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.
“The Sonnets to Orpheus, Part Two, XII Want the change. Be inspired by the flamewhere everything shines as it disappears.The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so muchas the curve of the body as it turns away.”
“Books inviting us to read, on the bookshelves stand.Piers for bridges that will lead, into Fairyland.”
“You are not too old and it is not too lateto dive into your increasing depths where life calmly gives out its own secret.”