Best Selling Books by Rainer Maria Rilke

For poetry lovers and students of literature and literary criticism, Robert Bly, the National Book Award-winning poet, brings his prowess as a translator and critic to bear on the work of one of the major German poets of the century.

Rilke''s timeless letters about poetry, sensitive observation, and the complicated workings of the human heart. Born in 1875, the great German lyric poet Rainer Maria Rilke published his first collection of poems in 1898 and went on to become renowned for his delicate depiction of the workings of the human heart. Drawn by some sympathetic note in his poems, young people often wrote to Rilke with their problems and hopes. From 1903 to 1908 Rilke wrote a series of remarkable responses to a young, would-be poet on poetry and on surviving as a sensitive observer in a harsh world. Those letters, still a fresh source of inspiration and insight, are accompanied here by a chronicle of Rilke''s life that shows what he was experiencing in his own relationship to life and work when he wrote them.

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.

This volume of Rilke''s letters covers the years from the completion of The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge to Rilke''s death in December 1926, nearly five years after he had written the Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus, his last major works. There are important letters here to Muzot, Lou Andreas-Salome, to Princess Marie of Thurn and Taxis Hohenlohe, and many others. The most significant of the Wartime Letters: 1914-1921 are also included. An Introduction briefly traces the development of Rilke''s work during these years; the Notes provide the necessary framework of biographical details and point up significant references to the poetry.

"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.

This representative selection from Rilke''s large and extraordinary correspondence provides a kind of spiritual autobiography of the poet. The period here covered reflects all the great experiences of Rilke''s early adult life: his difficult beginnings, his relationships with Lou Andreas-Salome and with his wife Clara, his two journeys to Russia, his contact with the Worpswede artists, the influence of Paris, the revelation of Cezanne. Many of the letters are psychologically revealing; many touch upon characteristic themes, or freshly transcribe experience that sooner or later passes into the poetry.

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."

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."

Rilke''s move to Paris in 1902 and his close association with Rodin led him in a new direction in his poetry. between 1906 and 1908 he produced a torrent of brilliant work that he published in two volumes under the title ''New Poem.''

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.”

Rilke’s Book of Hours falls into three parts: The Book of Monkish Life (1899), The Book of Pilgrimage (1901), and The Book of Poverty and Death (1903). Although these poems were the work of Rilke’s youth, they contain the germ of his mature convictions. Written as spontaneously received prayers, they celebrate a God who is not the Creator of the Universe, but seems to be rather humanity itself, and, above all, that most intensely conscious part of humanity, the artist. This exquisite gift edition contains Babette Deutsch’s classic translations, which capture the rich harmony and suggestive imagery of the originals, allowing interpretations both religious and philosophical, and transporting the reader to new heights of inspiration and musicality.

Written with astonishing rapidity in two weeks of February 1922, Sonnets to Orpheus is a series of fifty-five brilliant and affirmative songs.

"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.

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.

“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.

Rilke''s association with Rodin in 1902 inspired in him a new poetic method. ''Somehow, '' he wrote, ''I too must come to make things... realities that emerge from handiwork. Somehow I too must discover the smallest basic element, the cell of my art, the tangible immaterial means of representation for everything.'' Until this work, Rilke''s voice had come from the interior, expressing feelings and moods. New Poems represented a turning point, an intoxication with the materiality of the world.

The "Duino Elegies "are the culmination of the development of Rilke''s poetry. A summary of his spiritual troubles, perhaps no volume of poems in a European language has made so dramatic and sustained an impact on English-speaking readers in this century.

Rainer Maria Rilke offers a compelling portrait of Parisian life, art, and culture at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1902, the young German writer Rainer Maria Rilke traveled to Paris to write a monograph on the sculptor Auguste Rodin. He returned many times over the course of his life, by turns inspired and appalled by the city''s high culture and low society, and his writings give a fascinating insight into Parisian art and culture in the last century. 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. Much of this work, despite its perennial popularity in French, German, and Italian, has never before been translated into English. This volume brings together a translation of Rilke''s essay on poetry, ''Notes on the Melody of Things'' and the first English translation of Rilke''s experiences in Paris as observed by his French translator.

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.

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.

Thirteen connected tales "busied with transferring God from the sphere of rumor into the realm of direct and daily experiencing". For other editions, see Author Catalog.