New Releases by Rainer Maria Rilke

The first-ever English translation of Rilke’s landmark poetry cycle, by Vita and Edward Sackville-West ­– reissued for the first time in 90 years In 1931, Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s Hogarth Press published a small run of a beautiful edition of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies, in English translation by the writers Vita and Edward Sackville-West. This marked the English debut of Rilke’s masterpiece, which would eventually be rendered in English over 20 times, influencing countless poets, musicians and artists across the English-speaking world. Published for the first time in 90 years, the Sackville-Wests’ translation is both a fascinating historical document and a magnificent blank-verse rendering of Rilke’s poetry cycle. Featuring a new introduction from critic Lesley Chamberlain, this reissue casts one of European literature’s great masterpieces in fresh light.

A gorgeous edition of one of the most beloved classics of the twentieth century, published in celebration of W. W. Norton’s 100th anniversary. This slim volume of letters from the poet and mystic, Rainer Maria Rilke, to a nineteen-year-old cadet and aspiring poet named Franz Xaver Kappus, has touched millions of readers since it was first published in English in 1934. The translator, Mary Dows Herter Norton—a polymath extraordinaire with expertise in music, literature, and science, and who, along with her husband, William Warder Norton, founded the company that bears his name—played a crucial role in elevating Rilke’s reputation in the English-speaking world. This Norton Centenary Edition commemorates Norton, known as “Polly” to friends and colleagues, and the 100th anniversary of the publishing company she co-founded. An admiring foreword by Damion Searls—himself a recent translator of Rilke’s Letters—celebrates Polly’s stylistic achievement, and an afterword by Norton’s President, Julia A. Reidhead, honors her commitment to maintaining W. W. Norton & Company’s independence. This handsome new edition of a beloved classic brings Rilke’s enduring wisdom about life, love, and art to a new generation, in the translation that first introduced him to the English-speaking world.

A stunning, revelatory new translation of the only novel by one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century, from one of “the most trustworthy and exhilarating of Rilke’s contemporary translators” (Michael Dirda, Washington Post). A groundbreaking masterpiece of early European modernism originally published in 1910, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge unspools the vivid reflections of the titular young Danish nobleman and poet. From his Paris garret, Brigge records his encounters with the city and its outcasts, muses on his family history, and lays bare his earliest experiences of fear, tenderness, and desolation. With a poet’s feel for language and a keen instinct for storytelling, Rainer Maria Rilke forges a dazzlingly fractured coming-of-age narrative, kaleidoscopic in its alternation of vivid present encounters and equally alive memories of childhood. Strikingly contemporary, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge reveals a writer metabolizing his own experiences to yield still-essential questions about fiction and reality, empathy and psychosis, and—above all—life, love, and death. In a fascinating introduction, award-winning translator Edward Snow explores the overlaps between Rilke’s experiences and those of his protagonist, and shows with granular attention the novel’s capacity for nuance and sympathy. Snow’s exquisite translation captures as never before the astonishing cadences and musical clarity of the poet’s prose. It reveals The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge as an urgent contemporary achievement, more than one hundred years after it was written.

“The ultimate expression of intergenerational literary wisdom.” —Andrew Solomon, The New Yorker A work that has inspired generations, this new edition of Letters to a Young Poet features a fresh translation of Rilke’s ten classic letters, along with the missing letters from the young poet himself.For nearly a century, eager writers and young poets, as well as those simply looking for a purpose in life, have embraced the wisdom of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, first published in 1929. Most readers and scholars have long assumed that the letters from the young poet were forever lost to posterity. Yet, shockingly, these letters were recently uncovered in Germany, and now the acclaimed translator Damion Searls has not only cast a fresh eye on Rilke’s original letters but also those of the “young poet,” Franz Xaver Kappus, an Austrian military cadet and an aspiring poet. This timeless edition, in addition to presenting their dialogue together for the first time in English, provides a new window into the workings of Rilke’s visionary poetic and philosophical mind, allowing us to reexperience the literary genius of one of the most inspiring works of twentieth-century literature.

Intimately connected in themes and regarded as the poet's masterpieces, these verses offer meditations on love, death, God, and the meaning of life. This edition features acclaimed translations by Jessie Lemont.

