Sonnets to Orpheus and Duino Elegies

By Rainer Maria Rilke

During three feverish weeks in 1922, Rainer Maria Rilke composed the 55 sonnets that constitute Sonnets to Orpheus. Inspired by the death of a friend's daughter, the poet felt that he was being compelled to write by the girl's ghost. At about the same time he also completed Duino Elegies, which he had begun ten years earlier. Intimately connected to the Sonnets in themes and sensibilities, the Elegies offer meditations on love, death, God, and life's meaning that express Rilke's irresolvable conflict between a longing for solitude and a painful loneliness.
Although his poetry was recognized and admired by leading European artists, the Austro-Bohemian poet was virtually unknown during his lifetime, achieving international acclaim only with these final masterpieces. This edition presents translations by Jessie Lemont, praised by London's Times Literary Supplement for their presentation of Rilke as "a writer of short individual lyrics, often of incomparable, impressionist vividness, plastic vitality and symbolic suggestiveness." 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Release date: Jan 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9780486846064

Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), born in Prague into a German-speaking family, is widely recognized as one of the world's great poets. While based in Paris, he traveled broadly until finally settling in Switzerland. Rilke's writings have deeply influenced countless readers, including major writers, the world over. His Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus count among the great achievements in world literature.

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DOVER THRIFT EDITIONS

GENERAL EDITOR: SUSAN L. RATTINER

EDITOR OF THIS VOLUME: JANET B. KOPITO

Copyright

Copyright © 2020 by Dover Publications, Inc.

All rights reserved.

Bibliographical Note

This Dover edition, first published in 2020, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published by The Fine Editions Press, New York, in 1945. A new introductory Note has been prepared specially for this edition.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Rilke, Rainer Maria, 1875–1926, author. | Lemont, Jessie, translator.

Title: Sonnets to Orpheus and Duino elegies / Rainer Maria Rilke; translated by Jessie Lemont.

Other titles: Sonnets to Orpheus and Duino elegies. Selections. English | Duino elegies

Description: Mineola, New York : Dover Publications, Inc., 2020. | Series: Dover thrift editions | This Dover edition, first published in 2020, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published by The Fine Editions Press, New York, in 1945. A new introductory note has been prepared specially for this edition. | Translated from the German. | Summary: Haunted by the death of a friend’s daughter, Rainer Maria Rilke spent three feverish weeks writing Sonnets to Orpheus. At around the same time, he completed The Duino Elegies, which offer meditations on love, death, God, and the meaning of life. Intimately connected in themes, these verses are regarded as the poet’s masterpieces and appear here in the acclaimed translations by Jessie Lemont— Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019030883 | ISBN 9780486838670 (paperback)

Classification: LCC PT2635.I65 S62 2020 | DDC 831/.8—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019030883

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Note

BORN ON DECEMBER 4, 1875, in Prague—then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire—to a middle-class family in the German-speaking minority of that city, Rilke was a sensitive and introspective child. René (later Rainer) Maria Rilke experienced the fracturing of his parents’ marriage in 1884. He remained with his father, who believed that his son would benefit from the discipline and rigors of a military school, where he was sent from 1886 to 1891. An illness led to Rilke’s withdrawal, and he later attended a trade school. Thereafter, he attended a business school and studied with private tutors, and his interest in writing grew into a serious pursuit. He published his first book of poetry in 1894: Life and Songs (Leben und Lieder). Rilke attended universities in Prague, Munich, and Berlin (1896–1899), immersing himself in the immensely appealing worlds of art and literature.

In 1897, Rilke met the worldly Lou Andreas-Salomé (it was she who suggested that he change his name from René to Rainer), an author and psychoanalyst who had studied with Freud. She was fifteen years his senior and was the wife of a university professor. Rilke and Salomé formed a close bond, and their relationship— accepted by her husband, with whom Rilke and Lou traveled to Italy—lasted until his death. Salomé was the daughter of a Russian general, and she and Rilke made two visits to Russia, in 1899 and 1900, where Rilke met Tolstoy and other writers, as well as painters. He wholeheartedly embraced Russian culture, as well as its language, which he attempted to learn.

