Product Description
"This miracle of a book, perhaps the most beautiful group of poetic translations this century has ever produced," (Chicago Tribune) should stand as the definitive English language version.Amazon.com Review
Stephen Mitchell offers what are perhaps the most masterful andintimate translations of Rainer Maria Rilke's poetry to date, infusing itwith all the power, eloquence, rhythm and lightness of its originalvoice. Includes the Duino Elegies and The Sonnets toOrpheus. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (22)

A lovely collection
Stephen Mitchell is by far the best translator of Rilke I've come across. And the selections are so good. Whenever I read Rilke I'm filled with a very bittersweet pleasure. I cannot recommend him enough.

I love this translation
Who couldn't love Rilke's writing? It's about life and the perplexities in it. It's about the little things and the big. Every now and then we all need somebody who has been there and done that to tell us it is normal to question and wonder - that is what these poems do for me.

brilliant
Ethereal and beautiful writing.Rilke deserves his reputation as a premier German poet.The translation is good too.

Mitchell's translations take great liberties
Mitchell's translations are sometimes quite unfaithful to Rilke, and some of his renderings clumsy--even if the poem had been his own English-language creation. However, in some cases, he significantly alters the meanings of lines. A good example of this is in Rilke's famous "Der Schwan" in which Mitchell renders "draws back past him in streams on either side" from "unter ihm zurückziehn, Flut um Flut." "Wave by wave" becomes "on either side" and "beyond him" becomes "past him." The distortions in other places go beyond the aesthetic to alter the content of Rilke's poem, as in the final line of "Der Panther," which Mitchel renders "plunges into the heart and is gone" instead of something like "plunges into his heart to be." "To be," to remain, to exist, is a heckuvaways from "gone." I think Mitchell's translations are a shame, given that it can be so difficult to find bilingual editions. In this case, I'd recommend at least comparing this volume to Hofman's Twentieth Century German Poetry before purchasing. Certainly if you have no German, you'd want accurate translations.

The angel of the word!
Rainer Maria Rilke' s exquisite stylistic sobriety and his thought'sdeepnessmakes of him one of the most absorbing and interesting poets of the second half of the XIX Century. His febrile style contrasts with the delicacy of his verses, loaded of penetrating vision and prolific display of visual images that conveys us with the mythic roots.

The words in Rilke'spoetic have major expression, density and expression; a strong expansiveness and excel significance.

His reading is an absolute must for any hard reader I any corner of the world.
... Read more

Product Description
“You have to live life to the limit, not according to each day but by plumbing its depth.”
–RAINER MARIA RILKE

In this treasury of uncommon wisdom and spiritual insight, the best writings and personal philosophies of one of the twentieth century’s greatest poets, Rainer Maria Rilke, are gleaned by Ulrich Baer from thousands of pages of never-before translated correspondence.

The result is a profound vision of how the human drive to create and understand can guide us in every facet of life. Arranged by theme–from everyday existence with others to the exhilarations of love and the experience of loss, from dealing with adversity to the nature of inspiration, here are Rilke’s thoughts on how to live life in a meaningful way:

Life and Living: “How good life is. How fair, how incorruptible, how impossible to deceive: not even by strength, not even by willpower, and not even by courage. How everything remains what it is and has only this choice: to come true, or to exaggerate and push too far.”

Art: “The work of art is adjustment, balance, reassurance. It can be neither gloomy nor full of rosy hopes, for its essence consists of justice.”

Faith: “I personally feel a greater affinity to all those religions in which the middleman is less essential or almost entirely suppressed.”

Love: “To be loved means to be ablaze. To love is: to shine with inexhaustible oil. To be loved is to pass away; to love is to last.”

Intimate, stylistically masterful, brilliantly translated, and brimming with the wonder and passion of Rilke, The Poet’s Guide to Life is comparable to the best works of wisdom in all of literature and a perfect book for all occasions. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The greatest Poet
This is beautifully put together and translated by a man that knew where Rilke was going with his poetry and prose.

"It is possible to love to such an extent that the shortcomings of one's beloved begin to appear touching , even wonderful, ...
This is a profound and beautiful book. Ulrich Baer, editor and translator of the volume has gone through the more than seven- thousand letters Rilke wrote in his lifetime and selected those he felt had the most to say about living and loving in the world. He orders the letters into sections which begin with his title and are followed by a line from Rilke.

1) On LIfe and Living You have to live life to the limit
2) On Being with othersTo be a Part, that is Fulfillment for us
3)On Work: Get up Cheerfully on Days You have to Work
4) On Difficulty and Adversity The Measure by which we may know our Strength
5)On Childhood and Education;This Joy in Daily Discovery
6) On Nature It Knows Nothing of Us
7)On Solitude The Lonest People Above all Contribute Most to Commonality
8)On Illness and Recovery Pain Tolerates No Interpretation
9)On Loss, Dying and Death Even Time Does not 'Console' It puts things in Place and creates Order
10) OnLanguage That Vast, Humming and Swinging Syntax
11)On Art Art Presents Itself as a Way of Life
12) On Faith ADirection of the Heart
13) On Goodness and Morality Nothing Good, Once it Has Come into Existence May be Suppressed
14) On Love There is no Force in the World but Love

In his rich repetitive introduction to the volume Baer discusses the special place letter-writing had in Rilke's life and work. Rilke in his letters has a spontaneity and poetic freedom beyond that in his very disciplined and exacting poems. But of course the themes of both forms of writing are common ones, and the letters a source of ideas and inspirations for the Poetry. What distinguishes the Letters from another form Rilke used to great advantage ' the Diary' is the consciousness of the 'you' at the other end.
Baer suggests one particular strength of Rilke's writing in the Letters is his nuanced awareness of the person at the other end, and his ability to reach out and feel and know how to express a message which will resonate in the heart of the recipient.
Baer gives a picture of Rilke the legendary Poet- waiting for the fruit to ripen ,as most notably in the great period in which he suddenly in weeks time wrote the 'Duino Elegies' and 'Sonnets to Orpheus'- in contrast tothe daily workman letter-writing Rilke. Baer underlines that Rilke expresses in the letters his own rare and special vision of life, one which conjoinsthe everyday with the cosmic, which feels in the rhythms of rhyme our inner rhythm of biology and mind, which senses in its internalization of the worlds objects a fullness of being and lived life. Baer presents the picture of a poet of holy immanence whose idea of the aesthetic is not in the pretty only, but who forges and finds beauty in the ugly aspects of reality also.
Baer also tells the not always admirable tale of Rilke's personal life, the marriage to Clara Westhoff, the birth of their sole daughter Ruth, Rilke's abandonment of them, his seeking out his own fate but not without his fawning at aristocratic patrons, his love of love but often cruel abandonment of those loved, his loyalty to his own faith and vocation as poet, his apprentice- admiring relationship with Rodin and wisdom in being free of it, his great fame. And what is in a way most touching his keeping in touch through the letters as he deepened into a solitude which for him was far more blessing than curse.
It seems there now is a fashion started perhaps by Alain de Botton with his volume on Proust, of selecting out from the total work of great literary creators passages best encapsulating their wisdom and vision of life.
Many of the statements of this volume may seem exaggerated and in need of qualification. Yet even these statements are richly poetically suggestive. The work of a great poet for whom ripeness is within, and richness in feeling infuses all.

" The strings of sorrow may only be used extensively if one vows to play on them also at a later point and in their particular key all of the joyousness that accumulates behind everything that is difficult, painful and that we had to suffer, and without which the voices are not complete."

