René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926), known asRainer Maria Rilke,[a] was an Austrian poet and novelist. Acclaimed as anidiosyncratic and expressive poet, he is widely recognized as a significant writer in the German language.[1] His work is viewed by critics and scholars as possessing undertones ofmysticism, exploring themes ofsubjective experience and disbelief.[2][3][4] His writings include one novel, several collections of poetry, several volumes of correspondence and a few early novellas.
Rilke travelled extensively throughout Europe, finally settling in Switzerland, which provided the inspiration for many of his poems. While Rilke is best known for his contributions to German literature, he also wrote in French. Among English-language readers, his best-known works include two poetry collections:Duino Elegies (Duineser Elegien) andSonnets to Orpheus (Die Sonette an Orpheus), a semi-autobiographical novelThe Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge), and a collection of ten letters published posthumouslyLetters to a Young Poet (Briefe an einen jungen Dichter). In the later 20th century, his work found new audiences in citations byself-help authors[5][6][7] and frequent quotations in television shows, books and motion pictures.[8]
He was born René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke inPrague, capital ofKingdom of Bohemia (then ruled byAustria-Hungary, now capital of the Czech Republic). His father, Josef Rilke (1838–1906), found employment as a railway official after an unsuccessful military career. His mother, Sophie ("Phia") Entz (1851–1931), was from a well-to-do family in Prague, the Entz-Kinzelbergers, who lived at Herrengasse (Panská) 8, where René spent many of his early years.
His childhood was not always a happy one, and the relationship between Phia and her only son was colored by her mourning for an earlier infant daughter who died within one week. During Rilke's early years, Phia acted as if she sought to recover the lost daughter by treating Rilke as if he were a girl. According to Rilke, he had to wear "fine clothes" and "was a plaything [for his mother], like a big doll".[9][10][11][b] His parents' marriage ended in 1884.[citation needed]
His parents enrolled the poetically and artistically talented youth in a military academy inSankt Pölten, Lower Austria. He attended classes from 1886 until 1891, but left due to illness. He then moved toLinz, and entered a trade school. During this time he lived with Hans Drouot (publisher and owner of the printing and publishing company Jos. Feichtingers Erben) at Graben 19 on the 3rd floor.
Expelled in May 1892, the 16-year-old returned to Prague, where, for three years, he was tutored for the university entrance exam, which he passed in 1895. He took classes in literature, art history, and philosophy inPrague,[13] until 1896 when he left school and moved to Munich.[14]
Rilke met and fell in love with the widely travelled and intellectual woman of lettersLou Andreas-Salomé in 1897 in Munich. He changed his first name from "René" to "Rainer" at Salomé's urging because she thought that name to be more masculine, forceful and Germanic.[15] His relationship with this married woman, with whom he undertook two extensive trips to Russia, lasted until 1900. Even after their separation, Salomé continued to be Rilke's most important confidante until the end of his life. Having trained from 1912 to 1913 as apsychoanalyst withSigmund Freud, she shared her knowledge of psychoanalysis with Rilke.
In 1898, Rilke undertook a journey of several weeks to Italy. The following year he travelled with Lou and her husband,Friedrich Carl Andreas, to Moscow where he met the novelistLeo Tolstoy. Between May and August 1900, a second journey to Russia, accompanied only by Lou, again took him to Moscow and Saint Petersburg, where he met the family ofBoris Pasternak andSpiridon Drozhzhin, a peasant poet. Author Anna A. Tavis cites the cultures of Bohemia and Russia as the key influences on Rilke's poetry and consciousness.[16]
In 1900, Rilke stayed at the artists' colony atWorpswede. (Later, his portrait would be painted by the proto-expressionistPaula Modersohn-Becker, whom he got to know at Worpswede.) It was here that he got to know the sculptorClara Westhoff, whom he married the following year. Their daughter Ruth (1901–1972) was born in December 1901.
Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907), an early expressionist painter, became acquainted with Rilke in Worpswede and Paris, and painted his portrait in 1906.
