's contemporary translators" (Michael Dirda, Washington Post), makes Rilke's achievement accessible as never before in English. Snow retains a striking fidelity to the German text while also conveying the captivating psychological presence that animates Rilke's best poems.

Rilke: New Poems

by Rainer Maria Rilke

"Essential for all poetry collections. . . . Translator Joseph Cadora renders a beautiful new edition complete with commentary on each poem, based on Rilke's letters, numerous biographies, and related works as well as an introduction outlining his approach to the translation." —Library Journal, starred review
"[The] renderings of the canonical poems, such as "The Panther," "Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes," and "Archaic Torso of Apollo" (to name a few), are worthwhile additions to the enormous body of Rilke's work already translated by others." —Booklist
Ranier Maria Rilke is one of the world's best-selling poets, and Rilke: New Poems contains many of his most iconic pieces. Translator Joseph Cadora has created the definitive English-language version through meticulous faithfulness to Rilke's German and insightful commentary on each of the 400-plus poems. Bilingual, with an introduction by Robert Hass.
The Panther
From endless passing of the bars his gaze
has wearied—there is no more it can hold.
There seem to be a thousand bars always,
and past those thousand bars there is no world.
The soft pad of his brawny, rippling pace
turns itself in a tightening circle till,
like a mighty dance around a tiny space,
it centers a numb but still enormous will.
But at times the shades of his pupils rise,
grasping an image he cannot resist;
through his tense, unmoving limbs it flies,
and within his heart it ceases to exist.
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) is one of the world's most beloved poets.
Joseph Cadora is a guitarist, writer, and translator. He lives in Berkeley, California.

Rilke: New Poems

by Rainer Maria Rilke

“Essential for all poetry collections…Originally published in 1907 and 1908 in two volumes, the 200 poems contained in this bilingual single volume represent a period of intense creativity in the poet’s career. Translator Joseph Cadora renders a beautiful new edition complete with commentary on each poem at the end, based on Rilke’s letters, numerous biographies, and related works as well as an introduction outlining his approach to the translation..”—Library Journal, starred review
“[The] renderings of the canonical poems, such as “The Panther,” “Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes,” and “Archaic Torso of Apollo” (to name a few), are worthwhile additions to the enormous body of Rilke’s work already translated by others. Cadora’s willingness to translate nearly two hundred poems is admirable, since many themes recur and develop.”—Booklist

"Through him resounds the music of the universe."—Herman Hesse
Rainer Maria Rilke is one of the world's best-selling poets, and New Poems contains many of his most iconic pieces. Throughout, Rilke he is obsessed with shapes and different layers of physical containment—from an image held in a panther's eye to a cathedral window. Translator Joseph Cadora has created the definitive English-language version through meticulous faithfulness to Rilke's German and insightful commentary on each of the four hundred-plus poems. As Cadora said in an interview, "I tried to stay true to the vision of Rilke that would invite the reader into his world, not mine." Bilingual, with an introduction by Robert Hass.
The Panther:
From endless passing of the bars his gazehas wearied—there is no more it can hold. There seem to be a thousand bars always, and past those thousand bars there is no world.
The soft pad of his brawny, rippling paceturns itself in a tightening circle till, like a mighty dance around a tiny space, it centers a numb but still enormous will.
But at times the shades of his pupils rise,grasping an image he cannot resist; through his tense, unmoving limbs it flies, and within his heart it ceases to exist.
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) is one of the world's most beloved poets. Working at the cusp of the century, Rilke bridged the gap between traditional and modernist poetics. Born in Prague, Rilke traveled widely across Europe and Egypt, and lived for many years in Paris.
Joseph Cadora is a guitarist, writer, and translator. He lives in Berkeley, California.

The Inner Sky: Poems, Notes, Dreams

by Rainer Maria Rilke

A new selection of poems and prose by the great poet Rainer Maria Rilke, set with the original text and a facing page translation, and including more than a dozen works that have never before appeared in English. The translations, by the NEA and PEN-award-winning author and translator Damion Searls, are lively, moving, and appealing, and they give a new voice for Rilke in English: mystical but concrete.
Searls’ selection of texts revolves around related images and ideas―birds and trees, giving and receiving, working and waiting, girlhood and gardens―and presents a coherent vision of how we relate to the outer world and inner world of the imagination. Great for scholars and students and the perfect introduction for those just getting to know this master poet.

