First Published in 1986. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Influenced by Hegel and Nietzsche, and inspired by stays in Italy and France, as well as travels to Russia, Spain, and North Africa, Rainer Maria Rilke nevertheless sought desperately to be original. He rejected all «idées reçues, » whether they were of God, reality, or literature, instead creating his own absolute. He searched for the «real, » re-formed German poetry, and revolutionized Western narrative prose with Malte Laurids Brigge. While Rilke's work is marked by two cesuras, after which it displays important advances in diction and the figuration of verbal icons, it becomes ever more esoteric. However, there are also constants throughout his oeuvre in thematics, topoi, and diction - for example, the preoccupation with death, figures such as the angel, key nouns, alliterations, and noun sequences. His fear of death drove him to adopt «the open, » an idea conceived by the dubious mystagogue Alfred Schuler that surfaces throughout Rilke's poetry and triumphs in Sonnets to Orpheus and Duino Elegies.

Originally published in English in 1951, this biography of one of Germany’s foremost mystical poets dis-proves many of the myths surrounding Rainer Maria Rilke and examines his life and work from social, historical and psychological perspectives, while all the time referencing Rilke’s works to his complex personality. The legacy of his work on younger generations is also examined. All German prose quotations have been translated into English for this edition, existing translations used for the German poetry.

Este libro es una biografía elegíaca del poeta, en el que Rilke habla a través de sus cartas, enlazadas artesanalmente por la autora. Se trata de un poeta que parte en busca de su propia voz, su sí mismo, en una enconada lucha con su propia naturaleza. Lou Andreas-Salomé muestra el revés de la trama de la creación, el riesgo vital que supone encontrar al poeta en cada uno de nosotros y, a la vez, el poder salvador que entraña. En un mundo que enfrenta el peligro –ya vaticinado por Nietzsche– de que los sentimientos se vean aplastados por la razón, Rilke se revela aquí como el poeta que aceptó ese desafío, que él mismo vivió en una dramática lucha cuerpo-alma.

An analysis of Rilke's Gedichte an die Nacht and the influence of this collection on his most outstanding work, the Duinese Elegien.

Illuminates the major aspects of the works of Germany's greatest 20th-century poet. Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) is the best-known German poet of his generation and is widely appreciated today by readers in Europe, the United States, and world-wide. Because of the inventiveness and musicality of his poetic language and the visionary intuition of his thinking, Rilke's influence extends well beyond poetry to include religion, philosophy, the social sciences, and the arts. His works have been widely translated into English, and new enderings of such poem cycles as The Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus appear frequently. Critics regard Rilke's Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge as a seminal modern novel. The Companion to Rilke provides essential, up-to-date essays by top Rilke scholars on a wide range of the major aspects of Rilke's life and works. The volume follows the chronology of Rilke's career, emphasizing those works that have met with the greatest critical interest. Among the topics covered are: Rilke's life and thought; the writings before 1902; Das Stunden-Buch and Das Buch der Bilder; the Neue Gedichte, The Cornet and other brief narratives; Malte Laurids Brigge; The Duino Elegies; The Sonnets to Orpheus; Rilke as a poet in French; Rilke and the visual arts. Erika and Michael Metzger (SUNY Buffalo) have written extensively on various aspects ofGerman literature and have edited significant Baroque texts.

The letters Rilke wrote during the war and postwar years are of particular interest not only for whatever they may contain of the wisdom of the poet, the artist, and the humanitarian, but for their analysis of the intellectual and spiritual currents of the time. These letters give the account of Rilke's own state of mind and of his final approach to the threshold of his great works. They show the rapid change he underwent after his reaction to the first excitement of the war; how his dismay at the cruelty and confusion of war helped to render the poet in him speechless for many years; how he nevertheless characteristically held to his own fundamental views throughout war and revolution and in spite of everything retained his belief in the capacity of humanity to create for itself a better future.

Born in 1875, the German lyric poet Rainer Maria Rilke published his first collection of poems in 1898 and went on to become renowned for his delicate depiction of the workings of the human heart. These translations by M.D. Herter Norton offer Rilke's work to the English-speaking world in an accurate, sensitive, modern version.

This volume of Rilke's letters covers the years from the completion of The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge to Rilke's death in December 1926, nearly five years after he had written the Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus, his last major works. There are important letters here to Muzot, Lou Andreas-Salome, to Princess Marie of Thurn and Taxis Hohenlohe, and many others. The most significant of the Wartime Letters: 1914-1921 are also included. An Introduction briefly traces the development of Rilke's work during these years; the Notes provide the necessary framework of biographical details and point up significant references to the poetry.