In the summer of 1902, Rilke left home and travelled to Paris to write amonograph on the sculptorAuguste Rodin. Before long his wife left their daughter with her parents and joined Rilke there. The relationship between Rilke and Clara Westhoff continued for the rest of his life; a mutually-agreed-upon effort towards a divorce was bureaucratically hindered by the fact that Rilke was a Catholic, albeit a non-practising one.
At first, Rilke had a difficult time in Paris, an experience that he called upon in the first part of his only novel,The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. At the same time his encounter with modernism was very stimulating: Rilke became deeply involved with the sculpture of Rodin and then the work ofPaul Cézanne. For a time, he acted as Rodin's secretary, also lecturing and writing a long essay on Rodin and his work. Rodin taught him the value of objective observation and, under this influence, Rilke dramatically transformed his poetic style from the subjective and sometimes incantatory language of his earlier work into something quite new in European literature. The result was theNew Poems, famous for the "thing-poems" expressing Rilke's rejuvenated artistic vision. During these years, Paris increasingly became the writer's main residence.
The most important works of the Paris period wereNeue Gedichte (New Poems) (1907),Der Neuen Gedichte Anderer Teil (Another Part of the New Poems) (1908), the two "Requiem" poems (1909), and the novelThe Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, started in 1904 and completed in January 1910.[17]
During the later part of this decade, Rilke spent extended periods inRonda, the famous bullfighting centre in southern Spain, where he kept a permanent room at the Hotel Reina Victoria from December 1912 to February 1913.[18][19]
Duino Castle near Trieste, Italy, was where Rilke began writing theDuino Elegies in 1912, recounting that he heard the famous first line as a voice in the wind while walking along the cliffs and that he wrote it quickly in his notebook.
Between October 1911 and May 1912, Rilke stayed at the CastleDuino, nearTrieste, home ofPrincess Marie ofThurn und Taxis. There, in 1912, he began the poem cycle called theDuino Elegies, which would remain unfinished for a decade because of a long-lasting creativity crisis. Rilke had developed an admiration forEl Greco as early as 1908, so he visitedToledo during the winter of 1912/13 to see his paintings. It has been suggested that El Greco's manner of depicting angels influenced the conception of the angel in theDuino Elegies.[20] The outbreak ofWorld War I surprised Rilke during a stay in Germany. He was unable to return to Paris, where his property was confiscated and auctioned. He spent the greater part of the war in Munich. From 1914 to 1916 he had a turbulent affair with the painterLou Albert-Lasard. Rilke was called up at the beginning of 1916 and had to undertake basic training in Vienna. Influential friends interceded on his behalf – he was transferred to the War Records Office and discharged from the military on 9 June 1916. He returned to Munich, interrupted by a stay atHertha Koenig's [de] manorGut Bockel [de] in Westphalia. The traumatic experience of military service, a reminder of the horrors of the military academy, almost completely silenced him as a poet.[21]
Château de Muzot in Veyras, Switzerland, was where Rilke completed writing theDuino Elegies in "a savage creative storm" in February 1922.Rilke and Klossowska at Chateau Muzot 1923
On 11 June 1919, Rilke travelled from Munich to Switzerland. He met Polish-German painterBaladine Klossowska, with whom he was in a relationship to his death in 1926. The outward motive was an invitation to lecture in Zurich, but the real reason was the wish to escape the post-war chaos and take up his work on theDuino Elegies once again. The search for a suitable and affordable place to live proved to be very difficult. Among other places, Rilke lived in Soglio,Locarno and Berg am Irchel. It was only in mid-1921 that he was able to find a permanent residence in the Château de Muzot in the commune ofVeyras, close toSierre in Valais. In an intense creative period, Rilke completed theDuino Elegies in several weeks in February 1922. Before and after this period, Rilke rapidly wrote both parts of the poem cycleSonnets to Orpheus containing 55 entire sonnets. Together, these two have often been taken as constituting the high points of Rilke's work. In May 1922, Rilke's patronWerner Reinhart bought and renovated Muzot so that Rilke could live there rent-free.[22]
During this time, Reinhart introduced Rilke to his protégée, the Australian violinistAlma Moodie.[23] Rilke was so impressed with her playing that he wrote in a letter: "What a sound, what richness, what determination. That and theSonnets to Orpheus, those were two strings of the same voice. And she plays mostlyBach! Muzot has received its musical christening..."[23][24][25]
From 1923 on, Rilke increasingly struggled with health problems that necessitated many long stays at asanatorium inTerritet nearMontreux onLake Geneva. His long stay in Paris between January and August 1925 was an attempt to escape his illness through a change in location and living conditions. Despite this, numerous important individual poems appeared in the years 1923–1926 (includingGong andMausoleum), as well as his abundant lyrical work in French. His book of French poemsVergers was published in 1926.
