Rainer Maria Rilke

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

**Rainer Maria Rilke** <tr><td colspan="2" style="text-align: center;">
Rainer Maria Rilke in a portrait by Paula Modersohn-Becker</td></tr>
Born:	December 4, 1875 Prague, Bohemia <tr><th style="text-align: right;">Died:</th><td>December 29, 1926 Switzerland</td></tr>
Occupation(s):	poet, novelist <tr><th style="text-align: right;">Nationality:</th><td>Austrian</td></tr><tr><th style="text-align: right;">Writing period:</th><td>1894 - 1935</td></tr><tr><th style="text-align: right;">Debut work(s):</th><td>Leben und Lieder</td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" style="font-size: smaller; font-style: italic; border-top: 1px solid;">Duino Elegies, Letters to a Young Poet</td></tr>

Rainer Maria Rilke (4 December, 1875 – 29 December, 1926) is generally considered the German language's greatest 20th century poet. His haunting images tend to focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety — themes that tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist poets.

He wrote in both verse and a highly lyrical prose. His two most famous verse sequences are the Sonnets to Orpheus and the Duino Elegies; his two most famous prose works are the Letters to a Young Poet and the semi-autobiographical The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. He also wrote more than 400 poems in French, dedicated to his homeland of choice, the canton of Valais in Switzerland.

[edit] Life

[edit] 1875-1896

He was born René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke in Prague, Bohemia (then within Austria-Hungary, now the Czech Republic). His childhood and youth in Prague were not very happy. His father, Josef Rilke (1838-1906), became a railway official after an unsuccessful military career. His mother, Sophie ("Phia") Entz (1851-1931), came from a well-to-do Prague manufacturing family, the Entz-Kinzelbergers, who lived in a palace on the Herrengasse (Panská) 8, where René also spent much of his early years. The parents' marriage fell apart in 1884. The relationship between Phia and her only son was encumbered by her prolonged mourning for her elder daughter, after which she forced René into his sister's role, including dressing him in girl's clothing when he was young.[1]

His parents pressured the poetically and artistically gifted youth into entering a military academy, which he attended from 1886 until 1891, when he left due to illness. From 1892 to 1895 he was tutored for the university entrance exam, which he passed in 1895. In 1895 and 1896, he studied literature, art history, and philosophy in Prague and Munich.

[edit] 1897-1902

In 1897 in Munich, Rainer Maria Rilke met and fell in love with the widely traveled intellectual and lady of letters Lou Andreas-Salome (1861-1937). (Rilke changed his first name from "René" to the more masculine Rainer at Lou's urging.) His intense relationship with this married woman, with whom he undertook two extensive trips to Russia, lasted until 1900. But even after their separation, Lou continued to be Rilke's most important confidante until the end of his life. Because she had trained from 1912 to 1913 as a psychoanalyst with Sigmund Freud, she shared her knowledge of psychoanalysis with Rilke.

In 1898, Rilke undertook a journey lasting several weeks to Italy. In 1899, he travelled with Lou and her husband, Friedrich Andreas, to Moscow where he met the novelist Leo Tolstoy. Between May and August 1900, a second journey to Russia, accompanied only by Lou, again took him to Moscow and St. Petersburg, where he met the family of Boris Pasternak and Spiridon Drozhzhin, a peasant poet. Later, "Rilke called two places his home: Bohemia and Russia".<ref>Anna A. Tavis. Rilke's Russia: A Cultural Encounter. Northwestern University Press, 1997. ISBN 0810114666. Page 1.</ref>

In autumn 1900, Rilke stayed in Worpswede, where he got to know the sculptress Clara Westhoff (1878-1954), whom he married the following spring. Their daughter Ruth (1901-1972) was born in December 1901. However, Rilke was not one for a middle-class family life; in the summer of 1902, Rilke left home and travelled to Paris to write a monograph on the sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840-1917). Still, the relationship between Rilke and Clara Westhoff continued for the rest of his life.

[edit] 1902-1910

At first, Rilke had a difficult time in Paris, an experience that he called on in the first part of his only novel, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. At the same time, his encounter with modernism was very stimulating: Rilke became deeply involved in the sculpture of Rodin, and then with the work of Paul Cézanne. For a time he acted as Rodin's amanuensis, eventually writing a long essay on Rodin and his work. Rodin taught him the value of objective observation, which led to Rilke's Dinggedichten ("thing-poems"), a famous example of which is "Der Panther" ("The Panther"). During these years, Paris increasingly became the writer's main residence.