Larenopfer

by Rainer Maria Rilke

René Maria Rilke was born in Prague on 4 December 1875 and died near Montreux in Switzerland, on 29 December 1926. The foremost lyric German poet of the 20th century, he is remembered primarily for his Duino Elegies, the Sonnets to Orpheus, the Neue Gedichte, the Buch der Bilder, the Stundenbuch, and the Cornet.

Although his mature poetry has been translated into many languages, his early poetry remains accessible only in the original German. This translation of the Larenopfer, or offerings to the Lares, the Roman household deities, are songs that Rilke sings to his hometown Prague and to his beloved Bohemia, short poems on the parks, fountains, churches, bridges and palaces of Prague, not forgetting Rabbi Löw’s legends, the Jewish cemetery, the Thirty Years’ War and, of course, young love.

This cycle of 90 poems offers the reader a unique view into Rilke’s fascinating world, the turn-of-the-century atmosphere of Prague, then the third largest city in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Here a young German of the ruling bourgeoisie shows great appreciation for contemporary Czech literary works and enthusiasm for the cause of Czech cultural identity. Larenopfer possesses not only literary merit but is also of considerable sociological and historical interest.

Sonnets to Orpheus Bilingual Edition

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Written during an astonishing outburst of creativity during a period of only two weeks in February 1922, Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus is one of the great poetic works of the twentieth century. Willis Barnstone brings these striking poems into English with an approach honed through years of work on the philosophy of translation, about which he has written extensively. This dual-language edition allows readers to compare versions face-to-face to get a clear sense of the nuances of the translation. Also included is an extensive introduction from the translator that offers a biographical sketch of Rilke and reflects upon the ever-present tension between the poet's passion for life, romance, and adventure, and his yearning for the solitude he desperately needed to dedicate himself fully to his art.

Letters to a Young Poet: A New Translation and Commentary

by Rainer Maria Rilke

A fresh perspective on a beloved classic by acclaimed translators Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy.

German poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s (1875–1926) Letters to a Young Poet has been treasured by readers for nearly a century. Rilke’s personal reflections on the vocation of writing and the experience of living urge an aspiring poet to look inward, while also offering sage wisdom on further issues including gender, solitude, and romantic love. Barrows and Macy’s translation extends this compilation of timeless advice and wisdom to a fresh generation of readers. With a new introduction and commentary, this edition places the letters in the context of today’s world and the unique challenges we face when seeking authenticity.

Letters to a Young Poet: With the Letters to Rilke from the ''Young Poet''

by Rainer Maria Rilke, Damion Searls, Franz Xaver Kappus

“The ultimate expression of intergenerational literary wisdom.” ―Andrew Solomon, The New Yorker A work that has inspired generations, this new edition of Letters to a Young Poet features a fresh translation of Rilke’s ten classic letters, along with the missing letters from the young poet himself.For nearly a century, eager writers and young poets, as well as those simply looking for a purpose in life, have embraced the wisdom of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, first published in 1929. Most readers and scholars have long assumed that the letters from the young poet were forever lost to posterity. Yet, shockingly, these letters were recently uncovered in Germany, and now the acclaimed translator Damion Searls has not only cast a fresh eye on Rilke’s original letters but also those of the “young poet,” Franz Xaver Kappus, an Austrian military cadet and an aspiring poet. This timeless edition, in addition to presenting their dialogue together for the first time in English, provides a new window into the workings of Rilke’s visionary poetic and philosophical mind, allowing us to reexperience the literary genius of one of the most inspiring works of twentieth-century literature.

Fifty Poems

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Fresh, beautiful new translations of one of the most important poets of all time, publishing in celebration of the 150th anniversary of Rainer Maria Rilke's birth.

