Ranier Maria Rilke

A mystic lyricism and precise imagery often marked verse of German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, whose collections profoundly influenced 20th-century German literature and include

The Book of Hours

(1905) and

The Duino Elegies

(1923).

People consider him of the greatest 20th century users of the language.

His haunting images tend to focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety — themes that tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist poets.

His two most famous sequences include the

Sonnets to Orpheus

, and his most famous prose works include the

Letters to a Young Poet

and the semi-autobiographical

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

.

He also wrote more than four hundred poems in French, dedicated to the canton of Valais in Switzerland, his homeland of choice.