"I believe that one is never more just than at those moments when one admires unreservedly and with absolute devotion. It is in this spirit of unchecked admiration that the few great individuals whom our time was unable to stifle ought to be presented, precisely because ourage has become so very good at assuming a critical stance."

"After all, life is not even close to being as logically consistent as our worries; it has many moreunexpected ideas and faces than we do."

... Read more

Customer Reviews (13)

5 stars for the original poetry, 1 star for the translations
Rilke is just about my favourite poet... a true master.In the German, his verse is just sublime.

These translations, however, are shockingly bad.Not only does the translator completely ignore (or distort) some of the key images, he invents new ones for no apparent reason. Mitchell seems to think he is there to improve on the original.He doesn't.

If you don't read German, you should only buy this to read Mitchell's verse.You won't be getting Rilke's.

Lush,Alive and Vivid Addition to Your Rilke Collection
I am a passionate, ardent admirer of Rilke so
before I even opened this book I knew I would
be delighted because of its sheer weight and size.

Oh, YES! I thought to myself.

And then I opened it - and the very first selection
is Rilke's evocative poem, "I live my life in
Widening Circles" with the German on one page
and the English on the facing page.

I don't even speak German - but I love looking
at Rilke's original words - just LOOKING at them
elevates me. I also think that the side-by-side
translation says something of translater Stephen
Mitchell's love for the original.

I also enjoyed the Selected Prose. In reading it
I felt like I was stepping into Rilke's den for
a chat and either strong coffee or a cocktail.

This would be an excellent introduction to Rilke
or a fine compliment to anyone's Rilke Library.

poetry from the soul
I recently discovered Rilke, and am much the better for it - his craft with words literally gives one goosebumps.The poetry portion of _Ahead of All Parting_ is dual language, so readers of German can enjoy the original as well as Mitchell's translations.The book also contains copious notes about many of the poems (when they were written, what was going on in Rilke's life) as well as a section of his published and unpublished prose, which I found almost as vivid and beautiful as his poetry.The book itself is also physically beautiful - the pages are delicate, further adding to the sensusousness of the reading experience.

eloquent and thought provoking
ahead of all parting is a book that i treasure above all others. after reading a friends copy, i immediately ran to the bookstore that same night, and paid full price for it. something i rarely do, by the way. rilke is one of the most eloquent and beautiful writers that i know of. his poetry is some of the most thought provoking and uplifting that i have ever read. he saw things and felt things differently than the average person, and in turn used that to build his poetry and prose. mitchell is the best english translator for rilke's work, it's not perfect, but it's not bad. i have nothing but praise for rainer maria rilke. for all poetry lovers out there, i definately recommend you pick up a copy of this book, you will not regret it.

Suspicious Translation
The three stars I give this book are more for Rilke than for his rather poor translator.

I first became suspicious of Stephen Mitchell when I noticed some rather careless mistakes in this book (for instance, translating the German word for Moon into sun).

But I was no longer suprised by these flaws when I noticed some other works that Mitchell has translated:
the Bhagavad-Gita
The Book of Job
The Gospel
The Tao-Te-Ching

I suppose it is theoretically possible for there to exist an individual that is so immensely talented with languages that he is capable of translating adequately texts from Sanskrit, Hebrew, Ancient Greek, Classical Chinese, and German.... But I don't think Mitchell is that individual.

That being said, the poetics of the translation are very nice and the poems to feel pretty close to Rilke.However, to do this (whom I consider the most profound poet to ever take up a pen) author justice, I am just going to have to learn German for myself ... Read more

Product Description
Originallly published as four clothbound editions (The Roses and The Windows, The Astonishment of Origins, Orchards, and The Migration of Powers), this large paperback brings together all of Rilke's French poems, as well as his hitherto unpublished Dedications and Fragments, in an exquisite English translation by A. Poulin, Jr.

Before Poulin's important efforts, it wasn't widely known that Rilke—often deemed one of modernity's finest writers for his work in German—also wrote over 400 poems in French. These lyrics were composed toward the end of Rilke's life, after he had produced his masterworks, The Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus. Yet the French poems are entirely of a piece with Rilke's characteristic themes, subjects, moods, and images. As Poulin notes in his Preface: "The French lyrics [are] small poems of careful attentiveness to the things of this world [and] to the elusive states of being in which the world is poetically transformed."
... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Rilke's French poems
Exquisite translations by A. Poulin. A lovely bilingual edition with Poulin's enlightening introduction.

Some compelling poems, but not Rilke's best
Rilke's French Poems suffice if you are a Rilke admirer and are craving more Rilke knowing that nothing he wrote will match The Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus.Like his other poems, they are a definite step down, partially mundane, yet with flashes of mystical insight that spur me to read on.

Very good introduction that speaks to some of the translation issues.The original French is fortunately on the left side of the page and makes for a nice contrast.I don't read French, but I know enough about Indo-European langauges to roughly sound it out, and there are beautiful rhymes galore.In fact, it appears that nearly all of the French rhymes, whereas hardly any English does.Yet knowing that they rhyme in French adds a little more sparkle to the English.

French was Rilke's second language, and as he was not as proficient as in German, something is sacrificed.I recall in the introduction, which makes sense, that writing poems in French were comparable to Rilke starting over and therefore echo his early German poems.

The Rose Poems stand out, breathtaking on account of their consistent return to the word and image of the rose, as do some other short poems conveying meditations on a certain thing, such as a window.The dedications and fragments at the end, which wonderfully complete the addition, do not add much noteworthy.

I wish that I read French, and would recommend these poems to anyone who does, or is learning.For those not acquanited with Rilke's other works, there are better places to start.For those familiar with his earlier works, this is comparable and the definitive French collection to have.

Support local bookstores if you can.

French Poetry by a German Poet
This book contains very different work from Rilke's German poetry, decidedly French in nature, with ephemeral images and nuanced depictions of the poetic scenes of life.Many of the poems also are constructed with an amazing sense of the meter and scan of the French language and with an extremely precise rhyme of French vowels. The reader of this edition will see an entirely different side to Rilke.

By sheer dint of prayer, I knew bread
I first read this book when I was eighteen years old, a starving Bohemian (more or less), and at a crossroads in my life.

Years later, I still turn to it, and it sits on my bookshelf, in front of me as I write this review.

If you thought you knew roses before - you may find out, after readingRilke's French poetry - that you haven't known roses at all.One poem inparticular that has followed me through the years has the words: "Bysheer dint of prayer, I knew bread."

By sheer dint of this book ofverse, you may know roses. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (5)

selected poems
I have so many big books, I was expecting this one to have many more poems than it does. Rilke wrote a tremendous number of poems, and this certainly has some of the best ones, but I was looking forward to the opportunity to wallow in all that I already knew with much more to explore as an aside. Now that I am retired, I have way too much time on my hands to evaluate products within a frame of reference that imagines some limits on all that a single person might find useful within a single lifetime. I have lived with poems from Rilke for many years. I don't know the German, but can accept getting just a single poem on each set of two pages. I looked for something that I had difficulty understanding in the 20 German Poets translated by Walter Kaufmann and don't find what Kaufmann described as a dedication of 1924: Fur Helmuth Freiherrn Lucius Von Stoedten in this book. Everything that is more venturous than even life itself is hardly appreciated by everybody. I'm probably lucky the poem before it in 20 German Poets is on page 575 to tell everybody: For in you the god is waiting to consult. Walter Kaufmann, when faced with the same span of contradictions, wrote: For the god requires helpful counsel from the man.