From the writer of the classic Letters to a Young Poet, reflections on grief and loss, collected and published here in one volume for the first time. “A great poet’s reflections on our greatest mystery.”—Billy Collins “A treasure . . . The solace Rilke offers is uncommon, uplifting and necessary.”—The Guardian Gleaned from Rainer Maria Rilke’s voluminous, never-before-translated letters to bereaved friends and acquaintances, The Dark Interval is a profound vision of the mourning process and a meditation on death’s place in our lives. Following the format of Letters to a Young Poet, this book arranges Rilke’s letters into an uninterrupted sequence, showcasing the full range of the great author’s thoughts on death and dying, as well as his sensitive and moving expressions of consolation and condolence. Presented with care and authority by master translator Ulrich Baer, The Dark Interval is a literary treasure, an indispensable resource for anyone searching for solace, comfort, and meaning in a time of grief. Praise for The Dark Interval “Even though each of these letters of condolence is personalized with intimate detail, together they hammer home Rilke’s remarkable truth about the death of another: that the pain of it can force us into a ‘deeper . . . level of life’ and render us more ‘vibrant.’ Here we have a great poet’s reflections on our greatest mystery.”—Billy Collins “As we live our lives, it is possible to feel not sadness or melancholy but a rush of power as the life of others passes into us. This rhapsodic volume teaches us that death is not a negation but a deepening experience in the onslaught of existence. What a wise and victorious book!”—Henri Cole

The definitive bilingual version of Rilke's New Poems--faithful to the original German, with insightful commentary on every poem. Essential.

The Sonnets of Orpheus I by Rainer Maria Rilke Translated by Joshua Jennings- A ShortWorks Publication ShortWorks is an independent publishing group that compiles short, compelling works, from arts, music and literature to social criticism and history to science and technology. www.shortworks.co

COMPOSED IN A BURST of inspiration near the end of the poet's life, Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus represents the consummation of the writer's career, distilling the essence of his poetic wisdom in a gem-like sequence. This new translation--with the original German on facing pages--offers a clear window into the world of this endlessly scintillating cycle of poems. "Daniel Polikoff's English version of Rilke's last sonnet sequence, perhaps his greatest work, is wholly admirable. Rilke's late work is extremely difficult to penetrate. Both its conceptual nature and Rilke's unique use of the German language tend to resist interpretation. Astonishingly, Polikoff has found ways of rendering Rilke's complexities into English and also preserving his metrical and rhyme schemes. Such an accomplishment is possible only with a deep understanding of Rilke's vision and a knowledge of the root structure of German. Daniel Polikoff gives us Rilke in word and spirit in these splendid Sonnets."--LISEL MUELLER, National Book Award for Poetry (1981) for The Need to Hold Still; Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1997) for Alive Together: New & Selected Poems "Daniel Polikoff is the first to achieve the unimaginable: an English translation which brings the form and content of these Sonnets together into an organic confluence. These new translations lift our understanding of Rilke's spiritual and aesthetic inspiration up to a whole different level, one accessible for the first time to the English reader. As a professor of German literature who has taught these sonnets for over thirty years, I can only thank Daniel Polikoff for this phenomenal accomplishment. His version should serve as the new standard for Rilke translations and belongs on the bookshelves of every poetry lover."--LUDWIG MAX FISCHER, author of Seasons of the Soul: The Poetic Guidance of Herman Hesse "This is a uniquely faithful, skillful, and eloquent translation of one of the greatest poems of the 20th century. I salute Daniel Polikoff and recommend his wonderful work to all seekers and lovers of poetry."--ANDREW HARVEY, author of Teachings of Rumi Poet-scholar Daniel Joseph Polikoff has published two books of poetry as well as a major work on Rilke and depth psychology: In the Image of Orpheus: Rilke-A Soul History.