The most important works of the Paris period were Neue Gedichte (New Poems) (1907), Der Neuen Gedichte Anderer Teil (Another Part of the New Poems) (1908), the two "Requiem" poems (1909), and the novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, started in 1904 and completed in January 1910.

[edit] 1910-1919

Between October 1911 and May 1912, Rilke stayed at the Castle Duino, near Trieste, home of Countess Marie of Thurn and Taxis. There, in 1912, he began the poem cycle called the Duino Elegies, which would remain unfinished for a decade due to a long-lasting creativity crisis.

The outbreak of World War I surprised Rilke during a stay in Germany. He was unable to return to Paris, where his property was confiscated and auctioned. He spent the greater part of the war in Munich. From 1914 to 1916 he had a turbulent affair with the painter Lou Albert-Lasard.

Rilke was called up at the beginning of 1916, and he had to undertake basic training in Vienna. Influential friends interceded on his behalf, and he was transferred to the War Records Office and discharged from the military on June 9, 1916. He spent the subsequent time once again in Munich, interrupted by a stay on Hertha Koenig's Gut Bockel in Westphalia. The traumatic experience of military service, a reminder of the horrors of the military academy, almost completely silenced him as a poet.

[edit] 1919-1926

On June 11, 1919, Rilke traveled from Munich to Switzerland. The outward motive was an invitation to lecture in Zürich, but the real reason was the wish to escape the post-war chaos and take up once again his work on the Duino Elegies. The search for a suitable and affordable place to live proved to be very difficult. Among other places, Rilke lived in Soglio, Locarno, and Berg am Irchel. Only in the summer of 1921 was he able to find a permanent residence in the Chateau de Muzot, close to Sierre in Valais. In May 1922, Rilke's patron Werner Reinhart purchased the building so that Rilke could live there rent-free.

In an intense creative period, Rilke completed the Duino Elegies within several weeks in February 1922. Before and after, he wrote both parts of the poem cycle Sonnets to Orpheus. Both are among the high points of Rilke's work.

From 1923 on, Rilke increasingly had to struggle with health problems that necessitated many long stays at a sanatorium in Territet, near Montreux, on Lake Geneva. His long stay in Paris between January and August 1925 was an attempt to escape his illness through a change in location and living conditions. Despite this, numerous important individual poems appeared in the years 1923-1926 (including Gong and Mausoleum), as well as a comprehensive lyrical work in French.

Only shortly before his death was Rilke's illness diagnosed as leukemia. The poet died on 29 December 1926 in the Valmont Sanatorium in Switzerland, and was laid to rest on 2 January 1927 in the Raron cemetery to the west of Visp. He chose his own epitaph:

Rose, oh reiner Widerspruch, Lust,
Niemandes Schlaf zu sein unter soviel
Lidern.

Rose, oh pure contradiction, joy
of being No-one's sleep, under so
many lids.

[edit] Rilke's influence

German philosopher Martin Heidegger cites Rilke as an example of the highest form of thinker in his essay "What Are Poets For?" The essay's theme is largely explored through the examination of an "improvised verse" (short poem) Rilke wrote in 1924. Heidegger, sometimes considered the most influential German thinker of the 20th century, ranks Rilke in the German poetic tradition as second only to Holderlin.
Erie Chapman cites Rilke frequently in his essays on caregiving.
The Rilke Project involves contemporary pop artists and actors (including Xavier Naidoo, BAP, Jürgen Prochnow, and Katja Riemann) interpreting Rilke's texts to make Rilke accessible to new generations.

[edit] Literature

Rilke has also been celebrated in Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow and William Gaddis' voluminous novel The Recognitions, and is referred to in Julia Alvarez's novel How the García Girls Lost Their Accents.

J.D. Salinger alludes to Rilke in various works, including the novel Franny and Zooey and the short story A Perfect Day for Bananafish.

Audrey Niffenegger mentions and quotes from Rilke frequently in The Time Traveler's Wife.

Douglas Coupland quotes Rilke's Letters To A Young Poet in Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture.

A Rilke translation inspired Lost in Translation, a celebrated 1974 poem by James Merrill.

Jo Shapcott's collection of poems, Tender Taxes, is based on a series of Rilke's poems written in French.