Rilke is one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century, revered throughout the world. Geoffrey Lehmann has selected fifty of Rilke’s finest poems from the two volumes, entitled New Poems, that are the center of gravity of his achievement. Lehmann’s refined ear and perfect mastery of English verse form give his renderings of Rilke a precision and poise that are equal to that of the German originals. On the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of Rilke’s death a master poet lives anew.

Duino Elegies, Deluxe Edition: The original English translation of Rilke's landmark poetry cycle, by Vita and Edward Sackville-West - reissued for the first time in 90 years (Pushkin Press Classics)

by Rainer Maria Rilke

The first-ever English translation of Rilke’s landmark poetry cycle, by Vita and Edward Sackville-West – reissued for the first time in 90 years

In 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.

Change Your Life (Pushkin Press Classics)

by Rainer Maria Rilke

“Crucefix’s translation will have, and keep, a place on my shelves where all the poetry lives.” – Philip Pullman

A new selection and translation, by an acclaimed poet, of Rilke’s most essential work – the perfect gift for the poetry lover in your life

In dazzling new translations of 142 poems by the acclaimed Martyn Crucefix, Rilke beguiles with fresh insight and mystery.

Rainer 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.

Poems to Night (Pushkin Collection)

by Rainer Maria Rilke

A collection of haunting, mystical poems of the night by the great Rainer Maria Rilke - most of which have never before been translated into English

One night I held between my hands
your face. The moon fell upon it.

In 1916, Rainer Maria Rilke presented the writer Rudolf Kassner with a notebook, containing twenty-two poems, meticulously copied out in his own hand, which bore the title "Poems to Night." This cycle of poems which came about in an almost clandestine manner, are now thought to represent one of the key stages of this master poet's development.

Never before translated into English, this collection brings together all Rilke's significant night poems in one volume.

Duino Elegies, Deluxe Edition: The original English translation of Rilke's landmark poetry cycle, by Vita and E dward Sackville-West - reissued for the first time in 90 years

by Rainer Maria Rilke

The first-ever English translation of Rilke’s landmark poetry cycle, by Vita and Edward Sackville-West – reissued for the first time in 90 years

In 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.

Rilke in Paris

by Rainer Maria Rilke, Maurice Betz

Rainer Maria Rilke offers a compelling portrait of Parisian life, art, and culture at the beginning of the 20th century.

In 1902, the young German writer Rainer Maria Rilke traveled 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. Paris was a lifelong source of inspiration for Rilke. Perhaps most significantly, the letters he wrote about it formed the basis of his prose masterpiece, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge.

Much of this work, despite its perennial popularity in French, German, and Italian, has never before been translated into English. This volume brings together a translation of Rilke's essay on poetry, 'Notes on the Melody of Things' and the first English translation of Rilke's experiences in Paris as observed by his French translator.

Letters around a Garden (The French List)

by Rainer Maria Rilke

An 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 in French, Rilke relishes the prospect of their elusive meeting, keenly discusses the plans for his garden, and wittily laments the trials of his plants. Beyond the encomium for Paul Valéry and poignant memory of place are passages of exquisite writing, in which Rilke evokes with trademark sensitivity the delicate relationship between the changing seasons and the natural world of his adopted region. We also witness the loving relationship evolve between these sometime-fugitive correspondents and how questions of solitariness and companionship impinge on one who faces unaccustomed challenges as his health tragically declines.

A Very German Christmas: The Greatest Austrian, Swiss and German Holiday Stories of All Time (Very Christmas, 5)

by Hermann Hesse, Rainer Maria Rilke, Thomas Mann, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Joseph Roth, Heinrich Heine, Erich Kästner, Martin Suter, Arthur Schnitzler

The fifth volume in our popular Very Christmas series, this collection brings together traditional and contemporary holiday stories from Austria, Switzerland, and Germany. You'll find classic works by the Brothers Grimm, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Heinrich Heine, Thomas Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke, Hermann Hesse, Joseph Roth, and Arthur Schnitzler, as well as more recent tales by writers like Heinrich Böll, Peter Stamm, and Martin Suter. Eine fröhliche Weihnachten—A Merry Christmas—made all the more festive with these literary treats redolent of candle-lit trees, St. Nikolaus, gingerbread, the Christkindl, roast goose and red cabbage, Gugelhopf and stollen cakes, accompanied by plenty of schnapps.
Joseph Roth’s story “Christmas in Cochinchina,” published in English for the first time in this collection, appeared in the December 2020 issue of Harper’s Magazine.

