"Sonnets to Orpheus" with "Letters to a Young Poet"
"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".
Rilke, born in Prague in 1875, died at Valmont near Montreux in the last days of 1926. 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 1922 – 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 1903 and 1908, 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.
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.