In 1924,Erika Mitterer [de] began writing poems to Rilke, who wrote back with approximately 50 poems of his own and called her verse aHerzlandschaft (landscape of the heart).[26] This was the only time Rilke had a productive poetic collaboration throughout all his work.[27] Mitterer visited Rilke in November 1925.[28][29] In 1950 herCorrespondence in Verse with Rilke was published and received much praise.[30]
Rilke supported theRussian Revolution in 1917 as well as theBavarian Soviet Republic in 1919.[31] He became friends withErnst Toller and mourned the deaths ofRosa Luxemburg,Kurt Eisner, andKarl Liebknecht.[32] He confided that of the five or six newspapers he read daily, those on thefar left came closest to his own opinions.[33] He developed a reputation for supporting left-wing causes and thus, out of fear for his own safety, became more reticent about politics after the Bavarian Republic was crushed by the right-wingFreikorps.[33] In January and February 1926, Rilke wrote three letters to the Mussolini-adversary Aurelia Gallarati Scotti in which he praisedBenito Mussolini and described fascism as a healing agent.[34][35][36]
Shortly before his death, Rilke's illness was diagnosed asleukemia. He suffered ulcerous sores in his mouth, pain troubled his stomach and intestines, and he struggled with increasingly low spirits.[37] Open-eyed, he died in the arms of his doctor on 29 December 1926, in the Valmont Sanatorium in Switzerland. He was buried on 2 January 1927, in theRaron cemetery to the west ofVisp.[37]
Rilke had chosen as his own epitaph this poem:
Rose, oh reiner Widerspruch, Lust, Niemandes Schlaf zu sein unter soviel Lidern.
Rose, o pure contradiction, desire to be no one's sleep beneath so many lids.
A myth developed surrounding his death and roses. It was said: "To honour a visitor, the Egyptian beautyNimet Eloui Bey [Wikidata], Rilke gathered some roses from his garden. While doing so, he pricked his hand on a thorn. This small wound failed to heal, grew rapidly worse, soon his entire arm was swollen, and his other arm became affected as well", and so he died.[37]
"The Panther" was an influential poem describing life from the perspective of an animal in a zoo, which focused more on its cage than on humans, one of the first to do so, part of an early counter-movement against anthropomorphic views of animals and nature along with individuals such asJakob von Uexküll, a writer of perspectives of creatures such as jellyfish and ticks, a man who he corresponded with, and poetHugo von Hofmannsthal who wrote from the perspective of a man who had language become like 'rotten mushrooms' in his mouth.[38]
Rilke's three complete cycles of poems that constituteThe Book of Hours (Das Stunden-Buch) were published byInsel Verlag in April 1905. These poems explore the Christian search for God and the nature of Prayer, using symbolism from Saint Francis and Rilke's observation of Orthodox Christianity during his travels to Ukraine in the early years of the twentieth century.
Rilke wrote his only novel,Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge (translated asThe Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge), while living in Paris, completing the work in 1910. The narrative takes the form of a rambling novelette filled with poetic language and contains, among other things, a retelling of the prodigal son tale, a striking description of death by illness, an ode to the joys of roaming free during childhood, a chilling description of how people wear false faces with others, and a snarky comment about the weirdness of neighbors.
