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    Sonnets to Orpheus and Duino Elegies
    Sonnets to Orpheus and Duino Elegies
    Sonnets to Orpheus and Duino Elegies
    Ebook114 pages1 hour

    Sonnets to Orpheus and Duino Elegies

    By Rainer Maria Rilke

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    The cycle of 55 sonnets that comprise Rainer Maria Rilke's "Sonnets to Orpheus" were written in a period of three weeks during 1922, a time which the poet himself described as a "savage creative storm." Inspired by the death of his daughter's friend, Wera Knoop, Rilke commenced to the production of "Sonnets to Orpheus," a work filled with mythological and biblical allusions. During the same burst of creative energy he set to working on the completion of the "Duino Elegies," a work begun some ten years earlier but set aside due to Rilke's own emotional distress over the tragic events of World War I and his conscription into the Austro-Hungarian army. He wrote in a letter to the deceased girl's mother that Wera's ghost was "commanding and impelling" him to write. The results of this "savage creative storm" are generally considered as Rilke's masterpieces. "Duino Elegies" is an intensely spiritual group of verses that ponders the beauty and existential suffering of life. Together these works exhibit why Rilke is widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense of all German-language poets.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDigireads.com Publishing
    Release dateJan 1, 2014
    ISBN9781420950298
    Sonnets to Orpheus and Duino Elegies
    Author

    Rainer Maria Rilke

    Rainer Maria Rilke was born in Prague in 1875 and traveled throughout Europe for much of his adult life, returning frequently to Paris. There he came under the influence of the sculptor Auguste Rodin and produced much of his finest verse, most notably the two volumes of New Poems as well as the great modernist novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Among his other books of poems are The Book of Images and The Book of Hours. He lived the last years of his life in Switzerland, where he completed his two poetic masterworks, the Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus. He died of leukemia in December 1926.

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    Reviews for Sonnets to Orpheus and Duino Elegies

    4.5/5

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    • 3/5
      Probably the most infuriating book of poetry I've ever read, perhaps will ever read. The highs and lows are so dizzyingly high and so mind-numbingly, banally low that I couldn't always keep pace. The first and tenth elegies were high, the other elegies interesting and beautiful, if you can stomach the whole whiney little boy thing he falls into occasionally, and his affection for idiot-metaphysics ('Sein Aufgang ist Dasein' and so forth). Many of the sonnets, however, are appalling. Once Rilke ditches the generally critical stance of the elegies (complaints on injustice, suffering etc...) the idiot-metaphysics becomes overwhelming:

      "Be - and at the same time know the implication of non-being...
      to nature's whole supply of speechless, dumb,
      and also used up things, the unspeakable sums,
      rejoicing, add yourself and nullify the count."

      Not to say there aren't great sonnets in there too, but my overall impression was one of disgust at this wonderful poet - what's more human than poetry? - wanting to become an object, thrilling in a mysticism of death. Add this to the apparent desire for a god to save us from the injustice and suffering so perfectly evoked in the elegies (uh... couldn't we save ourselves?), and my brain explodes. Because the whole thing is so beautiful, and at once so horrible, that there's nothing else for my brain to do.
    • 4/5
      Obviously we should all read all of Rilke's poems... but the Sonnets to Orpheus would be the second work I would buy, right after the Book of Hours. I like having the parallel translations--I can sound out just enough German to appreciate some of the sonic work.
    • 4/5
      Rilke, in this comprehensive translation of two major works, crafts powerful yet elegant poetic odes to the majesty of the human experience and its relationship to the external world. A realm in which the human being exists in quandary and struggle. The translation is quite readable and often beautiful, but sometimes a little uneven. I would like to compare it to other translations.
    • 5/5
      For my taste this is not the best translation, but I do like certain parts. These are two of Rilke's major works (The third being the Book of Hours). I would not use this as my primary translation, but if you are looking for a second copy, this is more than adequate.

