Turning-Point

Miscellaneous Poems 1912-1926

Rilke Rainer Maria

While Rilke has been perhaps more widely translated into English than any other modern poet, the emphasis has always been on "major works" – the "New Poems" volumes, "Duino Elegies" and "Sonnets to Orpheus". Yet Rilke produced many more poems which had little or no airing beyond the confines of his workshop. Michael Hamburger argues in his perceptive and entertaining introduction that these poems are not inferior to the poems in the collections that form the accepted corpus; rather that they merely failed to fit in with Rilke's wish to form a definitive statement.

First published under the title "An Unofficial Rilke", Hamburger's translations have been critically acclaimed for their contribution towards a more complete understanding of one of the major poets of the 20th century.

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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