Awaiting paperback...
So very happy to stumble upon this edition while browsing through a bookstore but, alas, when I discovered the PRICE just could not (quite) bring myself to purchase it...It is a shame that the publisher is asking so much for this book. Listen to the previous reviews-the binding/paper quality,etc. are NOT well constructed. The poetry/translations,surely, are. Wait for the paperback. Pay less for a book that will not stand the test of time (in construction) but will (in regard to its content.)Thanks go to Mr. Snow, with my apologies...

The Poetry of Rilke by Edward Snow
I have found Edward Snow's translations to be by far the best with respect to poetic translations, certainly a much more difficult endeavor than merely producing a linguistic translation. Having been able to read Rilke alongside a native German, we both agree that Snow captures the essence of the poetry with his translations. I am very pleased with this new collection and once through it will compare it to Snow's earlier translations since it is mentioned in the forward that he has redone some of his earlier work, notably on the Elegies.

As for the quality of the book, two things I would suggest to those who denigrate this volume. First, the publishing industry isn't what it once was, and with the advent of electronic media it is becoming increasingly more expensive to produce quality books, even in paperback format. I recall a time when a hardback book of this size would have cost only $10 or $20. Therefore caveat emptor, you pays your nickle, you takes your chances. Second, to use the oft quoted adage, one should not judge a book by its cover. I personally buy books for their content, not the binding. Lovers of good poetry will want to add this volume to their collections whether in hard or paperback editions.

Wait for the paperback...
I agree with Mr. Horne's review of the quality of this book. The boards are cheap and thin, with no cloth. The paper is thin and cheap enough to yellow as quickly as a paperback. The cut of paper on the top of my book is uneven (though this is, most likely, a flaw peculiar to my copy).

Snow's translations of Rilke are some of the best. It's a shame that North Point Press brought them out in such a shoddy edition. Users that don't own Snow's previous translations might find this a great single volume for Rilke. However, they would be advised to wait for the paperback, due to the poor quality of this pressing. Or, if interested in hardbacks, they might want to purchase the individual originals, second hand.Though the translations of the Elegies are nearly recomposed in this volume, I can hardly think that Snow would discredit his earlier versions of the Elegies (or any of his other complete translations of Rilke's books of poetry).

The Poetry of Rilke, Trans. & Edted by Edwrd Snow
This review addresses the actual book.Given the competition from electronic books, the internet, free downloads, paperbacks, you'd think publishers of VERY EXPENSIVE hardcover editions would go all out to produce a beautiful edition. Instead, they give you cheap cardboard covers that will dim in a year, paper that turns brown in two, and bindings that begin to crack in three. Oh, and they charge you $50 for one book. I am very disappointed that Northpoint Press could not have produced a beautiful volume that I would treasure rather than a cheap edition, cheaper than the old book club editions of yesteryear, that will deteriorate.Where is their pride?And how can they compete?My volume from another publisher of Ginsberg's collected poems is already filled with brown pages.

I have both Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus and the Duino Elegies from the same publisher and the binding is at one-third cloth.

All I can say to publishers is--if you want me to spend fifty bucks, then I expect a quality edition or I will eschew buying further volumes.I am sure I'm not the only reader who feels this way.Remember, ONE VOICE SPEAKS FOR TEN THOUSAND! ... Read more

Product Description
Every page is stamped with Rilke's characteristic grace, and the book is free of the breathless effect that occasionally mars his poetry. His ideas on gender and the role of the artist are also surprisingly prescient. And even his retrograde comment on the "beauty of the virgin" (which the poet derives from the fact that she "has not yet achieved anything") is counterbalanced by his perception that "the sexes are more related than we think." Those looking for an alluring image of the solitary artist--and for an astonishing quotient of wisdom--will find both in Letters to a Young Poet.Amazon.com Review
It would take a deeply cynical heart not to fall in love with Rainer MariaRilke's Letters to a Young Poet. At the end of this millennium, hisslender book holds everything a student of the century could want: theunedited thoughts of (arguably) the most important European poet of themodern age. Rilke wrote these 10 sweepingly emotional letters in 1903,addressing a former student of one of his own teachers. The recipient waswise enough to omit his own inquiries from the finished product, whichmeans that we get a marvelously undiluted dose of Rilkean aesthetics andexhortation.

The poet prefaced each letter with an evocative notation of the city inwhich he wrote, including Paris, Rome, and the outskirts of Pisa. Yet hespends most of the time encouraging the student in his own work, deliveringa sublime, one-on-one equivalent of the modern writing workshop:

Go into yourself and test the deeps in which your life takes rise; at itssource you will find the answer to the question whether you mustcreate. Accept it, just as it sounds, without inquiring into it. Perhaps itwill turn out that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destinyupon yourself and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without everasking what recompense might come from outside.

Customer Reviews (67)

Lowest Price, Perfect Condition
Very solid!I picked the cheapest book, hoping that the seller was honest in the description (great condition)and it's absolutely perfect.Not a single mark or bend.

Background on This Translation
Rilke's letters to Franz Kappus were written between 1903 and 1908.They were first published in German in 1929.In 1934 H. D. Herter Norton produced the first English translation (revised by her in 1954).The second English translation that I know of was done by Reginald Snell in 1945 and published in London by Sidgwick and Jackson.The edition being offered here is the Snell translation--only his name and the original publication data have been stripped from the book.(Other than that, the book is essentially a photocopy of the 1945 edition.)

The publisher here is "BN Publishing" which I assume means "Barnes & Noble" (although the "about us" link on their website says almost nothing about them!).

The Snell translation seems to me quite adequate.Here is a sample of one sentence done by three translators:

"And this more human love...will resemble that which we are preparing with struggle and toil, the love that consists in this, that two solitudes protect and border and salute each other." -- H. D. Herter Norton (1934)

"And this more human love...will be something like that which we are preparing with struggle and toil, the love which consists in the mutual guarding, bordering and saluting of two solitudes." -- Reginald Snell (1945)

"And this more human love... will resemble what we are now preparing painfully and with great struggle: the love that consists in this: that two solitudes protect and border and greet each other." -- Stephen Mitchell (1984)

Of these three, the Norton seems to me to have the best cadence, but beyond that Rilke's sense is present in all.

One does wonder, however, why BN Publishing felt free to erase this book's origins.

One other oddity to note:If you click on "see inside this book," Amazon shows you the Stephen Mitchell edition, not the Snell edition, giving this rather confusing explanation:"This view is of the Mass Market Paperback edition (1986) from Vintage. The Paperback edition(2009) from BN Publishing that you originally viewed is the one you'll receive if you click the Add to Cart button at left."

Beautiful writing, beautiful translation, some unanswered questions
This is a great book for any writer, any artist, any human being confronting the mystery of their existence.I have taken great comfort and consolation from reading Letters to a Young Poet at two different times in life.I have recently enjoyed Stephen Mitchell's translation,but I had a number of questions that went unanswered by Mitchell.

1) Whatever happened to Franz Kappus later in life?The last letter mentions him at a military post, and I know of no poems written by him later in life.I surmise that he went down into his soul, like Rilke told him to, and answered the question "Must I write?" with a "No."

2) How come Rilke made such a big deal about Jens Peter Jacobsen, when very few people are even aware of him today?

3) Why wasn't "The Lay of the Love and the Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke" included in the book?On further review, I discovered that it was a book in its own right, but I didn't get that from Mitchell's footnote to Rilke's letter.

4) Why does Mitchell frequently capitalize "Things" in the letters?Was Rilke using a technical term?Did Rilke capitalize the equivalent word?I found this to be a mystery.

5) Why wasn't Kappus's sonnet, which Rilke copied in his own hand, included in the text?Mitchell mentioned in a footnote that it was available in the original German, but omitted in the translation.But why?Was it a lousy sonnet?Is it tradition to omit this poem?The other translation I read also omitted the sonnet.