From 1900 to 1902, Rilke lived at Worpswede, an artists’ colony in eastern Germany, where he met Clara Westhoff, a sculptor. They married in 1901, and their daughter, Ruth, was born later that year. The couple lived apart for most of the time, while maintaining a cordial relationship. Rilke relocated to Paris in 1902 in order to write about the sculptor Auguste Rodin (Clara joined him there—she had studied with Rodin). He recounted some of his experiences in Paris—a city for which he had conflicted feelings—in novelistic form in The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, published in 1910.

Toward the end of his life, Rilke wrote most of his poetry in French, influenced by Paul Valéry, whose work he translated into German. Rilke’s final years were difficult, as he had developed leukemia, which led to frequent hospitalizations. Rainer Maria Rilke died in 1926, at the age of fifty-one, at his chateau in Switzerland.

A major development occurred in Rilke’s writing when he was invited by Princess Marie of Thurn und Taxis to stay as her guest at her castle in Duino, near Trieste, Italy. It was here, in 1912, that Rilke began his major poetic work, Duino Elegies, which he dedicated to the princess. He did not complete the collection until ten years later, and it was published in 1923. In Duino Elegies, Rilke addresses death (How strange to live on the earth no longer, First Elegy); love (But you, in whom the ecstasy of one in the other/is ever growing stronger, Second Elegy); the burden of the awareness of death on humans, unlike animals (We alone see death, Eighth Elegy); and the search for meaning in life (And so we press on, striving toward attainment," Ninth Elegy). Rilke began another significant work, his Sonnets to Orpheus, in 1922. Moved by the death of his daughter’s friend, Wera Knoop, at the age of nineteen, he dedicated the

Reviews for Sonnets to Orpheus and Duino Elegies

[stillatim · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Probably the most infuriating book of poetry I've ever read, perhaps will ever read. The highs and lows are so dizzyingly high and so mind-numbingly, banally low that I couldn't always keep pace. The first and tenth elegies were high, the other elegies interesting and beautiful, if you can stomach the whole whiney little boy thing he falls into occasionally, and his affection for idiot-metaphysics ('Sein Aufgang ist Dasein' and so forth). Many of the sonnets, however, are appalling. Once Rilke ditches the generally critical stance of the elegies (complaints on injustice, suffering etc...) the idiot-metaphysics becomes overwhelming:

"Be - and at the same time know the implication of non-being...
to nature's whole supply of speechless, dumb,
and also used up things, the unspeakable sums,
rejoicing, add yourself and nullify the count."

Not to say there aren't great sonnets in there too, but my overall impression was one of disgust at this wonderful poet - what's more human than poetry? - wanting to become an object, thrilling in a mysticism of death. Add this to the apparent desire for a god to save us from the injustice and suffering so perfectly evoked in the elegies (uh... couldn't we save ourselves?), and my brain explodes. Because the whole thing is so beautiful, and at once so horrible, that there's nothing else for my brain to do.

[poetontheone · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Rilke, in this comprehensive translation of two major works, crafts powerful yet elegant poetic odes to the majesty of the human experience and its relationship to the external world. A realm in which the human being exists in quandary and struggle. The translation is quite readable and often beautiful, but sometimes a little uneven. I would like to compare it to other translations.

[chellerystick · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Obviously we should all read all of Rilke's poems... but the Sonnets to Orpheus would be the second work I would buy, right after the Book of Hours. I like having the parallel translations--I can sound out just enough German to appreciate some of the sonic work.

[arctic1stranger · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

For my taste this is not the best translation, but I do like certain parts. These are two of Rilke's major works (The third being the Book of Hours). I would not use this as my primary translation, but if you are looking for a second copy, this is more than adequate.