Duino Elegies

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Book Overview

Perhaps no cycle of poems in any European language has made so profound and lasting an impact on an English-speaking readership as Rilke's Duino Elegies. These luminous new translations by Martyn Crucefix, facing the original German texts, make it marvellously clear how the poem is committed to the real world observed with acute and visionary intensity. Completed in 1922, the same year as the publication of Eliot's The Waste Land, the Elegies constitute...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393001555
• ISBN13: 9780393001556
• Release Date: January 1963
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Weight: 0.33 lbs.

Customer Reviews

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.

The Epitome of Poetry

For me, at least, Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies are the very epitome of poetry. I know others who, even though they admire Rilke above all other poets, prefer other "Rilke" poems, such as "Evening." For me, however, it has always been, and always will be, the Elegies. Certainly they are the most extravagant and elusive of Rilke's poems, even for those who count others among their favorites.Rilke, who longed for a place of solitude in the country, arrived at the fortress-like Castle Duino, high above the Adriatic, near Trieste, in December 1911. His hostess was Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis-Hohenlohe, who had invited Rilke to translate Dante's Vita Nuova with her. Princess Marie, however, soon left for more sociable climes and Rilke was left alone on the stormy, wind-swept cliffs of Duino. Rilke, at this time of his life, was known to commit himself to a strict regimen of work. Nevertheless, his poems, he has written, always seemed to burst upon him suddenly, like a thunderstorm on a hot summer's afternoon. And, one afternoon at Duino, the opening line of the first elegy burst upon Rilke like a flash of lightening.There is no problem with the Duino Elegies...if one reads and comprehends German. If one doesn't, however, the problems of translation can be enormous. Translation, always a fragile task, becomes even more so when it involves poetry, and reaches its zenith with a work as sublime as Rilke's Duino Elegies. So many versions of these gorgeous poems exist (at least twenty), that the Elegies are certainly suffering from a case of "translation overkill."In the original German, the Duino Elegies are the most sublime expressions of awe, of terror, of love, of splendor, of Life, that have ever been set down by the hand of man. In hands other than Rilke's, however, they can seem clumsy and more than a bit melodramatic. Rilke wrote delicately-calibrated poetry, without excess words and, the dread of all translators, the hyphenated word. But, all that aside, reading the Elegies in translation, any translation, is better than not reading them at all.No matter how "angelic" these poems may seem, never doubt that they are expression of life in the here and now. As Rilke, himself, tells us, "the world exists nowhere but within us." These gorgeous poems are about the difficulties of living in this world, of not being heard by the angels, and of the tragedy that can so easily befall us. They are about Rilke's desire for solitude and his desire to escape it, i.e., the need and the utter impossibility of understanding and being understood completely in this life.Although many of the translations are flawed, as translation by its very nature must be, the Duino Elegies remain the epitome of poetry. They are a cry of terror, of awe, of joy, of splendor at the lonely and solitary condition of man.

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 translators have managed to do so. The Picador edition is especially superior (although still flawed). By all means buy the Elegies, which are among the best pieces of literature of this century, and possibly the best collection of lyric poetry of all time - but if you buy this edition, you might not realise that.

awe-ful...

Considered the quintessence of Rilke's work, the Elegies invite the reader into conversations with chasms of despair and angels of light... and don't forget: "Every angel is terrible."

Rilke tells us what the God really is

When I first read this book I learned poetry because poetry must come from the heart. And Rilke is the heart of imagination. The teacher of writing. God's liar. Telling stories about the heaven and hell. Kissing the angels. Falling down to the deepest see. And what we see is what we dont. The universe is covered with dust. He is coming from mountains and through the lakes. Rilke has written like somebody is whispering to your ears. Those are the concertoes of Mozart and sculptures of Michaelangelo. You can see Rilke in the lines. You can see God whispering to your ears. And the whole tragedy is this: He is telling those words. There he is writing all alone. Looking to the mirror. Wishing that all his poems are telling the truth. He is crying for the others who had gone before him. Who is gonna find him in those lines?