Perhaps Mitchell's translation has awakened a hunger in me for a more scholarly version of this great work.But this book will do very nicely for anyone reading it for the first time.

Should be in every poet/writer's library
Must have, the awe inspiring.. and down to earth..
and awesome story... of an inspiring writer..
a must read, and need to be in your own personal library.
Martha Smith

Fantastic classic
I jump to Rilke's 'Letter's to a Young Poet' whenever in need for artistic thresholding. His words go beyond the print everytime. Have already highlighted the hell out of some passages. A+ seller and read. ... Read more

Product Description
The Everyman's Library Pocket Poets hardcover series is popular for its compact size and reasonable price which does not compromise content. Poems: Rilke contains poems from The Book of Images; New Poems; Requiem for a Friend; Poems, 1906-1926; French Poems; The Life of Mary; Sonnets to Orpheus; The Duino Elegies; Letters to a Young Poet; and an index of first lines. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Small packaging of great poetry...
This small book packs a wonderful selection of Rilke's poetry...
I have had the book for many years and revisit it frequently; it is a great gift to friends, providing an excellent introduction to Rilke's poetry...

Much has been written on the particular challenges of translating Rilke; from capturing the subtle flows and associations of his poetry, to rendering it accessible, to interpreting its many meanings accurately.This translation provides one of the finest capture of Rilke's poetry. It is very vivid, pleasant to read and often sheds light on difficult parts, retaining the multiple meanings of the original. I particularly like the translation of the Duino Elegies, my all-time favorite poems; indeed, I compared this translation line by line with several others and feel its interpretation of the Elegies is most illuminating.

A small elegant selection
The 'Everyman' volumes provide a selection of the poet's work. Small and elegant editions which perhaps especially with Rilke give the kind of feeling the poet would like one to have i.e. of having a precious object in one's hand. But this is for sampling and tasting. To know to really know a poet like Rilke one should take the greatest work, 'Duino Elegies' 'Sonnets to Orpheus' and read them as a whole.
Yet this edition gives a real 'feeling' of what the poet is, and will provide the reader a sense of whether they wish to go deeper in exploration of the poet's world. ... Read more

Product Description
Now substantially revised by Edward Snow, whom Denise Levertov once called "far and away Rilke's best translator," this bilingual edition of The Book of Images contains a number of the great poet's previously untranslated pieces. Also included are several of Rilke's best-loved lyrics, such as "Autumn," "Childhood," "Lament," "Evening," and "Entrance."
... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Edward Snow's work superb
Any reader (or writer) of translation work knows the inherent difficulties--translation is often something like palimpsest or erasure, the voice of the translator becoming too loud or possibly too literal. There is no such thing as a one to one ratio in translation. What Snow's recent work with Book of Images (and I recommend his other Rilke translations, Sonnets to Orpheus, Duino Elegies) demonstrates is a labor of love: it is almost as if he has acquired Cocteau's radio from Orphée and used it to channel Rilke; I simply have not come across any more appealing translations of Rilke than his. The bilingual edition is important, and I wish all translations would do this (though I understand it can be expensive): the en face provides one the original text as well as the translated, so there exists not only a visual representation of the poetic object, but also enables anyone with a bit of knowledge of the foreign language a way in.

This is a beautiful work.

Marvelous
There is very little question that Rilke was the greatest German poet of the 20th century. The only question that remains is whether he was the greatest poet in any language. His brief, imaginative poems capture the essence of man in the modern period, alone, isolated, and without meaning.

Edward Snow has captured the grace and subtle imagery of Rilke in this altogether outstanding collection of poems, in large part because he is a great poet in his own right. Readers of Rilke will surely be familiar with a number of poems in this bilingual collection, such as Autumn:

"The leaves are falling, falling as if from far off,
as if the heavens distant gardens withered;
they fall with gestures that say "no."

And in the nights the heavy earth falls
From all the stars into aloneness.

We are falluing. This hand is falling.
And look at the others: it is in them all.

And yet there is One who holds this falling
With infinite softness in his hands." (85).

Great poetry, great translation, great text
Rilke ranks among the world's greatest poets.Each poem in the Book of Images is an elegant snapshot of a beautiful world.Snow's translation is superb, and he is commonly regarded as the preeminent English translator of Rilke's poetry.This text contains the translation and the original German side-by-side so that readers can gain a better appreciation of Rilke.The Snow translatio of the Book of Images is one of the greatest English-language poetic achievements.

A superb translation of 'Das Buch der Bilder'!
Rilke is that poet that you, if you are tormented by memories of high-school poetry lessons past (dactylic metre sound vaguely familiar?), ought try.His imagery is accessible, his meaning clear...and he manages simultaneously a beautiful degree of both spiritual and metaphorical richness.

Snow's translations of Rilke's poetry are superb; he consistently preserves the metric structure and is also conscious of the need to employ every word and consider every nuance of meaning, rather than simply settling for glossing it (a surprisingly common problem in poetry translation).In the challenging world of finding faithful poetry translation, Snow's work is outstanding...and the original material to my sense of literary aesthetics unsurpassed...little of Rilke's beauty is sacrificed in the execution of this translation.Rilke's simultaneous spareness, sensitivity, and richness endure here; rather than imposing himself upon the reader, Snow succeeds admirably at the translator's task, and brings Rilke to the English-speaking audience.

A marvelous translation of Rilke
Edward Snow has captured the essential grace of Rilke's poetry without sacrificing faithfulness to the original text.In this book of wonderful and exquisite poems, the lyric genius of Rilke comes through; Snow's ownpoetic sensibility is also clear.Some of my favorite Rilke poems (such as"Autumn" or "Memory") are rendered here in a way thatperfectly suits their quiet, holy sense of both solitude and communion. Read it. ... Read more

Product Description
Available for the first time in a single volume, Ranier Maria Rilke’s two most beloved sequences of poems rendered by his most faithful translator. Rilke is unquestionably the twentieth century’s most significant and compelling poet of romantic transformation and spiritual quest. His poems of ecstatic identification with the world exert perennial fascination. In Stephen Mitchell’s versions of Rilke’s two greatest masterpieces readers will discover an English rendering that captures the lyric intensity, fluency, and reach of his poetry. Stephen Mitchell adheres impeccably to Rilke’s text, to his formal music, and to the complexity of his thought; at the same time, Mitchell’s work has authority and power as poetry in its own right. ... Read more

Product Description
An anthology of Rilke's strongest poetry and prose for both aficionados and new readers.

Here is a mini-anthology of poetry and prose for both aficionados and those readers discovering Rainer Maria Rilke for the first time. John J. L. Mood has assembled a collection of Rilke's strongest work, presenting commentary along with the selections. Mood links into an essay passages from letters that show Rilke's profound understanding of men and women and his ardent spirituality, rooted in the senses.

Combining passion and sensitivity, the poems on love presented here are often not only sensual but sexual as well. Others pursue perennial themes in his work—death and life, growth and transformation. The book concludes with Rilke's reflections on wisdom and openness to experience, on grasping what is most difficult and turning what is most alien into that which we can most trust. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Book Review
Nothing bad to report really. The book cover was not the same, which is a little dissapointing cuz I liked the cover shown in the picture. But other than that it got here relatively fast (it got sent back to the sender, they contacted me and re-sent it, which was nice!).

Essential reading: Human Relationships
Everyone should own a copy of this short collection of insightful ideas.Buy at least twocopies and give one to the one you care most about.
You do not need to be guided through this.It is poetry; read it and re-read it.
Many careful thinkers, including Albert Einstein, believe that one's human relationshipsis the paramount value.Your relationships begin with your reflections on yourself.