Letters to a Young Painter (ekphrasis)

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Never before translated into English, Rainer Maria Rilke’s fascinating Letters to a Young Painter, written toward the end of his life between 1920 and 1926, is a surprising companion to his infamous Letters to a Young Poet, earlier correspondence from 1902 to 1908. While the latter has become a global phenomenon, with millions of copies sold in many different languages, the present volume has been largely overlooked.

In these eight intimate letters written to a teenage Balthus—who would go on to become one of the leading artists of his generation—Rilke describes the challenges he faced, while opening the door for the young painter to take himself and his work seriously. Rilke’s constant warmth, his ability to sense in advance his correspondent’s difficulties and propose solutions to them, and his sensitivity as a person and an artist come across in these charming and honest letters.

Writing during his aged years, this volume paints a picture of the venerable poet as he faced his mortality, through the perspective of hindsight, and continued to embrace his openness towards other creative individuals. With an introduction by Rachel Corbett, author of You Must Change Your Life: The Story of Rainer Maria Rilke and Auguste Rodin (2016), this book is a must-have for Rilke’s admirers, young and old, and all aspiring artists.

Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge (German Edition)

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Aus dem ländlichen Dänemark kommt der 28jährige Malte Laurids Brigge in das aufregende Paris der Jahrhundertwende, um dort als Dichter zu leben. Doch die Stadt seiner Träume wird für den empfindsamen jungen Mann zu einem Albtraum: Häßlich und abstoßend findet er sie, laut und schmutzig, lieblos und erdrückend. Die vielfältigen Eindrücke, die auf ihn einprasseln, hält er in seinem Tagebuch fest – und findet so zu einer ganz neuen ästhetischen Wahrnehmung … »Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge« aus dem Jahr 1910, Rilkes Tagebuchroman über die Krise der Existenz und die Krise der Kunst, gilt – noch vor den Werken von Joyce, Proust oder Kafka – als erster großer Roman der literarischen Moderne.

Die Aufzeichnungen Des Malte Laurdis Brigge (Insel Taschenbuch) (German Edition)

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Book by Rilke, Rainer Maria

Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge.

by Rainer Maria Rilke, Manfred Engel

Rainer Maria Rilke: Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke und andere Prosagedichte Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke: Entstanden in einer ersten Fassung 1899, umgearbeitet 1904. Erstdruck in: Deutsche Arbeit (Prag), Oktober 1904. Noch einmal uberarbeitet fur die Buchausgabe: Leipzig (Insel) 1906. Inhaltsverzeichnis Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke Die Auslage des Fischhandlers Der Lowenkafig [Saltimbanques] [Kavallerie-Parade] [Sandwiches-Manner] [Gewitter-Segen] [Richtung zur Zukunft] [Wir haben eine Erscheinung] Vollstandige Neuausgabe. Herausgegeben von Karl-Maria Guth. Berlin 2016. Textgrundlage sind die Ausgaben: Rainer Maria Rilke: Samtliche Werke. Herausgegeben vom Rilke-Archiv in Verbindung mit Ruth Sieber-Rilke, besorgt von Ernst Zinn, Band 1-6, Wiesbaden und Frankfurt a.M.: Insel, 1955-1966. Die Paginierung obiger Ausgaben wird in dieser Neuausgabe als Marginalie zeilengenau mitgefuhrt. Umschlaggestaltung von Thomas Schultz-Overhage. Gesetzt aus der Minion Pro, 12 pt."

The Complete French Poems

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Originally published as four clothbound editions (The Roses and The Windows, The Astonishment of Origins, Orchards, and The Migration of Powers), this large paperback brings together all of Rilke's French poems, as well as his hitherto unpublished Dedications and Fragments, in an exquisite English translation by A. Poulin, Jr.

