An authoritatively translated, single-volume compendium of two of the early twentieth-century German poet's most beloved sequences offers insight into Rilke's influence, ability to identify with the world, and perspective on life as a spiritual quest.
A series of fifty-five poems explores the nature of love, death, life, and the spirit. Toward the end of writing Duino Elegies, Rilke paused to write Sonnets to Orpheus, which came as a sort of blast of creativity that inspired Duino Elegies.
His poems of ecstatic identification with the world exert perennial fascination. They are perhaps most mysterious, even to me,' wrote Rainer Maria Rilke of the Sonnets to Orpheus, 'in the manner in which they arrived and imposed themselves on me - the most puzzling dictation I have ever received and taken down. His Sonnets to Orpheus may appear comparatively simple, even casual, at first reading, but they are crammed with content which resonates far beyond the familiar legend of Orpheus and Eurydice.
The Sonnets have an astonishing range which takes in the Singing God and his beloved Eurydice; legend in general, along with time, flight and change; architecture, music and dance; animals, plants, flowers and fruits. They ask to be read by the ear and by the inner eye as much as by the intellect. The Sonnets were 'taken down' during a very few weeks in - weeks in which the poet also brought his Duino Elegies to completion.
In them, Rilke partly identifies himself with Orpheus. The young dancer Vera, for whom the Sonnets are inscribed, taken so young into the Underworld, becomes Eurydice. A tension which adds life to Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus comes through a paradox. Rilke's was a deeply inward, introspective nature, but in the Sonnets he succeeds brilliantly in looking out from his isolation: in making poetry from material which lies in an important sense 'outside'.
Rilke's ten letters to the young officer-cadet Franz Xavier Kappus, written between and , were later published as Letters to a Young Poet. By now the letters have become a part of literary folklore. They contain insights which are as profound today as when they were written, almost a century ago. Rainer Maria Rilke was one of the twentieth century's great lyric poets. Born in Prague in , he was educated in Germany and later in his life moved to Switzerland, where he wrote his two last works, the Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus, both published in For poets, Orpheus represents the ultimate journey into life and death - the mythical poet who could enchant any living thing - even the beasts and the trees.
In this, his fifth collection of poems, Don Paterson, himself a master of the sonnet form, offers a radiant and at times distressing version of the great work. Since his work was translated by J. Leishman and Stephen Spender in the s, Rainer Maria Rilke has never lost his significance for English-speaking poets.
In their various acts of translation, poets such as Auden, Lowell and Randall Jarrell or - more recently - Jo Shapcott, Michael Hofmann and Seamus Heaney, have all testified to Rilke's continuing and primary importance.
Don Paterson now joins this company with an entirely new complete translation of the Sonnets to Orpheus. 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 essays in this volume forge a new path in illuminating the philosophical significance of this late masterpiece. Contributions illustrate the unique character and importance of the Sonnets, their philosophical import, as well as their significant connections to the Duino Elegies completed in the same period.
Loved each and every part of this book. I will definitely recommend this book to poetry, classics lovers. Your Rating:. Your Comment:. Read Online Download.
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