The fifty-five Sonnets to Orpheus were written by Rilke in February 1922, in less than two weeks. Their central themes are Orpheus and his song of praise; what is sung is "Dasein", "being- here", the presence in the world. Rilke considered as a betrayal of his poetry any translation that would not reproduce, together with his thinking, his internal movement, his rhythm, his rhymes, his music. The goal of the translator has been to make that orchestration "heard" as much as possible, to try and reproduce the structure, rhyme and rhythm, of Rilke's Sonnets, in order for these translations to sound as echoes of the originals.
The reputation of Rainer Maria Rilke has grown steadily since his death in 1926; today he is widely considered to be the greatest poet of the twentieth century. This Modern Library edition presents Stephen Mitchell’s acclaimed translations of Rilke, which have won praise for their re-creation of the poet’s rich formal music and depth of thought. “If Rilke had written in English,” Denis Donoghue wrote in The New York Times Book Review, “he would have written in this English.” Ahead of All Parting is an abundant selection of Rilke’s lifework. It contains representative poems from his early collections The Book of Hours and The Book of Pictures; many selections from the revolutionary New Poems, which drew inspiration from Rodin and Cezanne; the hitherto little-known “Requiem for a Friend”; and a generous selection of the late uncollected poems, which constitute some of his finest work. Included too are passages from Rilke’s influential novel, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, and nine of his brilliant uncollected prose pieces. Finally, the book presents the poet’s two greatest masterpieces in their entirety: the Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus. “Rilke’s voice, with its extraordinary combination of formality, power, speed and lightness, can be heard in Mr. Mitchell’s versions more clearly than in any others,” said W. S. Merwin. “His work is masterful.”
Edward Snow's selection of more than one hundred of Rainer Maria Rilke's little-known and neglected poems in this bilingual edition offers the reader a glimpse into one of the most powerful and underrated accomplishments in all of modern poetry. The poems in Uncollected Poems reveal a freer, more dangerous, less self-fashioning Rilke than the poet of the Elegies and the Sonnets; and Snow's translations of them, while always scrupulously faithful to the German, bring Rilke's power and music into English with unmatched grace and intelligence.
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.
Sonnets to Orpheus is Rainer Maria Rilke's first and only sonnet sequence. It is an undisputed masterpiece by one of the greatest modern poets, translated here by a master of translation, David Young. Rilke revived and transformed the traditional sonnet sequence in the Sonnets. Instead of centering on love for a particular person, as has many other sonneteers, he wrote an extended love poem to the world, celebrating such diverse things as mirrors, dogs, fruit, breathing, and childhood. Many of the sonnets are addressed to two recurrent figures: the god Orpheus (prototype of the poet) and a young dancer, whose death is treated elegiacally. These ecstatic and meditative lyric poems are a kind of manual on how to approach the world – how to understand and love it. David Young's is the first most sensitive of the translations of this work, superior to other translations in sound and sense. He captures Rilke's simple, concrete, and colloquial language, writing with a precision close to the original.
Rainer Maria Rilke's poetry offers a rare combination of insight, beauty, and accessibility that has delighted readers for generations. Beloved for its unique lyrical style and musical language, his work stands as some of the most remarkable poetry of the past one hundred years. In Praise of Mortality is an artfully curated selection of poems from Sonnets to Orpheus and Duino Elegies that investigate the emotional and psychological impact of the industrial revolution, and meditate on themes of impermanence and the steady passage of time. Barrows, an award-winning poet herself, and Macy, a well-known spiritual teacher, bring to their translations a striking sensitivity to the subtle currents of the work, approaching the poems with a fresh perspective that highlights the delicacy of their craft and beauty. With a deep reverence for nature and a singular ability to embody the tenuous connection between the spiritual and material, Rilke's sonnets and elegies are a thoughtful antidote to the distractions, noise, and ever-increasing pace of the modern world.
“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.” —Kirsta 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.
Presents Rilke's 1922 Sonnets to Orpheus, written in a burst of inspiration, and expressing a vision of a state of being in which all the ordinary human dichotomies are reconciled in an infinite wholeness. Also included is his Letters to a young poet, an influential series of letters written to a young officer cadet on the subject of poetics.
RAINER MARIA RILKE: Dance the Orange: Selected Poems Translated by Michael Hamburger and edited by Jeremy Mark Robinson This edition has been revised and updated. www.crmoon.com This new collection includes poems taken from the time of the great German poet's New Poems through the Duino Elegies to the last pieces. These are some of Rainer Maria Rilke's best works; they are intense, compact, lyrical and lucid, by turns erotic, heartfelt and mystical. Hamburger's excellent translations have the German original facing each poem. Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) is one of the greatest of all lyrical poets. Rilke is part of that group of European poets and writers which includes Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Rimbaud, Georg Trakl, Marina Tsvetajeva, and friends such as Andre Gide, Lou Andreas-Salome and Paul Valery. Rilke was an incredibly inventive creator of poetry, who could forge the myriad states and images of love, from the delicate, detailed and subtle, to the passionate, illuminating and ecstatic. Rilke was adept at inflecting language with blissful tones: while he could describe the many experiences of love, he found it difficult to turn them into realities, to act on his words. For him love could be a transitory, fragile state between two people. 'Why do people who love each other separate before there is any need? Because it is after all so very temporary a thing, to be together and to love one another'. Rilke saw life as a 'continuous flow of vicissitudes', change following change, so that parting was inevitable, and people should become used to it ('at any moment be ready to give each other up, let be and not hold each other back'.