Before Poulin's important efforts, it wasn't widely known that Rilke—often deemed one of modernity's finest writers for his work in German—also wrote over 400 poems in French. These lyrics were composed toward the end of Rilke's life, after he had produced his masterworks, Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus. Yet the French poems are entirely of a piece with Rilke's characteristic themes, subjects, moods, and images. As Poulin notes in his Preface to The Complete French Poems: "The French lyrics [are] small poems of careful attentiveness to the things of this world [and] to the elusive states of being in which the world is poetically transformed."

Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge. Leipzig 1910.

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Hard to find

Selected Poems: With Parallel German Text (Oxford World's Classics)

by Rainer Maria Rilke, Robert Vilain, Susan Ranson, Marielle Sutherland

Rilke is one of the leading poets of European Modernism, and one of the great twentieth-century lyric poets in German. From The Book of Hours in 1905 to the Sonnets of Orpheus written in 1922, he constantly probed the relationship between his art and the world around him, moving from the neo-romantic and the mystic towards the precise craft of expressing the everyday in poetry. This new edition--the only bilingual edition to include such a broad range of poems--fully reflects Rilke's poetic development. It contains the full text of the Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus, and selected poems from The Book of Images, New Poems, and earlier volumes, and from the uncollected poetry 1906-26. The translations are accurate, sensitive, and nuanced, and are accompanied by an introduction and notes that chart the development of Rilke's poetic practice and his central role in modern poetry. The book also includes a chronology, select bibliography, and explanatory notes that identify people and places, and include key commentary by Rilke from letters or notes.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge: A Novel

by Rainer Maria Rilke

This is the definitive, widely acclaimed translation of the major prose work of one of our century's greatest poets -- "a masterpiece like no other" (Elizabeth Hardwick) -- Rilke's only novel, extraordinary for its structural uniqueness and purity of language. First published in 1910, it has proven to be one of the most influential and enduring works of fiction of our century.

Malte Laurids Brigge is a young Danish nobleman and poet living in Paris. Obsessed with death and with the reality that lurks behind appearances, Brigge muses on his family and their history and on the teeming, alien life of the city. Many of the themes and images that occur in Rilke's poetry can also be found in the novel, prefiguring the modernist movement in its self-awareness and imagistic immediacy.

The Poetry of Rilke

by Rainer Maria Rilke

For the past twenty-five years, North Point Press has been working with Edward Snow, "Rilke's best contemporary translator" (Brian Phillips, The New Republic), to bring into English Rilke's major poetic works. The Poetry of Rilke—the single most comprehensive volume of Rilke's German poetry ever to be published in English—is the culmination of this effort. With more than two hundred and fifty selected poems by Rilke, including complete translations of the Sonnets to Orpheus and the Duino Elegies, The Poetry of Rilke spans the arc of Rilke's work, from the breakthrough poems of The Book of Hours to the visionary masterpieces written only weeks before his death. This landmark bilingual edition also contains all of Snow's commentaries on Rilke, as well as an important new introduction by the award-winning poet Adam Zagajewski. The Poetry of Rilke will stand as the authoritative single-volume translation of Rilke into English for years to come.

Poems from the Book of Hours (New Directions Paperbook) (English and German Edition)

by Rainer Maria Rilke

A bilingual presentation of Rilke's early work illuminates his ideas about God and humanity

Turning-Point : Miscellaneous Poems 1912-1926 (Poetica) (German and English Edition)

by Rainer Maria Rilke

First published under the title An Unofficial Rilke, Hamburger's translations have been critically acclaimed for their contribution towards a more complete understanding of one of the major poets of the 20th century.

While Rilke has been perhaps more widely translated into English than any other modern poet, the emphasis has always been on 'major works' - the New Poems volumes, Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus. Yet Rilke produced many more poems which had little or no airing beyond the confines of his workshop. Michael Hamburger argues in his perceptive and entertaining introduction that these poems are not inferior to the poems in the collections that form the accepted corpus; rather that they merely failed to fit in with Rilke's wish to form a definitive statement.

Michael Hamburger was born in Berlin in 1924 and came to Britain in 1933. Among the many authors he has translated from are Hölderlin, Goethe, Paul Celan and Peter Huchel. He is equally acclaimed as one of Britain's leading poets of the period since World War II. Anvil publishes his Collected Poems 1941-1994 and his subsequent collections.