Great Rilke,Less Mood
This translation and selection is really made with love. Yet I could not fail but noticing an unbalance between Rilke's radical work on Love and the difficulty of the translator and critic to approach it without being surrendered. As the title suggests. Read it!

"The point is to live everything"
"Do not seek the answers which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now." Perhaps then without noticing it everything will resolve gradually along some distant day into the answer."

Rilke is a poet who brings mystery and existensial questioning into every rich and suggestive line he writes. His poetry is ripe and weighted with meaning.
In this small book there are selections from his letters, in which he spontaneously reflects on Love as he addresses intimately his correspondents. There are too his poems on Love whose metaphoric questioning and ambiguity also seem to bring the reader into a poetic space of special mystery and beauty.

"The more one is, the more abundant is everything one experiences. If you want to have a deep love in your life, you must save up for it and collect and gather honey."

Rilke's own personal love life bears not only the mark of his questioning , and deep search for meaning. It also marks the record of his meeting and abandonment. The real love of his life despite his many deep love connections was with his own vocation for which he left his wife and young daughter.

"What ruthless magnificence and yet how terrible to ignite love; what conflagration, what disaster, what doom.To be on fire yourself, of course , if one is capable of it: that may well be worth life and death."

One may not always understand, one may not always agree, one may not always approve but when one reads Rilke what knows one is in the presence of great and deep poetry.

A journey through the roots of the speech!

There have been very few poets with such creative mind, potency and inexhaustibleness as R.M.R. He was a cosmic poet of introspective flight loaded if you want of musical intimacy, his thoughts seem to be Chopin's Nocturnes and he sings his rapture homage to the night as a few indeed but the most impressive character is behind that radiant language's use there is a shaman speaking by him.

You may not argue the lack of time concerning to Rilke: the poetry simply doesn't understand about absences and coordinates of space or time, simply it appears and seduces you with the exemplary serenity of an astonished child. O course his nocturnal visions were expanded by Nietzsche and Lou Andreas Salomé.

This fundamental text will lead you to another spheres where the Fourth Wall, in what dreams and love walk freely without rules, engagement in the most absolute disobey 's spirit , the essential premise of the artists, children and heroes.

"Life and death: they are one, at core entwined. Who understands himself from his own strain, presses himself into a drop of wine and throws himself into the purest flame".


... Read more

Product Description
The formative work of the legendary poet who sought to write "not feelings but things I had felt"

When Rainer Maria Rilke arrived in Paris for the first time in September 1902, commissioned by a German publisher to write a monograph on Rodin, he was twenty-seven and already the author of nine books of poems. His early work had been accomplished, but belonged tonally to the impressionistic, feeling-centered world of a late-nineteenth-century aesthetic.

Paris was to change everything. Rilke's interest in Rodin deepened and his enthusiasm for the sculptor's "art of living surfaces" set the course for his own pursuit of an objective ideal.What was "new" about Rilke's New Poems, published in two independent volumes in 1907 and 1908, is a compression of statement and a movement away from "expression" and toward "making realities." Poems such as "The Panther" and "Archaic Torso of Apollo" are among the most successful and famous results of Rilke's impulse.

This selection from both books unites the companion volumes in a torrent of brilliant work intoxicated with the materiality of the world. Edward Snow has now improved upon the translations for which he received the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award and with which he began his twenty-year project of translating Rilke.
... Read more

Product Description

This collection of writings from one of the twentieth century′s greatest poets is gathered into 365 readings for every day of the year. Including selections from his luminous poetry, his piercing prose, and his intimate letters, the reader receives an introduction to the depth and breadth of Rilke′s work like no other. His insights on spirituality, the creative process, and more will leave the reader inspired throughout the year.

Customer Reviews (2)

A must for Rilke Fans!
I first found Rilke as a 20 something, his Letters to a Young Poet. I remember I found it amazing, but somehow never followed up on reading his poetry.

I stumbled onto The Book of Hours (Das Stunden-Buch) a couple years ago (the Macy and Barrow's translation.) Initially it drove me crazy their translation style. But after the second read though I found I liked it more than some of the more literal translations. I feel in love with Rilke's work.

This is an amazing book, a chance to spend a year with Rilke reading his poems, letters, and journals. Its a chance to really taste his life and influences.

Highly recommend.

Daily Reflections
These daily reflections are provided from some of Rilke's most familiar (and least familiar) writings.Anyone who enjoys this author would enjoy A Year with Rilke. ... Read more

Product Description
These have been called the most famous and beloved letters of our century. Rainer Maria Rilke himself said that much of his creative expression went into his correspondence, and here he touches upon a wide range of subjects that will interest writers, artists, and thinkers. This edition includes a new foreword by Kent Nerburn, author of Small Graces and Letters to My Son. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (18)

Absolutely worth the buy
I've never read such a thin book with an immense amount of thought-provoking material in it.

It's intense, it's soul-finding.

A read to inspire
I give this as a gift to fellow poets but in all honesty this book will inspire anyone in any field. A beautiful journey of wisdom and perspective.

This book will remain a fixture on my bookcase and in my heart. I purchased this book many moons ago and never read it. I had many an intention to read it just never did...until Aug 2009.

It didn't occur to me until I finally opened this book that I had yet to open it until the time was right. I unconsciously was saving the words of this book to savor when I needed them the most.

The passages contained in this book, without question, are brilliant words of wisdom to light the creative path in the dark times of self doubt. This book will remind creative types like myself that the path you are on is worthy of footprints, most importantly your footprints.A Song Beneath Silence (2nd Edition) (Volume 2)

Amazing Book!
I highly recommend this book to all writers, poets and artists of any sort. This will bring you new inspiration but one that you had all along.

Much ado about nothing.
I heard so many great things about this book that I was expecting so much more than it delivered.I think the writer is full of himself and is trying to elevate his miserable introverted life into something redemptive and grandiose.I found only a few snippets of anything that resembled wisdom; the rest was so much hot air.
~Peter

A true classic
This book is a true classic.I would recommend for anyone who enjoys poetry and the struggle in finding the perfect words. ... Read more

Product Description
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 includereligion, philosophy, the social sciences, and the arts. His works have been widely translated into English, and newenderings 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; DasStunden-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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

wonderful resource
In preparing a study of Rilke and his work, I'm finding this book to be a wonderful resource. ... Read more

Product Description
A masterly new translation of one of the first great modernist novels In the only novel by one of the German language's greatest poets, a young man named Malte Laurids Brigge lives in a cheap room in Paris while his belongings rot in storage. Every person he sees seems to carry their death with them, and with little but a library card to distinguish him from the city's untouchables, he thinks of the deaths, and ghosts, of his aristocratic family, of which he is the sole living descendant. Suffused with passages of lyrical brilliance, Rilke's semi-autobiographical novel is a moving and powerful coming-of-age story. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (21)

Beautiful Ramblings
The great modernist poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote only one "novel" in his lifetime: The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. He termed it a novel; I am not so sure. The book is a compilation of narrative, philosophical asides, sketches for future poems, and detailed descriptions of artwork. It is clear that the writer is a poet, for much of the content does not make sense except in an irrational way. I was struck, for example, at the beginning of the novel by the narrator's description of people's faces. Everyone has four or five faces they wear throughout their lives. like masks. Some wear out quickly, the seams tearing at the edges. Some never use any face but one. Once, while walking through the streets of Paris, the narrator Malte hears a woman crying down a alley. When he investigates, the woman pulls her face out of her hands so quickly that she is left palming it in a puddle of tears, her head an open chasm.

