Rainer Maria Rilke

"Though they were written specifically to a young poet, Rilke's words apply to everyone - especially to those who are attempting to do anything creative in their lives." - Marc Allen, author of A Visionary Life The ten letters that form this beautiful little book are some of the most famous letters ever written. They range freely over a variety of subjects, from the dangers of an ironic worldview to the value of faith. The reason they have proved to be so popular over the years is that they are the work of a great soul; an expansive and inspiring spirit pervades them. For almost a hundred years, the voice that reached out to the aspiring artist with the most clarity and consolation was that of Rainer Maria Rilke. How is it that such a slim book, written so long ago in a time very different from our own, still speaks to us with such authority today? The answer lies in the simple fact that these letters are the result of a unique conjunction of circumstances that created an almost magical alchemy of thought and feeling. Because of their depth of sentiment and sense of wise detachment, readers often assume that they are the work of an older man looking back on the struggles of youth. But, in fact, these letters were written between Rilke's twenty-eighth and thirty-third years - during which he was struggling to find himself artistically. However, it is the great, overarching shadow of the French sculptor Rodin that helps lift Rilke's insights from the profound observations of a sensitive and talented young man to the status of timeless utterances about the mysteries of life and the creative process. This book makes a perfect gift for the writer, artist, or thinker.

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.

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.

Long hailed as a masterwork of modern German literature, The Book of Hours (1905) marks the origin of Rainer Maria Rilke's distinctive voice and vision--where clarity of diction meets unexpected imagery and first-person poetry discovers its full lyric possibility. In these audacious poems, a devout but candid speaker addresses an ultimately unknowable deity, passing through love, fear, guilt, anger, bewilderment, loneliness, tenderness, and exaltation in his search for meaning.In this dual-language edition, Edward Snow, "the most trustworthy and exhilarating of Rilke's contemporary translators" (Michael Dirda, Washington Post), makes Rilke's achievement accessible as never before in English. Snow retains a striking fidelity to the German text while also conveying the captivating psychological presence that animates Rilke's best poems.

För första gången på svenska - Rilkes Brev till en ung poet med Franz Xaver Kappus svar. »Ert brev nådde mig först för några dagar sedan. Jag vill tacka Er för dess stora och innerliga förtroende. Mer kan jag knappast. Jag kan inte gå in på Era versers egenskaper; varje kritisk avsikt är mig alltför främmande. Ingenting kan man beröra ett konst-verk med så lite som med kritiska ord: det leder alltid till mer eller mindre lyckliga missförstånd. Tingen är inte så fattbara och utsägbara som man för det mesta vill få oss att tro; de flesta händelser är outsägliga, tilldrar sig i ett rum som aldrig har beträtts av något ord, och outsägligare än alla är konst-verken, hemlighetsfulla existenser vilkas liv varar invid vårt, som förgår.« Så inleds det första brevet från Rainer Maria Rilke till den unge Franz Xaver Kappus den 17 februari 1903. Under sex år korresponderade de med varandra. Efter att Kappus gav ut breven har de kommit i otaliga utgåvor och blivit något av en estetisk nyckeltext för många unga, och blivande, poeter. Här presenteras Rilkes brev för första gången på svenska tillsammans med de brev som Kappus sände. Här kan man alltså se vilka frågor som Rilke försökte besvara, och det kastar ett nytt, och möjligen vemodigt, ljus över poetens råd till sin unge adept. Innehåller även Kappus dikter och ett efterord av Erich Unglaub. I översättning av Christine Bredenkamp och Helga Krook.

»Och Ert tvivel kan bli en god egenskap, om Ni utvecklar det. Det måste bli kunnigt, det måste bli kritik. Fråga det så fort det står i begrepp att fördärva något för Er varför något är motbjudande, begär bevis av det, pröva det, och Ni kommer kanske att finna det rådlöst och förläget, kanske också upproriskt. Men ge inte efter, kräv argument och handla varje gång på detta sätt, uppmärksamt och kon­sekvent, och den dagen kommer då tvivlet från att ha varit något nedbrytande blir en av de bästa krafterna som arbetar inom Er – kanske den klokaste av alla dem som är i färd med att bygga Ert liv.« Poeten Rainer Maria Rilkes brev till den unge Franz Xaver Kappus har blivit ett av världslitteraturens omistliga mästerverk. Alla som funderat på att skriva poesi, som sökt tröst i poesi eller bara velat andas den kan i dessa brev finna samtidigt stränga och fria råd om hur man ska leva med dikten. Detta är en folkupplaga, tänkt att nå många läs­are i en värld där poesi inte bara behövs utan krävs för att vrida tiden rätt. Översättning av Helga Krook och efterord av Sven-Olov Wallenstein.

RAINER MARIA RILKE: AUGUSTE RODIN Translated by Jessie Lamont and Hans Trausil Edited by Jeremy Mark Robinson A new edition of Rainer Maria Rilke's monograph on the French sculptor Auguste Rodin, a book first published in 1919. It is fully illustrated, with works by Rodin, and portraits of Rilke. Includes illustrations, an introduction, a note on Rilke, and a bibliography. www.crmoon.com Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) is one of the greatest of all lyrical poets. Rilke is part of that group of European poets and writers which includes Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Rimbaud, Georg Trakl, Marina Tsvetajeva, and friends such as Andre Gide, Lou Andreas-Salome and Paul Valery. Rilke was an incredibly inventive creator of poetry, who could forge the myriad states and images of love, from the delicate, detailed and subtle, to the passionate, illuminating and ecstatic. Fully illustrated. With bibliography and notes. Hardcover. Full colour laminate cover. 124 pages.

In 1916, Rainer Maria Rilke presented his friend Rudolf Kassner with a notebook, containing twenty-two poems meticulously inscribed in his own hand and bearing the title Poems to Night. This evocative sequence of poems, which echoes some of the great themes of German romanticism, is now thought to represent one of the key stages in the creative breakthrough and spiritual evolution of the preeminent European poet of the twentieth century. This translation was the first to bring all the poems together in English and is enhanced by the translator's valuable introduction and a rich selection of further poems Rilke dedicated to night at various stages of his life.

A century and a half after his birth, Rainer Maria Rilke remains woven into English-speaking culture in ways unexpected for a difficult modern poet, and especially one writing in German. Many readers will know individual titles from the two volumes of New Poems ( Neue Gedichte), presented here in full. But the vast majority of these poems are little known in the English-speaking world. In John Greening's fresh, lively translation, the tidal pull of Rilke's internal music and astonishing imagery comes to the surface alongside the poems' elaborate rhyme and meter. Although Rilke's poems are often described as Dinggedichte—thing-poems—that term is more useful in helping us see the poems themselves as individual artifacts, which in turn conveys something of Rilke's style. What may be surprising to those who assume that poets write solely on inspiration is the business-like way Rilke set up a production line for the New Poems, starting with a list of a hundred or so topics and crossing them off as he went. These poems look both inward and outward, and their variety is considerable—there are tour-de-force works as well as simple, quietly affective pieces. Rilke makes formal and thematic connections across a spectrum of tone and tempo. As Greening claims, these disparate pieces coalesce to reveal something we didn't know we were waiting to find.