This semi-autobiographical novel adopts the style and technique that became associated withExpressionism which entered European fiction and art in the early 20th century. He was inspired bySigbjørn Obstfelder's workA Priest's Diary andJens Peter Jacobsen's novelNiels Lyhne (1880) which traces the fate of anatheist in a merciless world. Rilke addresses existential themes, profoundly probing the quest for individuality and the significance of death and reflecting on the experience of time as death approaches. He draws considerably on the writings of Nietzsche, whose work he came to know throughLou Andreas-Salomé. His work also incorporates impressionistic techniques that were influenced byCézanne andRodin (to whom Rilke was secretary in 1905–1906). He combines these techniques and motifs to conjure images of mankind's anxiety and alienation in the face of an increasingly scientific, industrial and reified world.
Rilke began writing the elegies in 1912 while a guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis (1855–1934) atDuino Castle, nearTrieste on theAdriatic Sea. During this ten-year period, the elegies languished incomplete for long stretches of time as Rilke suffered frequently from severedepression, some of which was caused by the events ofWorld War I and hisconscripted military service. Aside from brief episodes of writing in 1913 and 1915, Rilke did not return to the work until a few years after the war ended. With a sudden, renewed inspiration – writing in a frantic pace he described as "a savage creative storm" – he completed the collection in February 1922 while staying atChâteau de Muzot inVeyras, in Switzerland'sRhône Valley. After their publication and his death shortly thereafter, theDuino Elegies were quickly recognized by critics and scholars as Rilke's most important work.[39][40]
TheDuino Elegies are intensely religious,mystical poems that weigh beauty and existential suffering.[41] The poems employ a rich symbolism ofangels andsalvation but not in keeping with typicalChristian interpretations. Rilke begins the first elegy in an invocation of philosophical despair, asking: "Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the hierarchies of angels?" (Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen?)[42] and later declares that "every angel is terrifying" (Jeder Engel ist schrecklich).[43] While labelling of these poems as "elegies" would typically implymelancholy andlamentation, many passages are marked by their positive energy and "unrestrained enthusiasm".[39] Together, theDuino Elegies are described as a metamorphosis of Rilke's "ontological torment" and an "impassioned monologue about coming to terms with human existence" discussing themes of "the limitations and insufficiency of the human condition and fractured human consciousness ... man's loneliness, the perfection of the angels, life and death, love and lovers, and the task of the poet".[44]
With news of the death of Wera Knoop (1900–1919), his daughter's friend, Rilke was inspired to create and set to work onSonnets to Orpheus.[45] In 1922, between February 2 and 5, he completed the first section of 26 sonnets. For the next few days, he focused on theDuino Elegies, completing them on the evening of February 11. Immediately thereafter, he returned to work on theSonnets and completed the following section of 29 sonnets in less than two weeks. Throughout theSonnets, Wera is frequently referenced, both directly by name and indirectly in allusions to a "dancer" and the mythicalEurydice.[46] Although Rilke claimed that the entire cycle was inspired by Wera, she appears as a character in only one of the poems. He insisted, however, that "Wera's own figure ... nevertheless governs and moves the course of the whole."[47]
The sonnets' contents are, as is typical of Rilke, highly metaphorical. The character of Orpheus (whom Rilke refers to as the "god with the lyre"[48]) appears several times in the cycle, as do other mythical characters such asDaphne. There are also biblical allusions, including a reference toEsau. Other themes involve animals, peoples of different cultures, and time and death.