Malte is a young aristocrat from Denmark without money who has moved to Paris to pursue his poetic vocation. The books flashes back and forth between his childhood memories and his observations of the people in France. In the second half of the book he hints at a love interest he left behind, an older woman who may be a relation.

The work jumps around from scene to scene randomly, and I had trouble making any sense of it. That is until the end, when Malte examines the New Testament story of the Prodigal Son. He imagines this character, not as the selfish libertine popularly construed, but as a sensitive young favorite of everyone in his household. He flees his family and gives away everything he owns to his "friends" simply because he no longer wishes to be loved. To be loved is to be controlled, and he wants freedom. He will love without reciprocation, because to love is to live. The Prodigal Son, then, is a symbol of Malte and his antipathy to attachment to anyone. As every selection in the book shows, he prefers to sit in the corner with his notebook making observations about those around him or delving into his reminiscences from home, never getting up and actually entering into the fray of life.
Those who need a clear plot and a reliable narrator beware. This book is non-linear and reads more like poetry than a traditional novel. But I love literature which challenges me to look at the world differently.The Notebooks certainly does that.

I have been a long fan of the translations of Stephen Mitchell. I was first drawn to this particular book by the excerpts in Ahead of All Parting: The Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke (Modern Library) (English & German Edition) (English and German Edition) This translation is first-rate.

An enigmatic work that is not holding up well with the passage of time
I first read THE NOTEBOOKS OF MALTE LAURIDS BRIGGE more than 35 years ago.I found it difficult going, but I thought it profound (as I had been taught to regard it).On re-reading it, I once again find it difficult going, but now I find it less than profound.To be sure, there is some exquisite writing and some spell-binding and memorable passages.But much of it is far too cryptic and idiosyncratically private to be great literature, and occasionally it is silly.Further, in assessing the worth of the work I cannot ignore certain aspects of Rilke's personal biography, as discussed at the end of this review.

Published one hundred years ago (twelve years before completion of his acclaimed masterpieces of poetry, "Duino Elegies" and "Sonnets to Orpheus"), NOTEBOOKS is Rilke's most extended exercise in prose.Nonetheless, the prose of NOTEBOOKS is poetic, impressionistic, and at times mystic.There is no narrative in the traditional sense and it seems rather misleading to refer to the book as a novel; indeed, more than once I have seen it called an "anti-novel".It consists of a series of meditative entries in two notebooks by a 28-year-old Dane of minor nobility, Malte Laurids Brigge.A few of the entries record, like a diary or journal, events of the ostensible present, which for the most part are Brigge's unpleasant encounters with the bustle and squalor of Paris, to which he has recently moved with limited funds.But far more entries deal either with the past - the personal past of Brigge as a child and that of his parents and forebears, as well as the past represented by a vast assortment of historical figures going back centuries, mostly nobility, saints, divines, and unrequited lovers - or with speculations ("the teeming maggots of my conjectures") about life, death, love, art, and the post-Nietzchean world without God.

The arc of the book is supplied by Brigge's search for his identity, his self.In connection with that search, Rilke deliberately invokes the Biblical story of the Prodigal Son.But it is a very self-indulgent prodigal son, and Rilke's version (such as it is) is told from his perspective.Within literary circles, NOTEBOOKS is known as one of the leading literary works of its time dealing with the search for selfhood, and it also is sometimes said to be a precursor, maybe even an early landmark, of 20th-Century existentialism.Alas, the self of Malte Laurids Brigge (perhaps like the self of Rainer Maria Rilke - ?) is not a particularly attractive or admirable one.To me, Brigge is the great-grandson and literary heir of Goethe's Werther, and NOTEBOOKS is, curiously, even more fusty than "The Sorrows of Young Werther", published more than a century earlier.

A paragraph about the translation:The first time I read NOTEBOOKS, it must have been the translation by M.D. Herter Norton.Recently, wanting to re-read it, I went looking for the volume I first read only to discover that I must have packed it away in boxes in storage.It was easier to purchase a new copy.What I bought was a translation by Stephen Mitchell.I did not particularly care for the book, and after 50 pages abandoned it, thinking that the Mitchell translation must be to blame.Then I saw that a new translation by Michael Hulse (highly regarded translator of, inter alia, several works by W.G. Sebald) had just been published by Penguin.That was the edition and version I read for this review.It turns out that I am essentially indifferent as between the Hulse and Mitchell translations.With some passages, Mitchell does a better job, though on the whole the Hulse translation seems slightly more comprehensible and lyrical.The footnotes to the Hulse translation, however, are much more informative than those to the Mitchell translation, and I found Hulse's introduction more useful than the one by William H. Gass.On those grounds, then, I recommend the Penguin/Hulse edition over the Viking/Mitchell/Gass one.

In the end, I conclude that I cannot attribute my relative disappointment on re-reading NOTEBOOKS to the translation.Rather, I think the explanation is simply that the book resonated more with a relatively callow youth than it does with someone in the autumn of his life.I also suspect that given the particular tides of Western culture over the last third of a century, NOTEBOOKS has not "worn" well.

Finally, I cannot entirely put aside the character of Rainer Maria Rilke, who was "one of the most repugnant human beings in literary history".That is the judgment of Michael Dirda, from his review of Ralph Freedman's biography of Rilke, "Life of a Poet" (contained in the excellent collection of Dirda reviews, "Bound to Please").As Dirda explains,

"[T]his hollow-eyed communer with angels, Greek torsos, and death was not merely a selfish snob; he was also an anti-Semite, a coward, a psychic vampire, a crybaby.He was a son who refused to go to his dying father's bedside, a husband who exploited and abandoned his wife, a father who almost never saw his daughter and who even stole from a special fund for her education to pay for his first-class hotel rooms.He was a seducer of other men's wives, a pampered intellectual gigolo, and a virtual parody of the soulful artiste who deems himself superior to ordinary people because he is so tenderly sensitive * * *."

I find it impossible to marvel and ponder over cryptic pronouncements and soulful cries when I have very little respect for the man who uttered them.At bottom, it's all a sham.

If a book could be a painting
This book is a rare beauty. The language is so beautifully strewn together, filled with vivid color and wit, it is easy one of the great classics of modern literature. This is Rilke's only novel and is an enduring work that has inspired a genre, a poet that put a poet's mind in literature.

Each page is a vivid canvas in itself, this book should, in my opinion, be read slowly and allowed to ruminate on the mind instead of devoured.

This books is a collection of elegant and beautiful thoughts strung together

Master work masterfully translated
Plunge in to this work of genius and you will emerge with a new view of what can be accomplished in fiction. Some of Rilke's poetry translations do not work well and it has been said that poetry cannot be translated. I prefer to read the originals. But this translation of his only novel is brilliant.

Fragmented
However, fragmented in a good way--This is a book for anyone who has or is feeling set adrift by life. It offers no sappy "Everything will be alright"s, but just chronicles a life adrift--fragmented, distractable, and more often than not disquieted. If it sounds whiny to you shelve it until something upsets your life a little, then it's great.

The translation was solid enough for me (I've got the Norton one as well), but translation is translation. The book binding/paper seem good. Recommended. ... Read more

Product Description
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angelic
orders? and even if one of them pressed me
suddenly to his heart: I'd be consumed
in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we can just barely endure,
and we stand in awe of it as it coolly disdains
to destroy us. Every angel is terrifying.
-from "The First Elegy"

Over the last fifteen years, in his two volumes of New Poems as well as in The Book of Images and Uncollected Poems, Edward Snow has emerged as one of Rainer Maria Rilke's most able English-language interpreters. In his translations, Snow adheres faithfully to the intent of Rilke's German while constructing nuanced, colloquial poems in English.

