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.

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

"The Book of hours, written in three bursts between 1899-1903, is Rilke's most formative work, covering a crucial period in his rapid ascent from fin-de-siecle epigone to distinctive modern voice. The poems are crucial documents of Rilke's development, from his tour around Russia with Lou Andreas-Salome, through his hasty marriage to Clara Westhoff in the artists' community of Worpswede, to his turn toward the urban modernity of Paris. Rilke assumes the persona of an artist-monk undertaking the Romantics' journey into the self, speaking to God as part transcendent deity, part needy neighbor. Echoes of his juvenile style persist, yet by the end of the book the influence of the sculptor Rodin is discernible in the distinctive idiom of urbanity, in the terminology of "things," and in Rilke's turn to the everyday world around him."--Jacket flap.

Explores the biographical and textual evidence of Russia's importance in shaping the writer Rainer Maria Rilke's aesthetic perception. During Rilke's two trips to Russia at the turn the century, he made connections with a number of important artists, including Leo Tolstoy and Nikolai Leskov, and the author traces the impact of these meetings and other experiences in Russia upon Rilke's writing. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

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.

In 1923, the twenty-seven-year-old Paul Hindemith published a composition for voice and piano, entitled Das Marienleben, based on Rainer Maria Rilke's poetic cycle of 1912. Twenty-five years later, the composer presented a thoroughly revised, partially rewritten version. The outcome of this revision has been highly controversial. Ever since its first publication, musicologists have argued for or against the value of such a decisive rewriting. They do so both by comparing the two compositions on purely musical grounds, and by attempting to assess whether the more strictly organized tonal layout and dynamic structuring of Marienleben II is more or less appropriate for the topic of a poetic cycle on the Life of Mary. This study is the first to analyze the messages conveyed in the two versions with an emphasis on their implicit aesthetic, philosophical, and spiritual significance. Acknowledging the compositions as examples of musical ekphrasis ("a representation in one artistic medium of a message originally composed in another medium"), the author argues in exhaustive detail that the young Hindemith of 1922-23 and the mature composer of 1941-48 can be seen as setting two somewhat different poetic cycles. This volume is of interest for musicologists and music lovers, scholars of German literature and lovers of Rilke's poetry, as well as for readers interested in the interartistic relationships of music and literature.

A look at neglected aspects of the early career of one of the premier poets of the German language.

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