Rainer Maria Rilke
Selected
Poems
Selected
Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke
- Translated by Robert Bly
Rainer
Maria Rilke (also
Rainer Maria von Rilke) (1875 – 1926) is considered one
of the German language's greatest 20th century poets.
His
haunting images focus on the difficulty of communion with
the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound
anxiety — themes that tend to position him as a transitional
figure between the traditional and the modernist poets.
He
wrote in both verse and a highly lyrical prose. His two most
famous verse sequences are the Sonnets to Orpheus and
the Duino Elegies; his two most famous prose works
are the Letters to a Young Poet and the semi-autobiographical
The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. He also wrote
more than 400 poems in French, dedicated to his homeland of
choice, the canton of Valais in Switzerland.
Rilke
had believed that his death would be from blood poisoning
as the result of having been pricked by a rose thorn. He chose
his own epitaph as:
Rose,
oh reiner Widerspruch, Lust,
Niemandes Schlaf zu sein unter soviel
Lidern. |
|
Rose,
oh pure contradiction, joy
of being No-one's sleep, under so
many lids. |
The
Cocteau Twins song Rilkean Heart, on the 1996 album
Milk and Kisses, is an homage to Tim’s son Jeff
Buckley, who was a lifelong lover of Rilke's work.
Source
- Wikipedia
|