Written in a period of spiritual crisis between 1912 and 1922, the poems that compose the Duino Elegies are the ones most frequently identified with the Rilkean sensibility. With their symbolic landscapes, prophetic proclamations, and unsettling intensity, these complex and haunting poems rank among the outstanding visionary works of the century.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

used to be studied
When I was in college and law school I hardly had any contact with people who would study something because it was poetry. The University of Michigan College of Engineering had its own department of English so engineering students would not be subject to snide comments from literary freaks who thought poetry was a significant component of certain cultures. I am aware of Rilke from an interest in European intellectual history, which combined ironically with curiosity whenever a female minister quoted Rilke in a sermon. As Daphne, since her transfromation into a bay tree, desires that you choose to be changed into wind, I can hardly comment on this further.

Ein Werk für das Unendliche
Rilkes Duineser Elegien stehen an der Spitze, was die poetische Schöpfung des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts betrifft. Sie sind ein metaphysisches Nachdenken über den Menschen und die Realität. Rilke überlegt sich die menschliche Bestimmung. Dafür, dass das Leben eine vorübergehende und peinliche Erfahrung ist, zeigt er uns die Engel als ein überbewusstes Wesen. Im Gegensatz zu dem Menschen wohnen sie an einem offenen Raum. Es gelingt Ihnen das Leben und den Tod zu vereinigen.Dort findet das reine Geschehen statt. Wegen ihres selbstlosen Erlebnis sind die Helden, die Liebenden, die Kinder und die früh Verstorbenen nah daran, nach den Ordnungen der Engel zu gelangen.
Die verkündete Nacht ist zu der Schein-Unsichtbar Verwandlung geneigt, weil sie eine tiefere Wahrnehmung ermöglicht. Rilkes poetische Sprache, Rhythmus und Bildnis sind atemlos.

Good poet - bad translator
Yes, Rilke is a genius, whose poetry is abstract and disturbing yet also direct, concise and perfectly written.

Unfortunately, Snow's translation does not manage to capture Rilke's power in full flow, as other translatorshave managed to do so. The Picador edition is especially superior (althoughstill flawed). By all means buy the Elegies, which are among the bestpieces of literature of this century, and possibly the best collection oflyric poetry of all time - but if you buy this edition, you might notrealise that.

Acclaimed translator gives us the "Duino Elegies"
Edward Snow is one of the most respected translators of Rilke.He's been working his way through Rilke's poetry and now offers a superb version of the "Duino Elegies," long considered the high point of Rilke'scareer.

There are many existing translations of Rilke's masterpiece, ofvarying quality.Snow's version reads quite well and compares favorably toacclaimed versions by Mitchell and others. ... Read more

Product Description
This is the first comprehensive collection of poems of Rainer Maria Rilke's work on religious and biblical themes. The collection also contains the complete poetic cycle of "The Life of the Virgin Mary," and constitutes the first English translation from German in over fifty years. This is a book for lovers of Rilke, as well as those interested and engaged in the intersection of religion and the arts, beauty and the transcendent. (A bilingual edition.) ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Rilke's Raptures
A quite-nice edition of Rilke's faith-centered poetry.Includes the complete "Life of Mary" poem cycle, which would later be set to music by Paul Hindemith (twice, in German) and, more recently, by Andrew Smith (with Anna Deavere Smith narrating, in English translation, in accompaniment with Washington National Cathedral Musicians).

translations of his religious poetry
In recent years many critics have come to admire Rainer Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 in Prague, Austria-Hungary - 29 December 1926 in Valmont (Switzerland)) as the German language's greatest poet of the 20th century. After he died of leukemia at the age of 51, the critical edition of his collected works in German eventually filled 12 volumes. More modest readers like myself, then, will be grateful for Kidder's original translations of sixty-one of his religious poems that cover a thirty-year period of his life. She previously translated Rilke's book The Book of Hours; Prayers to a Lowly God (Northwestern University Press, 2001).

Rilke grew up in an unhappy home, including a brief stint in a military academy. From very early he always knew that his life was meant for literature, poetry, and writing. His mother was zealously Catholic and outwardly pious, according to Kidder, both of which backfired on Rilke who rejected such displays as "grotesque and meaningless." Instead, Rilke cultivated an "inward piety" that in his poetry explored the problems and possibilities of religious faith in an age of unbelief and personal anxiety. "A frequent theme," Kidder remarks, "is the human heart's insatiable longing for the transcendent, the divine," which for Rilke expressed itself in religious proclivities that were decidedly unorthodox.

After her brief introduction, Kidder organizes Rilke's religious poetry according to five themes: God, The Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ, The Pilgrimage, and Poverty. The lefthand page contains the original German, and the right side her translations, accompanied by brief notes about the possible time, place, and origins of the poems. In addition to the Christian story, Greek mythology figured large as a source for Rilke's poetic imagination. Rilke readers new and old can now enjoy the first-ever collection of his specifically religious and Biblical poetry thanks to Kidder's expertise. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Little gem
This is a little Rilke gem if you'd like to carry his thoughts with you however I was surprised at the size and how small it is for the price.

Beautiful
I have bought copies of this for many people and I keep a paperback copy to lend in addition to my first edition hardcover. Some of the writing is so lovely that if I read very many of the poems at once, I feel intoxicated. I would recommend this to most anyone.

Poems from book of hours by Rilkebrief butbeautiful
Some years ago I acquired the version of Rilkes book of hours translated by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows and loved them so much ( please see review I wrote for this particular translation). I was hoping to findone poem from the book of hours that was included in the Macy/Barrows translation and even earlieron a audio cassette of poetry that featured several of Rilkes poems and an excerpt from Letters to a young poet,needless to say I am disappointed not to find this poem in this edition of the book of hours. That is why I Give it only four stars and not five. Aside from not finding this poem in this book I did find that the ones that were included here were beautiful and some how the translator has managed tobring more poeticfluency and even rhyme to these poems that were not in later editions of it which I appreciated. For those of you who would like to know the poem of which I speak of here I will copy it below as best as my memory knows it for you: You darkness of whom I born I love you morethan all the fires that fense in the world. For the fire creates a circle of light for everyone and then no one learns of you. But the darkness takes in everything shapes and shadows creatures and me people, nations- just as they are. It let's me imagine a great presence stirring beside me. I believe in the night.

Too few.
The number of poems that Deutsch thought would bear translation from theGerman is heartbreakingly small. Still, one is too glad she translated anyto be more than fleetingly greedy. I was also happy to see the Germanversions of the poems, even though my German's a little too rusty to readfor anything but pure meaning.

Some sentences stand out-- "ALLESLEBEN WIRD GELEBT". Indeed.

On my book list-- more Rilke.

Now Classic
Such a small book.That so few German poems, with English translations made by Babette Deutsch and first published in 1941, are still available in a cover that matches what I bought years ago bears witness to the power ofthe poems included here.With so little to skip through, this book made mewant to examine the German for clues about how few words could mean somuch.The best clue is in the first line of the last poem in this book. "Sie sagen: mein." ... Read more

Product Description
Between the New Poems of 1907 and 1908 and his death in 1926, Rainer Maria Rilke published only two major volumes of poetry--the Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus, both in 1923. But during this period he was writing verse continually, often prolifically--in letters, in guest books, in presentation copies, and chiefly in the pocket-books he always carried with him. This body of uncollected work exceeds five hundred pieces: finished poems of great poise and brilliance, headlong statements that hurtle through their subjects, haunting "fragments," and short bursts that arc into the unpursuable. A remarkable number of them are among Rilke's finest poems.