In 1929, writerFranz Xaver Kappus (1883–1966) published a collection of ten letters that (then between 27–32 year old) Rilke had written to him over the course of 6 years, beginning when Kappus was a 19-year-old officer cadet studying at theTheresian Military Academy inWiener Neustadt, where he had a professor who had taught Rilke at the boarding Military Middleschool (Militär-Unterrealschule) in St.-Pölten over 15 years earlier (from 1886-1891); (before Rilke dropped out of the officer's education after a year in Military highschool). Between 1902 and 1908, the young Kappus had written Rilke when he was uncertain about his future as a military officer or as a poet. Initially he sought Rilke's advice as to the quality of his poetry and whether he ought to pursue writing as a career. While he declined to comment much on Kappus's writings, Rilke advised Kappus on how a poet should feel, love and seek truth in trying to understand and experience the world around him and engage the world of art. These letters offer insight into the ideas and themes that appear in Rilke's poetry and his working process and were written during a key period of Rilke's early artistic development after his reputation as a poet began to be established with the publication of parts ofDas Stunden-Buch (The Book of Hours) andDas Buch der Bilder (The Book of Images).[49]
Rilke extensively engaged withmetaphors,metonymy andcontradictions in his poetry and prose to convey disbelief and a crisis of faith. Figures from Greek mythology, such asApollo,Hermes andOrpheus, recur as motifs in his poems and are depicted in original interpretations that often double as analogies for his experiences. Rilke's poems also feature figures ofangels, famously described in theDuino Elegies as "terrifying" (schrecklich); he also occasionally explored the crisis of his Catholic faith, including in his little-known 1898 poem "Visions of Christ", where he depictedMary Magdalene as the mother of Jesus' child.[50][51]
A portrait of Rilke painted two years after his death byLeonid Pasternak
Rilke is one of the best-selling poets in the United States.[52] In popular culture, Rilke is frequently quoted or referenced in television shows, motion pictures, music and other works when these works discuss the subject of love or angels.[53] His work is often described as "mystical" and has been quoted and referenced byself-help authors.[5] Rilke has been reinterpreted "as a master who can lead us to a more fulfilled and less anxious life".[6][54]
Rainer Maria Rilke,Sämtliche Werke in 12 Bänden (Complete Works in 12 Volumes), published by Rilke Archive in association with Ruth Sieber-Rilke, edited by Ernst Zinn. Frankfurt am Main (1976)
Rainer Maria Rilke,Werke (Works). Annotated edition in four volumes with supplementary fifth volume, published by Manfred Engel, Ulrich Fülleborn, Dorothea Lauterbach, Horst Nalewski and August Stahl. Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig (1996 and 2003)
^From the mid-16th century until the early 20th century, young boys in theWestern world wereunbreeched and woregowns ordresses until an age that varied between two and eight.[12]
^Müller, Hans Rudolf.Rainer Maria Rilke als Mystiker: Bekenntnis und Lebensdeutung in Rilkes Dichtungen (Berlin: Furche 1935)
^Stanley, Patricia H. "Rilke'sDuino Elegies: An Alternative Approach to the Study of Mysticism" in Heep, Hartmut (editor).Unreading Rilke: Unorthodox Approaches to a Cultural Myth (New York: Peter Lang 2000).
^abKomar, Kathleen L. "Rilke: Metaphysics in a New Age" in Bauschinger, Sigrid and Cocalis, Susan.Rilke-Rezeptionen: Rilke Reconsidered (Tübingen/Basel: Franke, 1995), pp. 155–169. Rilke reinterpreted "as a master who can lead us to a more fulfilled and less anxious life".
^abKomar, Kathleen L. "Rethinking Rilke'sDuisiner Elegien at the End of the Millennium" in Metzger, Erika A.A Companion to the Works of Rainer Maria Rilke (Rochester, New York: Camden House, 2004), pp. 188–189.
^See also: Mood, John.Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1975); and a book released by Rilke’s own publisher Insel Verlag, Hauschild, Vera (ed.),Rilke für Gestreßte (Frankfurt am Main: Insel-Verlag, 1998).
^Komar, Kathleen L. "Rethinking Rilke'sDuisiner Elegien at the End of the Millennium" in Metzger, Erika A.,A Companion to the Works of Rainer Maria Rilke (Rochester, New York: Camden House, 2004), 189.
^Fatima Naqvi-Peters.A Turning Point in Rilke's Evolution: The Experience of El Greco. The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory, Vol. 72, Is. 4, pp. 344–362, 1997.
^"An Kurt Wolf, 28. März 1917." S. Stefan Schank:Rainer Maria Rilke. pp. 119–121.
^"Elegien gegen die Angstträume des Alltags" byHellmuth Karasek(in German).Der Spiegel (47/1981). 11 November 1981; Karasek calls Rilke a friend of the Fascists.
^Rainer Maria Rilke,Lettres Milanaises 1921–1926. Edited by Renée Lang. Paris: Librairie Plon, 1956[page needed]
^Sword, Helen.Engendering Inspiration: Visionary Strategies in Rilke, Lawrence, and H.D. (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1995), pp. 68–70.