Rilke's poetry highly influenced the life and writings of Etty Hillesum.

The Iranian modernist writer Sadegh Hedayat was deeply moved by Rilke's meditations on death.

[edit] Film

Wim Wenders cites Rilke as the inspiration behind his angels in Wings of Desire.
Rilke's poem The Panther is quoted in the 1990 film Awakenings (based on the 1973 book of the same name by neurologist and author Oliver Sacks), expressing the emotional undertone of the story.
In the 1993 movie Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, actress Whoopi Goldberg refers to Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. That work is also a topic of conversation between several characters in the 2002 movie Igby Goes Down.
Rilke is quoted in Kissing Jessica Stein by a woman looking for a woman in a personal ad. This quote is what moves the main character, Jessica, to answer the ad, despite her presumed heterosexuality.
Rilke's poem "Archaic Torso of Apollo" is quoted by Miriam, played by Gena Rowlands, in Woody Allen's 1998 film Another Woman.
Rilke's poem You Who Never Arrived is quoted by Faith, played by Marisa Tomei, in Norman Jewison's 1994 film Only You.

[edit] Music

The indie rock band Rainer Maria takes its name from Rilke, and at least some of their merchandise bears the poet's image.
The Cocteau Twins song "Rilkean Heart", on the 1996 album Milk and Kisses, is an homage to Jeff Buckley who was a life long lover of Rilke's work.
The British composer Oliver Knussen has set texts of Rainer Maria Rilke to music in his unaccomapanied 'Rilke songs' and in 'Requiem:Songs for Sue'.
The Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich set several of Rilke's poems to music in his Symphony No. 14.
The American contemporary composer Morten Lauridsen set Rilke's poem "Les Chansons des Roses" to music
The contemporary Danish composer Per Norgard has set the Rilke sonnet to Orpheus "Singe die Gärten" as the second and final movement of his 3rd symphony.
The contemporary Norwegian composer Arne Nordheim has set Rilke's "Todeserfahrung" in his Wirklicher Wald.

[edit] Art

Fragments of Rilke's poetry are inscribed in the certain paintings by Cy Twombly.

[edit] Religion

Rilke's poem "You, Neighbour God" is included in the most commonly used edition of Liturgy of the hours.
Rilke's poetry is often referenced in the writings of contemporary spiritual teachers such as Jack Kornfield and Stephen Levine.

[edit] Selection of works

[edit] Complete works

Rainer Maria Rilke, Sämtliche Werke in 12 Bänden (Complete Works in 12 Volumes), published by Rilke Archive in association with Ruth Sieber-Rilke, supplied by Ernst Zinn. Frankfurt am Main (1976)
Rainer Maria Rilke, Werke (Works). Edition in four volumes with commentary and supplementary volume, published by Manfred Engel, Ulrich Fülleborn, Dorothea Lauterbach, Horst Nalewski and August Stahl. Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig (1996 and 2003)

[edit] Volumes of poetry

Leben und Lieder (1894)
Larenopfer (1895)
Traumgekrönt (1897)
Advent (1898)
Mir zur Feier (1909)
Das Stunden-Buch (The Book of Hours)
- Das Buch vom mönchischen Leben (1899)
- Das Buch von der Pilgerschaft (1901)
- Das Buch von der Armut und vom Tode (1903)
Das Buch der Bilder (The Book of Pictures) (4 Teile, 1902-1906)
Neue Gedichte (New Poems) (1907)
Der neuen Gedichte anderer Teil (1908)
Requiem (1908)
Das Marienleben (The Life of the Virgen Mary) (1912)
Duineser Elegien (Duino Elegies) (1912/1922)
Die Sonette an Orpheus (Sonnets to Orpheus) (1922)
Vergers (1926)
Les Quatrains Valaisans (1926)
Les Roses (The Roses) (1927)
Les Fenêtres (The Windows) (1927)
Poèmes Français (French Poems) (1935)

[edit] Prose

Geschichten vom Lieben Gott (Stories of God) (Novel, 1900)
Auguste Rodin (1903)
Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke (The Lay of the Love and Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke) (Novella, 1906)
Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge (The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge) (Novel, 1910)