Snow's selection of more than a hundred of these little-known works distills the best of the uncollected poetry while offering a wide enough choice to convey Rilke's variety and industry during the years he wrote them. Uncollected Poems will lead students, scholars, and other readers to a fresh--and more accurate--understanding of this great poet's life and work.
Amazon.com Review
Edward Snow has done the poetry-reading world a tremendousservice in translating and collecting these previously obscure piecesof Rainer Maria Rilke's. The poems were written late in Rilke'scareer, and continue his lifelong concerns with the deepest andsubtlest questions of being. Beautiful and lyrical writing fills thesepages, as in this untitled poem, written in Paris in March, 1913:"We don't know what we spend: / all that's named is past and eachbeing / invents itself at the last second / and will hear nothing..." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Rilke after the "sea-change"
the germans themselves might take a cue from this collection. as far as i know, fischer verlag (Rilke's publisher in germany) has released in the years since the poet's death nothing close to approximating a collection of "uncollected" works, but maybe a few lyrical fragments grouped under the rubric of "unvollendetes" (incomplete works, fragments) at the back of his collected works, or small editions of particular works unpublished in Rilke's lifetime (the Posthumous Papers of Graf C.W. comes to mind). and yet what this book of uncollected works shows is the real Rilke, the deepest terrains of his private self. whether it is the heart-rending last poem from the last notebook at the end of the book, or the small fragment he chose to be his epitaph, in these poems is registered an effort of the poet to come to terms with his own death, as if that were possible, more poignant in my opinion than, say, the Duino Elegies for the very reason that these fragments (among which are some completed lyrics, yes) themselves suffer the unbearable weight of what they need to communicate in a way that they can only be as they are: fragments, small "failures," which are yet more successful in becoming something "rich and strange," to quote Shakespeare, than a poem more thoroughly wrought and not as heart-felt, composed in the moment without the imposition of having a future as a complete poem, and thus which better register a trace of that creating poet's-heart, that missing part of every incomplete poem, what would make the fragment whole. in this book one encounters the very best of Rilke, the "thing poems" of the New Poems or the Book(s)of Images/Hours, and even some Duino-like longer elegiac verses, with some terse shorter lyrics ala Sonnets to Orpheus. There are also some really interesting pieces that are, in tone and syntax, unique in Rilke's oeuvre. Along these lines the poem-fragment "Mausoleum" comes to mind that, with its idiosyncratic syntax, its neologistic word-couplings, looks forward to and augurs the language-scapes of Paul Celan.

to keep it short, i do not agree that one should start here when beginning to read Rilke. in principle i do not even believe in translation, and i mean this as unpretentiously as possible. i think one must travel in languages as one does physically across land, and that if one wishes to encounter a poet or writer, or to read anything, one must travel to them, to their domain, their place within language. with Rilke this is most certainly the case. english doesn't really suit him. even with Snow's superb work, much is still desired and can be improved upon even, i think. the music always only half comes across. and i still think that for english readers at least ( i cannot testify to readers of Rilke in languages other than german or english - who knows, maybe Rilke in russian is good?) Rilke will remain undiscovered. this being said, i think that a good place to start with Rilke would be a selected works, or perhaps the Book of Images or the New Poems, moving on then to the Book of Hours, the Elegies and then the Sonnets, aka the more prime Rilke (i think its good to go chronologically), and then ending with this book. it's what i did, roughly, in my exploration of Rilke's oeuvre: starting from the unsprouted seeds and ending with the dead leaves scattered on the ground below the now aged and grown tree.

also, in a quite recent development, North Point Press (FSG) has released all of Edward Snow's translations of Rilke in one book, which for those who are just now starting their journey through Rilke's country (more like looking at a map of the actual land, or at paintings of it, one might say) i'd say is the best bet to get.

The Best Way to Read Translated Poetry
After four years in college double-majoring in both English and German, and after a long search for German literature that managed to inspire my literary sensibilities, I finally discovered Rainer Maria Rilke the week I graduated.

Rilke's ability to capture moments in nature and to describe events in life both physical and spiritual transcends languages and cultures. His rhythm and use of sounds in poetry is something not to be missed. He is a true poet on every level.

This edition of his poetry gathers together many different subjects and forms that show off his abilities perfectly. My favorite part of it, though, is that it is a bilingual edition. Poetry is difficult (if not impossible) to really translate from one language to another, so if you're reading the text only in English, you can only get one sense of the piece. While I won't judge the translator's interpretation, I will say that having the English and German texts side-by-side makes for a smooth read for German learners trying to read the German side, as well as for non-German readers who want to read the original for the sounds and the form it takes.

Rilke is the perfect poet for Germanophiles with a British poetic sensibility. If you're looking for a book that combines a good poetic translation of Rilke's work with the original text, then this is definitely the one to get.

Wonderful Collection
Rilke was one of the great imagists of the century. This collection contains magnificently translated poems by Edward Snow, who manages to capture the grace and power of Rilke's work. It is not altogether clear whether or not these poems were intended for publication, but it is a miracle that they were.

Rilke was a poet of images and of feelings, he captured again and again the feeling of man the individual caught in the sublime beauty of the earth and the cosmos:

"Earlier, how often, we'd remain, star in star,
when from the constellation the freest,
the announcing star, stepped forth and called.
Star in star we marveled,
He, the speaker of the star-sign,
I, my life's companion star.
And the night, how it granted us
The wide-awake accord" (235).

An excellent bilingual edition on the whole and a must for any reader of modern poetry.

Poetry Transcending Borders
Edward Snow's translations of Rilke are always beautiful.As a non-German speaker, I don't have the luxury of commenting on the purity of the translation, but having had the opportunity to compare Snow's translation of Duino Elegies to an older textbook version, I would say that Snow has a firm grasp on both the significance and the beauty of Rilke's poetry.

For those who have never read Rainer Maria Rilke, I strongly recommend beginning with these poems.While all his poetry books are powerfully moving, this one rises above the rest in its maturity, and also, due to its "uncollected" nature transcends the bounds of thematic elements.The arrangement is lovely, but I urge you to open this book at random.Whichever poem you turn to will gain different contours in the light of different moods, yet each has lines that resonate-you will find yourself remembering these gems at scattered moments, even months after reading them.

Wonderful, and some people might know what this is about.
This book contains my favorite poem, but explaining it could be like trying to contend that 2001 is a really great year because it might help ordinary people realize how elements of life might be like understanding the line, "until suddenly out of spitefully chewed fruit."For me, this is the kind of poetry that Harold Bloom was trying to explain in his book, THE ANXIETY OF INFLUENCE/A THEORY OF POETRY, though Bloom's ideas ranged from Milton, with the question, "Why call Satan a modern poet?" (Bloom, p. 20) to more modern poets without suggesting that Rilke might have topped them all in approaching the capability suggested in Bloom's quotation from Kierkegaard, "What inwardness he might have attained!" (Bloom, p. 76).My favorite poem by Rilke starts with the line, "Long you must suffer, knowing not what," and ends with the assertion, "No one will ever talk you out of it."This poem explains as much about how an individual can feel, when utterly singled out by perception, as any of the puzzles that philosophy typically gropes its way through in its efforts to find a world that any one person can understand.And the other poems in this book are also outstanding attempts to deserve the honor of being considered great poetry on a very personal level.Among the host of contenders, the one which is easiest to find begins with the German word, "Aber," so it appears first in the German index. The English translation seems to be suggesting something. "But if you'd try this: to be hand in my hand / as in the wineglass the wine is wine. / If you'd try this." ... Read more