Selected Poems of Rilke Bilingual Edition

by Rainer Maria Rilke

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, Mallarmé, and other symbolists. His poetry is innovative, enigmatic, and entertainingly idiosyncratic. C.F. MacIntyre's translations are both true to the original and poetic in their own right, and in each book he includes an introduction and notes. German text faces the English translation.

Duino Elegies/Duineser Elegien: A Dual-Language Book (Dover Dual Language German)

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke, one of Germany's greatest poets, began this work in 1912, at the castle of Duino near Trieste. It took him a decade to complete these meditations on love, death, God, and life's meaning, and he regarded them as his greatest achievement. Innovative and enigmatic, they express his irresolvable conflict between a longing for solitude and a painful loneliness. The elegies' enduring popularity attests to their vivid reflection of the human condition, in all its joy, terror, sorrow, and splendor.
Translator C. F. MacIntyre declares these works as "among the great and unforgettable poetry of the world." His interpretations are both true to the originals and poetic in their own right. This dual-language edition features English translations on the pages facing the original German. Poetry lovers, students of German literature and language, and other readers will find this volume an accessible exploration of one of modern literature's most profound sequences of poetry.

Duino Elegies Bilingual Edition

by Rainer Maria Rilke, C.F. MacIntyre

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 Château 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, Mallarmé, and other symbolists. His poetry is innovative, enigmatic, and entertainingly idiosyncratic. C.F. MacIntyre's translations are both true to the original and poetic in their own right, and in each book he includes an introduction and notes. German text faces the English translation.

Possibility of Being: A Selection of Poems (New Directions)

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Possibility of Being is a selection of poems by one of the most moving and original writers of this century, Rainer Maria Rilke (1857-l926). The title (taken from one of the Sonnets to Orpheus, ''Ibis is the Creature") reflects the central concern of both Rilke's life and art: the achievement of "being,” which this most spiritual yet least doctrinaire of modern German poets defined as "the experiencing of the completest possible inner intensity.'' The eighty-four poems included in this small volume will serve as a sound and inviting introduction to Rilke's strategies in the pursuit of "being." And just as the unicorn in "This Is the Creature" has an eternal "possibility of being" but only becomes visible in the mirror held by a virgin, so can our own possibilities become manifest in the mirror held by the sensitive artist. The poems are chosen from The Book of Hours (1899-1903), The Book of Images (1902 and 1906), New Poems (1907 and 1908), Requiem (1909), Duino Elegies (1923), Sonnets to Orpheus (1923), and the posthumous Poems 1906-26. This selection was made by Professor Theodore Ziolkowski of Princeton University, who drew from the various New Directions volumes of Rilke's work translated by J. B. Leishman.

Letters on God and Letters to a Young Woman (Northwestern World Classics)

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) was an avid letter writer, and more than seven thousand of his letters have survived. The best-known collection today is Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, first published in 1929. Two other letter collections appeared around the same time and gained high acclaim among readers yet are virtually unknown today. They are Letters to a Young Woman (1930) and Letters on God (1933).

With this volume, Annemarie S. Kidder makes available to an English-speaking audience two of the earliest collections of Rilke letters published after his death. The thematic collection On God-- here published in English for the first time in book format--contains two letters by Rilke, the first an actual letter written during World War I, in 1915 in Munich, the second a fictional one composed after the war, in 1922 at Muzot, in Switzerland. In these letters, Rilke builds on the mystical view of God conceived of in The Book of Hours, but he moves beyond it, demonstrating a unique vision of God and Christ, the church and religious experience, friendship and death. The collection Letters to a Young Woman comprises nine of Rilke's letters, written to a young admirer, Lisa Heise, over the course of five years, from 1919 to 1924. Though Rilke and Heise never met, Rilke emerges in these letters as the compassionate listener and patient teacher who with level-headed sensitivity affirms and guides the movements of another person's soul.

