Sonnets to Orpheus and Duino Elegies
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Rainer Maria Rilke
Rainer Maria Rilke was born in Prague in 1875 and traveled throughout Europe for much of his adult life, returning frequently to Paris. There he came under the influence of the sculptor Auguste Rodin and produced much of his finest verse, most notably the two volumes of New Poems as well as the great modernist novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Among his other books of poems are The Book of Images and The Book of Hours. He lived the last years of his life in Switzerland, where he completed his two poetic masterworks, the Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus. He died of leukemia in December 1926.
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Reviews for Sonnets to Orpheus and Duino Elegies
92 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Obviously 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.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rilke, 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.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5For 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.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Probably 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.
Book preview
Sonnets to Orpheus and Duino Elegies - Rainer Maria Rilke
SONNETS TO ORPHEUS AND DUINO ELEGIES
By RAINER MARIA RILKE
Translated by JESSIE LEMONT
Sonnets to Orpheus and Duino Elegies
By Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated By Jessie Lemont
Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-6350-2
eBook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-6351-9
This edition copyright © 2019. Digireads.com Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Cover Image: a detail of Orpheus and Eurydice
, c. 1910 (oil on canvas), by Maurice Denis (1870-1943) / Minneapolis Institute of Arts, MN, USA / The Putnam Dana McMillan Fund / Bridgeman Images.
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CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
SONNETS TO ORPHEUS
FIRST PART
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
XXV
XXVI
SECOND PART
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
XXV
XXVI
XXVII
XXVIII
XXIX
DUINO ELEGIES
FIRST ELEGY
SECOND ELEGY
THIRD ELEGY
FOURTH ELEGY
FIFTH ELEGY
SIXTH ELEGY
SEVENTH ELEGY
EIGHTH ELEGY
NINTH ELEGY
TENTH ELEGY
FROM THE BOOK OF HOURS
(Translated by Jessie Lemont)
Extinguish my eyes, I still can see you.
Close my ears, I can hear your footsteps fall.
And without feet I still can follow you,
And without voice I still can to you call.
Break off my arms, and I can embrace you,
Enfold you with my heart as with a hand.
Hold my heart, my brain will take fire of you
As flax ignites from a lit fire-brand—
And flame will sweep in a swift rushing flood
Through all the singing currents of my blood.
Rainer Maria Rilke
INTRODUCTION
A translation is a window artfully made to conceal itself and so more clearly reveal what lies beyond. Even the most up-to-date window may be expected to have some slight frame, thereby affording a decent line of demarcation between a world about us, for the moment alien to our interests, and the view through the window. The following words of introduction are, then, a slender frame to give becoming setting for the radiant world, the jewelled splendor, which this small book reveals.
Rainer Maria Rilke is universally acknowledged as one of the most inspired poetic minds of the last half century. Within those particular realms which he chose for his own he reigns in a serene and undisputed supremacy over his contemporaries. He was a far voyager. As a young man he left his own fatherland, then Austria, now Czechoslovakia, to reside in all parts of Europe, especially in Italy, Spain, Russia, Scandinavia, England, and longest in Paris, in which city he was for many years secretary to Auguste Rodin. His insatiable quest of wisdom and of art led him also into many and far fields of history, acquainting him with the myths and poetry of Europe, Egypt, and the East. As art critic, inspired thinker, and lyric poet he has had few peers. Within the last quarter of a century his works have become so well known in all continents as to be many times translated into the chief languages. The more spacious and sociologically significant domains of literature, such as drama or epic narrative, to be sure, he neglected in favor of his lyric art. But this art he perfected in a wide range from relatively simple songs to the most highly wrought metaphysical verse. Many of his clearest, simplest and most attractive lyrics belong to his earlier years, when life held for him and for the world less acute perplexities than after the first decade of our own tempestuous century. Whether his poetry materially improved with years doubtless remains a matter of taste and therefore disputable; certainly his art became steadily more enriched, complex, and philosophical. Those of his poems to which the epithet profound
is most commonly applied are represented by the present volume, containing the most successful of his metaphysical and meditative verses, his Sonnets to Orpheus and Duino Elegies. In them the poet in Rilke happily meets the seer; lyric power is never sacrificed to reflective power nor thoughts to lyricism; both are found in perfect ripeness and harmony.
The two sequences of poems are so intimately associated in art and doctrine as very properly to constitute one volume, Rilke’s final testament as a major philosophical poet and seriously inspired singer. However difficult these works may be, they are in no sense products of eccentricity, nor of morbidity. They cannot be likened to the