^Letter to Gertrud Ouckama Knoop, dated 20 April 1923; quoted in Snow, Edward, trans. and ed.,Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke, bilingual edition, New York: North Point Press, 2004.
^Sonette an Orpheus, Erste Teil, XIX, v. 8: "Gott mit der Leier"
^Freedman, Ralph. "Das Stunden-Buch and Das Buch der Bilder: Harbingers of Rilke's Maturity" in Metzger, Erika A. and Metzger, Michael M. (editors).A Companion to the Works of Rainer Maria Rilke. (Rochester, New York: Camden House Publishing, 2001), 90–92.
^Komar, Kathleen L. "Rilke in America: A Poet Re-Created" in Heep, Hartmut (editor).Unreading Rilke: Unorthodox Approaches to a Cultural Myth (New York: Peter Lang, 2000), pp. 155–178.
^Komar, Kathleen L. "Rethinking Rilke'sDuisiner Elegien at the End of the Millennium" in Metzger, Erika A.A Companion to the Works of Rainer Maria Rilke (Rochester, New York: Camden House, 2004), p. 189.
^See also: Mood, John.Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties (New York: W.W. Norton, 1975); and a book released by Rilke’s own publisher Insel Verlag, Hauschild, Vera (editor).Rilke für Gestreßte (Frankfurt am Main: Insel-Verlag, 1998).
^Malecka, Katarzyna.Death in the Works of Galway Kinnell (Amherst, New York: Cambria Press, 2008), passim.
^Guenther, John.Sidney Keyes: A Biographical Enquiry (London: London Magazine Editions, 1967), p. 153.
^"Self-Elegy: Keith Douglas and Sidney Keyes" (Chapter 9) in Kendall, Tim.Modern English War Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
^Metzger, Erika A. and Metzger, Michael M. "Introduction" inA Companion to the Works of Rainer Maria Rilke (Rochester, New York: Camden House, 2004), p. 8.
^Perloff, Marjorie. "Apocalypse Then: Merwin and the Sorrows of Literary History" in Nelson, Cary and Folsom, Ed (eds).W. S. Merwin: Essays on the Poetry (University of Illinois, 1987), p. 144.
^Perloff, Marjorie. "Transparent Selves': The Poetry of John Ashbery and Frank O’Hara," inYearbook of English Studies: American Literature Special Number 8 (1978):171–196, at p. 175.
^Robey, Christopher J.The Rainbow Bridge: On Pynchon's Use of Wittgenstein and Rilke (Olean, New York: St. Bonaventure University, 1982).
^Gadamer analyzed many of Rilke's themes and symbols. See: Gadamer, Hans-Georg. "Mythopoietische Umkehrung im Rilke'sDuisener Elegien" inGesammelten Werke, Band 9: Ästhetik und Poetik II Hermenutik im Vollzug (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1993), pp. 289–305.
^Dworick, Stephanie.In the Company of Rilke: Why a 20th-Century Visionary Poet Speaks So Eloquently to 21st-Century Readers (New York: Penguin, 2011).
^Cohn, Stephen (translator). "Introduction" in Rilke, Rainer Maria.Duino Elegies: A Bilingual Edition (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1989), pp. 17–18. Quote: "Auden, Rilke's most influential English disciple, frequently paid homage to him, as in these lines which tell of the Elegies and of their difficult and chancy genesis..."
Numerous contributors,A Reconsideration of Rainer Maria Rilke,Agenda poetry magazine, vol. 42 nos. 3–4, 2007.ISBN978-0-902400-83-2.
Pechota Vuilleumier, Cornelia,Heim und Unheimlichkeit bei Rainer Maria Rilke und Lou Andreas-Salomé. Literarische Wechselwirkungen. Olms, Hildesheim, 2010.ISBN978-3-487-14252-4
Ryan, Judith.Rilke, Modernism, and Poetic Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Schwarz, Egon,Poetry and Politics in the Works of Rainer Maria Rilke. Frederick Ungar, 1981.ISBN978-0-8044-2811-8.
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