[edit] Letters

[edit] Collected letters

Gesammelte Briefe in sechs Bänden (Collected Letters in Six Volumes), published by Ruth Sieber-Rilke and Carl Sieber. Leipzig (1936-1939)
Briefe (Letters), published by the Rilke Archive in Weimar. Two volumes, Wiesbaden (1950, reprinted 1987 in single volume).
Briefe in Zwei Bänden (Letters in Two Volumes) (Horst Nalewski, Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1991)

[edit] Other volumes of letters

Briefe un Auguste Rodin (Insel Verlag, 1928)
Briefwechsel mit Marie von Thurn und Taxis, two volumes, edited by Ernst Zinn with a forward by Rudolf Kassner (Editions Max Niehans, 1954)

[edit] Translations

[edit] Selections

Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, ed. and trans. Robert Bly (New York, 1981)
The Unknown Rilke, trans. Franz Wright (Oberlin College Press, expanded ed. 1990) ISBN 0932440568
The Book of Fresh Beginnings: Selected Poems, trans. David Young (Oberlin College Press, 1994) ISBN 0932440681
The Essential Rilke, ed. and trans. Galway Kinnell and Hannah Liebmann (Hopewell, NJ, 1999)
Uncollected Poems, trans. Edward Snow (North Point Press, New York, 1966)
Two Prague Stories, trans. Isabel Cole (Vitalis, Český Těšín, 2002)
Pictures of God: Rilke's Religious Poetry, ed. and trans. Annemarie S. Kidder (Livonia, MI 2005)
Duino Elegies, Sonnets to Orpheus, Letters to a young poet: Box set, ed. and trans. Stephen Mitchell

[edit] Duino Elegies

Duineser Elegien: Elegies from the Castle of Duino, trans. V. Sackville-West (Hogarth Press, London, 1931)
Duino Elegies, trans. J.B. Leishman and Stephen Spender (W. W. Norton, New York, 1939)
Duino Elegies, trans. Jessie Lemont (Fine Editions Press, New York, 1945)
Duineser Elegien: The Elegies of Duino, trans. Nora Wydenbruck (Amandus, Vienna, 1948
Duinesian Elegies, trans. Elaine E. Boney (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1975)
Duino Elegies, trans. David Young (W. W. Norton, New York, 1978) ISBN 0393309312

[edit] Sonnets to Orpheus

Sonnets to Orpheus, trans. with notes and commentary J.B. Leishman (Hogarth Press, Londn, 1936
Sonnets to Orpheus, trans. C. F. MacIntyre, (U.C. Berkeley Press, 1961).
Sonnets to Orpheus, trans. M.D. Herder Norton (W. W. Norton, New York, 1962)
Sonnets to Orpheus, trans. Jessie Lemont (Fine Editions PRess, New York, 1945)
Sonnets to Orpheus, trans. with notes Stephen Mitchell (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1985)
Sonnets to Orpheus, trans. Willin Barnstone (Shambahala, Boston, 2004)

[edit] Other works

Stories of God, trans. M.D. Herter Norton (W. W. Norton, New York, 1932)
Letters to a Young Poet, trans. M.D. Herter Norton (W.W. Norton, New York, 1934) ISBN 0393310396
Poems from The Book of Hours trans. Babette Deutsch (New Directions, New York, 1941)
The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, trans. M.D. Herter Norton (W.W. Norton, New York, 1949) ISBN 0393308812
The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, trans. Stephen Mitchell (New York, 1983)
The Lay of the Love and Death of Cornet Christophe Rilke, trans. Stephen Mitchell (Graywolf Press, 1985) ISBN 0915308770
The Book of Hours: Prayers to a Lowly God, trans. Annemarie S. Kidder (Evanston, 2001)
Larenopfer, trans. and commentary by Alfred de Zayas, with drawings by Martin Andrysek (Red Hen Press, Los Angeles, 2005)

[edit] Books on Rilke

[edit] Biographies

Ralph Freedman, Life of a Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke, New York 1996.
Paul Torgersen, Dear Friend: Rainer Maria Rilke and Paula Modersohn-Becker, Northwestern University Press, 1998.

[edit] Studies

A Companion to the Works of Rainer Maria Rilke, ed. Erika A and Michael M. Metzger, Rochester 2001.
Rilke Handbuch: Leben - Werk - Wirkung, ed. Manfred Engel and Dorothea Lauterbach, Stuttgart and Weimar 2004.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Image:Wikiquote-logo-en.png

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Rainer Maria Rilke

Retrieved from "http://en.wikivisual.com/index.php/Rainer_Maria_Rilke"