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

by Rainer Maria Rilke

First published in 1910, Rilke's Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge is one the first great modernist novels, the account of poet-aspirant Brigge in his exploration of poetic individuality and his reflections on the experience of time as death approaches.
A young man named Malte Laurids Brigge lives in a cheap room in Paris while his belongings rot in storage. Every person he sees seems to carry their death within them and with little but a library card to distinguish him from the city's untouchables, he thinks of the deaths, and ghosts, of his aristocratic family, of which he is the sole living descendant. Suffused with passages of lyrical brilliance, Rilke's semi-autobiographical novel is a moving and powerful coming-of-age story. This new translation by Burton Pike is a reaction to overly stylized previous translations, and aims to capture not only the beauty but also the strangeness, the spirit, of Rilke's German.

Duino Elegies: A Bilingual Edition (European Poetry Classics)

by Rainer Maria Rilke

The Duino Elegies are the culmination of the development of Rilke's poetry. A summary of his spiritual troubles, perhaps no volume of poems in a European language has made so dramatic and sustained an impact on English-speaking readers in this century.

Duino Elegies: A Bilingual Edition

by Rainer Maria Rilke

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 emerged as one of Rainer Maria Rilke's most able English-language interpreters. In his translations, Snow adheres faithfully to the intent of Rilke's German while constructing nuanced, colloquial poems in English.

Written in a period of spiritual crisis between 1912 and 1922, the poems that compose the Duino Elegies are the ones most frequently identified with the Rilkean sensibility. With their symbolic landscapes, prophetic proclamations, and unsettling intensity, these complex and haunting poems rank among the outstanding visionary works of the century.

The Book of Images: Poems / Revised Bilingual Edition (English and German Edition)

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Now substantially revised by Edward Snow, whom Denise Levertov once called "far and away Rilke's best translator," this bilingual edition of The Book of Images contains a number of the great poet's previously untranslated pieces. Also included are several of Rilke's best-loved lyrics, such as "Autumn," "Childhood," "Lament," "Evening," and "Entrance."

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (Oxford World's Classics)

by Rainer Maria Rilke

'An indescribable, aching, futile longing for myself'

The young Danish aristocrat Malte Laurids Brigge has been left rootless by the early death of his parents. Now living in Paris, Malte begins to record his life in a series of loosely connected notes, diary entries, prose poems, parables and stories, ostensibly collected by a fictional editor to form the Notebooks. Focusing on Malte's observations and experiences in the present, recollections of his childhood and family, and his reflections on historical events, these notes in highly crafted poetic prose explore the themes of life in the metropolis, poverty, sickness and death, love, memory and time, and perception and language.

The only extended prose work by the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge is a landmark in the development of the twentieth-century novel. It marks a radical departure from nineteenth-century realism, transcending conventions of linear narrative to reflect a consciousness in crisis, and an archetypal confrontation with the modern.

ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Poems to Night

by Rainer Maria Rilke

This collection of haunting, mystical poems of the night by the great Rainer Maria Rilke is the only English translation to bring them all together

In 1916, Rainer Maria Rilke presented his friend Rudolf Kassner with a notebook, containing 22 poems meticulously inscribed in his own hand and bearing the title Poems to Night. This evocative sequence of poems, which echoes some of the great themes of German romanticism, is now thought to represent one of the key stages in the creative breakthrough and spiritual evolution of the preeminent European poet of the twentieth century.

This translation was the 1st to bring all the poems together in English and is enhanced by the translator's valuable introduction and a rich selection of further poems Rilke dedicated to night at various stages of his life, providing fascinating insight into Rilke’s development.

The poems recall all of the great poet’s important themes: death and longing, the troubling reconciliation of beauty and suffering, and a search for transcendance. These deep questions circle the imagery of night in Rilke’s intensely lyrical style: darkness, the stars and the moon wheel through the verses, and the play of light and dark beomes an evocation of life’s duality. No other poet was as singularly devoted to beauty or as capable of gifting its consolations to the reader—a volume to cherish on stormy nights and peaceful ones.

Sonnets to Orpheus A New Translation (Bilingual Edition)

by Rainer Maria Rilke

2025 Indie Book Awards Finalist Poetry

"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.