Duino Elegies

Rilke Rainer Maria

With all his contradictions, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) is one of the fathers of modern literature and the Duino Elegies one of its great monuments. Begun in 1912 but not completed until 1922, they are "modern" in almost every sense the word has acquired; yet Rilke was by temperament anti-modern, a snob and a romantic. He was devoted to the three A's: Architecture, Agriculture, Aristocracy.

The Duino Elegies aroused real excitement among English readers when the now-dated Leishman/Spender versions first appeared in the 1930s. Stephen Cohn, the distinguished artist and teacher, has worked for over three years to complete this outstanding new translation. Peter Porter writes: "Your translation must have grandeur, essential size in its component parts, and speed to catch the marvellous twists of Rilke's imagination". He adds, "Cohn has met all these requirements". These versions show a rare empathy with the originals and an instinct for the right diction and cadence. They are, says Porter, "the most flowing and organic I have read".

About the Author

Rainer Maria Rilke was born in Prague in 1875. Following an unhappy period spent at military academies, he studied a variety of subjects at the universities of Prague, Munich, and Berlin. It was in Munich that he first met Lou Andreas-Salome, with whom he travelled to Russia in 1899 and 1900. In 1901 he married Klara Westhoff, briefly a student of Auguste Rodin. Rilke himself became Rodin's secretary, installed at the Villa des Brillants at Meudon near Paris, and published two monographs on the sculptor, in 1903 and 1907. A number of major works belong to Rilke's years in Paris, including Parts I and II of the Neue Gedichte and the experimental novel "Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge" (The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, 1910). For much of his life Rilke led a nomadic existence, travelling widely and often supported by the hospitality of friends and patrons. Towards the end of his life he settled at the Chateau de Muzot in the Swiss Valais, where in 1923, in a whirlwind of creativity, he completed the "Duineser Elegien" (Duino Elegies) as well as "Die Sonnette an Orpheus" ("Sonnets to Orpheus"). The "Elegies" were inspired by a visit to Castle Duino on the Adriatic, while the Sonnets are dedicated to the memory of a young dancer, the daughter of friends. Rilke died at Valmont in the last days of 1926.

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