The reputation of Rainer Maria Rilke has grown steadily since his death in 1926; today he is widely considered to be the greatest poet of the twentieth century. This Modern Library edition presents Stephen Mitchell’s acclaimed translations of Rilke, which have won praise for their re-creation of the poet’s rich formal music and depth of thought. “If Rilke had written in English,” Denis Donoghue wrote in The New York Times Book Review, “he would have written in this English.” Ahead of All Parting is an abundant selection of Rilke’s lifework. It contains representative poems from his early collections The Book of Hours and The Book of Pictures; many selections from the revolutionary New Poems, which drew inspiration from Rodin and Cezanne; the hitherto little-known “Requiem for a Friend”; and a generous selection of the late uncollected poems, which constitute some of his finest work. Included too are passages from Rilke’s influential novel, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, and nine of his brilliant uncollected prose pieces. Finally, the book presents the poet’s two greatest masterpieces in their entirety: the Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus. “Rilke’s voice, with its extraordinary combination of formality, power, speed and lightness, can be heard in Mr. Mitchell’s versions more clearly than in any others,” said W. S. Merwin. “His work is masterful.”

A new translation of Rilke's groundbreaking volume, following the formal properties of the original poems, especially meter and rhyme, as closely as English allows.

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.

"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.

»Die Winterstürme durchdringen die Welt mit wütender Macht. Da sinkt auf schneeigen Schwingen die tannenduftende Nacht ...« Für Rainer Maria Rilke ist der Winter die Zeit des Fragens und der Erinnerung, aber auch eine Zeit der Besinnung und des Abschieds. In Gedichten, Briefen und Texten sinniert Rilke über die ruhende Natur und die Stille der Welt und wie kein anderer vermag er es, mit seinen Worten zu trösten und zu kräftigen: »Aber die Winter! Oh diese heimliche Einkehr der Erde.«

This volume marks the first translation of these prayer-poems into English. Originally written in 1899, Rilke wrote them upon returning to Germany from his first trip to Russia. His experience of the East shaped him profoundly. He found himself entranced by Orthodox churches and monasteries, above all by the icons that seemed to him like flames glowing in dark spaces. He intended these poems as icons of sorts, gestures that could illumine a way for seekers in the darkness. As Rilke here writes, "I love the dark hours of my being, for they deepen my senses." Translated by Mark S. Burrows.

In 1902, the young German writer Rainer Maria Rilke travelled to Paris to write a monograph on the sculptor Auguste Rodin. He returned to the city many times over the course of his life, by turns inspired and appalled by the high culture and low society. Paris was a lifelong source of inspiration for Rilke. Perhaps most significantly, the letters he wrote about it formed the basis of his prose masterpiece, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. This volume brings together a new translation of RilkeOCOs essay on poetry, Notes on the Melody of Things, and the first English translation of RilkeOCOs experiences in Paris as observed by his French translator, Maurice Betz. "

An “elegant translation” of Rilke’s writings on sculptor Auguste Rodin that “offers a fresh look at an unlikely mentorship” and two extraordinary artists (The New York Times Book Review). Sculptor Auguste Rodin was fortunate to have his secretary Rainer Maria Rilke, one of the most sensitive poets of our time. These two pieces discussing Rodin’s work and development as an artist are as revealing of Rilke as they are of his subject. Written in 1902 and 1907, these essays mark the entry of the poet into the world of letters. Rilke’s description of Rodin reveals the profound psychic connection between the two great artists, both masters of giving visible life to the invisible. Michael Eastman’s evocative photographs of Rodin’s sculptures shed light on both Rodin’s art and Rilke’s thoughts and catapult them into the 21st century.

"Immensely readable...a significant piece of scholarship."—Fred Volkmer, New York Sun He would become one of the most important poets of the twentieth century; she a muse of Europe's fin-de-siècle thinkers and artists. In this collection of letters, a finalist for the PEN USA translation award, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke and Lou Andreas-Salomé, a writer and intellectual fourteen years his senior, pen a relationship that spans thirty years and shifting boundaries: as lovers, as mentor and protégé, and as deep personal and literary allies.

"The Book of hours, written in three bursts between 1899-1903, is Rilke's most formative work, covering a crucial period in his rapid ascent from fin-de-siecle epigone to distinctive modern voice. The poems are crucial documents of Rilke's development, from his tour around Russia with Lou Andreas-Salome, through his hasty marriage to Clara Westhoff in the artists' community of Worpswede, to his turn toward the urban modernity of Paris. Rilke assumes the persona of an artist-monk undertaking the Romantics' journey into the self, speaking to God as part transcendent deity, part needy neighbor. Echoes of his juvenile style persist, yet by the end of the book the influence of the sculptor Rodin is discernible in the distinctive idiom of urbanity, in the terminology of "things," and in Rilke's turn to the everyday world around him."--Jacket flap.

