Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), one of the greatest German-language poets, is among the key figures in modern Western literature. "The Neue Gedichte" (New Poems of 1907-8 are some of the freshest and most accessible of his works. For some months duri...

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 h...

"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...

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...