    Book preview

    Sonnets to Orpheus and Duino Elegies - Rainer Maria Rilke

    cover.jpg

    SONNETS TO ORPHEUS AND DUINO ELEGIES

    BY RAINER MARIA RILKE

    TRANSLATED BY JESSIE LEMONT

    Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5028-1

    eBook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5029-8

    This edition copyright © 2014

    Please visit www.digireads.com

    CONTENTS

    INTRODUCTION

    SONNETS TO ORPHEUS

    FIRST PART

    I

    II

    III

    IV

    V

    VI

    VII

    VIII

    IX

    X

    XI

    XII

    XIII

    XIV

    XV

    XVI

    XVII

    XVIII

    XIX

    XX

    XXI

    XXII

    XXIII

    XXIV

    XXV

    XXVI

    SECOND PART

    I

    II

    III

    IV

    V

    VI

    VII

    VIII

    IX

    X

    XI

    XII

    XIII

    XIV

    XV

    XVI

    XVII

    XVIII

    XIX

    XX

    XXI

    XXII

    XXIII

    XXIV

    XXV

    XXVI

    XXVII

    XXVIII

    XXIX

    DUINO ELEGIES

    FIRST ELEGY

    SECOND ELEGY

    THIRD ELEGY

    FOURTH ELEGY

    FIFTH ELEGY

    SIXTH ELEGY

    SEVENTH ELEGY

    EIGHTH ELEGY

    NINTH ELEGY

    TENTH ELEGY

    FROM THE BOOK OF HOURS

    (Translated by Jessie Lemont)

    Extinguish my eyes, I still can see you.

    Close my ears, I can hear your footsteps fall.

    And without feet I still can follow you,

    And without voice I still can to you call.

    Break off my arms, and I can embrace you,

    Enfold you with my heart as with a hand.

    Hold my heart, my brain will take fire of you

    As flax ignites from a lit fire-brand—

    And flame will sweep in a swift rushing flood

    Through all the singing currents of my blood.

    Rainer Maria Rilke

    INTRODUCTION

    A translation is a window artfully made to conceal itself and so more clearly reveal what lies beyond. Even the most up-to-date window may be expected to have some slight frame, thereby affording a decent line of demarcation between a world about us, for the moment alien to our interests, and the view through the window. The following words of introduction are, then, a slender frame to give becoming setting for the radiant world, the jewelled splendor, which this small book reveals.

    Rainer Maria Rilke is universally acknowledged as one of the most inspired poetic minds of the last half century. Within those particular realms which he chose for his own he reigns in a serene and undisputed supremacy over his contemporaries. He was a far voyager. As a young man he left his own fatherland, then Austria, now Czechoslovakia, to reside in all parts of Europe, especially in Italy, Spain, Russia, Scandinavia, England, and longest in Paris, in which city he was for many years secretary to Auguste Rodin. His insatiable quest of wisdom and of art led him also into many and far fields of history, acquainting him with the myths and poetry of Europe, Egypt, and the East. As art critic, inspired thinker, and lyric poet he has had few peers. Within the last quarter of a century his works have become so well known in all continents as to be many times translated into the chief languages. The more spacious and sociologically significant domains of literature, such as drama or epic narrative, to be sure, he neglected in favor of his lyric art. But this art he perfected in a wide range from relatively simple songs to the most highly wrought metaphysical verse. Many of his clearest, simplest and most attractive lyrics belong to his earlier years, when life held for him and for the world less acute perplexities than after the first decade of our own tempestuous century. Whether his poetry materially improved with years doubtless remains a matter of taste and therefore disputable; certainly his art became steadily more enriched, complex, and philosophical. Those of his poems to which the epithet profound is most commonly applied are represented by the present volume, containing the most successful of his metaphysical and meditative verses, his Sonnets to Orpheus and Duino Elegies. In them the poet in Rilke happily meets the seer; lyric power is never sacrificed to reflective power nor thoughts to lyricism; both are found in perfect ripeness and harmony.

    The two sequences of poems are so intimately associated in art and doctrine as very properly to constitute one volume, Rilke's final testament as a major philosophical poet and seriously inspired singer. However difficult these works may be, they are in no sense products of eccentricity, nor of morbidity. They cannot be likened to the chief works of James Joyce or T. S. Eliot. Here we find an orphic wisdom as visioned through the eyes of the poet's age. And while in their somewhat tremulous tone they reflect the singularly troubled decades of European history which saw their birth, they also share amply in that breadth of vision and wide historical perspective which were the final fruits of the nineteenth century. In some of his earlier poems Rilke may possibly come closer to the spirit of Greek poetry and art than here, but here he unquestionably harkens to the lessons of Greek philosophy. And he collects

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