Rilke's great cycle of ten elegies, perhaps his most profound poetic achievement, had its inception on the morning of January 21, 1912, but was interrupted by the First World War and not completed until a decade later. The Duino Elegies are not only the result of an extraordinary kind of contact with the unseen world; they are an attempt to understand that world in its holistic relationship to the visible, tangible world. This powerful rendering of the cycle is a product of the collaboration between a poet, Norris, and a Germanist, Keele.

Collects correspondence between the revered poet and the European intellectual, tracing the early days of their affair and offering insight into how they interacted as lovers, mentor and protege, and literary allies.

This translation of the Larenopfer, or offerings to the household god Lar, are songs that Rilke sings to his hometown Prague and to his beloved Bohemia, short poems on the parks, fountains, churches, bridges and palaces of Prague, not forgetting Rabbi Löw's legends, the Jewish cemetery, the Thirty Years War and, of course, young love. This cycle of 90 poems offers the reader a unique view into Rilke's fascinating world, the turn-of-the-century atmosphere of Prague, then the third largest city in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Here a young German of the ruling bourgeoisie shows great appreciation of contemporary Czech literary works and enthusiasm for the cause of Czech cultural identity. The book therefore possesses not only literary merit but is also of considerable sociological and historical interest. --Red Hen Press.

Breathing, you invisible poem! World-space in pure continuous interchange with my own being. Equipose in which I rhythmically transpire. Written only four years before Rilke's death, this sequence of sonnets, varied in form yet consistently structured, stands as the poet's final masterwork. In these meditations on the constant flux of our world and the ephemerality of experience, Rilke envisions death not only as one among many of life's transformations but also as an ideally receptive state of being. Because Orpheus has visited the realm of death and returned to the living, his lyre, a unifying presence in these poems, is an emblem of fluidity and musical transcendence. And Eurydice, condemned to Hades as a result of Orpheus's backward glance, becomes in Rilke's universe a mythical figure of consolation and hope. Edward Snow, in his translations of New Poems, The Book of Images, Uncollected Poems, and Duino Elegies, has emerged as Rilke's most able English-language interpreter. Adhering faithfully to the intent of Rilke's German while constructing nuanced, colloquial poems in English, Snow's Sonnets to Orpheus should serve as the authoritative translation for years to come.

This collection features 12 stories by Franz Kafka, whose fiction is synonymous with the anguish of modern life, and the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, whose stories unfold in the same transcendent lyricism as his verse. Twelve of Kafka's tales from the compilation Ein Landarzt (A Country Doctor), appear here, along with two tales from Ein Hungerkünstler (A Hunger Artist). Rilke's stories include "Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke" (The Ballad of Love and Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke); "Die Turnstunde" (The Gym Class); and Geschichten vom lieben Gott (Stories About the Good Lord).

Originally 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, 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 to The Complete French Poems: "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."

Selected from 'Das Buch der Bilder' and the two parts of 'Neue Gedichte, ' these poems were written in his less mystical period (1900-1908). The poems show Rilke's deep concern with sculpture and painting and exhibit his particular artistic and poetic power. One of Germany's most important poets, Rilke's poetry is innovative, enigmatic, and entertainingly idiosyncratic. C.F. MacIntyre's translations are both true to the original and poetic in their own right--From publisher description.

"In the diaries [Rilke] kept from 1898 to 1900, now translated for the first time . . . the overall impression is that of a genius just coming into his own powers."—Boston Phoenix In April 1898 Rainer Maria Rilke, not yet twenty-three, began a diary of his Florence visit. It was to record, in the form of an imaginary dialogue with his mentor and then-lover, Lou Andreas-Salome, his firsthand experiences of early Renaissance art. The project quickly expanded to include not only thoughts on life, history, and artistic genius, but also unguarded moments of revulsion, self-doubt, and manic expectation. The result is an intimate glimpse into the young Rilke, already experimenting brilliantly with language and metaphor. "For the lover of Rilke, this superb translation of the poet's early diaries will be a watershed. Through Edward Snow's and Michael Winkler's brilliantly supple and faithful translation . . . a new and more balanced picture of Rilke will emerge."—Ralph Freedman

Deluxe edition includes an original carborundum print. -- Cross-Cultural Communications.