Duino Elegies

Front Cover
Enitharmon Press, 2013 - Poetry - 103 pages
Perhaps no cycle of poems in any European language has made so profound and lasting an impact on an English-speaking readership as Rilke s Duino Elegies. These luminous new translations by Martyn Crucefix make it marvellously clear how the poem is committed to the real world observed with acute and visionary intensity. Completed in 1922, the same year as the publication of Eliot s The Waste Land, the Elegies constitute a magnificent godless poem in their rejection of the transcendent and their passionate celebration of the here and now. Troubled by our insecure place in this world and our fractured relationship with death, the Elegies are nevertheless populated by a throng of vivid and affecting figures: acrobats, lovers, angels, mothers, fathers, statues, salesmen, actors and children. This bilingual edition offers twenty-first century readers a new opportunity to experience the power of Rilke s enduring masterpiece. Selected by Philip Pullman as one of his 40 favourite books. Shortlisted for the Cornelieu M Popscu Prize, 2007."

About the author (2013)

More than any other modern German writer, Rainer Maria Rilke seems to match our romantic idea of what a poet should be, though, as with many writers, separating artistry from affectation is often difficult. Restless, sensitive, reverent, yet egotistical, Rilke often seems to hover in his poems like a sort of ethereal being. He was born in 1875 to a wealthy family in Prague. After a few years devoted to the study of art and literature, he spent most of his adult life wandering among the European capitals and devoting himself single-mindedly to poetry. His early poems reflect his interest in the visual and plastic arts, as he tries to lose himself in contemplation of objects such as an antique torso of Apollo.His later books of poetry, such as Duino Elegies (1923) and Sonnets to Orpheus (1923), on the contrary, focus intently on internal realms. The poetry of Rilke is noted, above all, for metaphysical and psychological nuances.

Bibliographic information

TitleDuino Elegies
AuthorRainer Maria Rilke
EditorMartyn Crucefix
Translated byMartyn Crucefix
Editionreprint
PublisherEnitharmon Press, 2013
ISBN1907587594, 9781907587597
Length103 pages
Subjects ›  › 

Poetry / European / German
Poetry / General
  
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