December 29, 1926

Rainer Maria Rilke, (Decenber 4, 1875, to December 29, 1926 ) was, according to Encyclopedia.com,

'Born in Prague ... [and] grew up in a middle-class milieu he called "petit bourgeois," of which he later felt ashamed.....[The early poetry and prose tales of his youth like]..., Am Leben hin (1898; On the Rim of Life), ... contain little to foreshadow his later genius.

'In his second, religious or mystic, period (1899-1903), Rilke, opposed to the naturalism of his time, became an esthetic symbolist and, above all, a religious prophet and humanitarian. In August 1900 he settled in the north German artist colony Worpswede near Bremen, met a young sculptress, Clara Westhoff, and married her. There he wrote a monograph, Worpswede (1902), about the painters whose work he observed, and contributed book reviews to the Bremer Tageblatt. His marriage, doomed almost from the start, remained a brief episode, although it was never formally dissolved. A few months after the birth (December 12, 1901) of his daughter, Ruth, he departed for Paris, leaving behind his wife and child.

'Two books of poetry, written for the most part during his time in the painters' colony, eventually brought Rilke fame.... (1901, 1906; The Book of Images ), ...[and] The other ... a cycle of religious poems, Das Stundenbuch (1905; The Book of Hours), ...[The] genesis [of the latter] was Rilke's two trips to Russia, undertaken in 1899 and 1900. .... These early works are sincerely mystical, revealing his sense of humility and brotherhood, his simple faith and genuine compassion for the poor and exploited.
....
'Rilke's life in Paris (1902-1910) initiated a new phase, marked by the most significant turn in his poetic career: his new attitude toward objective reality and his attempt to apprehend the very essence of things, animate as well as inanimate. The commission to write a monograph on the great French sculptor Auguste Rodin had brought Rilke to Paris. He served Rodin for a while as secretary, and he admired him more than any other living artist. ..... Rilke now developed a new concept of the artist as the hardworking craftsman. ...

'During a trip to Sweden in 1904, Rilke composed the first version of Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornet Christoph Rilke, a romantic, even melodramatic, sentimental account of the last hours of a young aspiring cavalry officer. Later he tried to disassociate himself from this poem that became his most popular work. After the publication of his Neue Gedichte, Rilke set about completing an autobiographical novel begun in Rome 4 years before. In this, his only major narrative work, Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge ...(Notebook of Malte Laurids Brigge), he tells the story of his own inner suffering during his lonely Paris years.

'With the completion of Malte Laurids Brigge in the winter of 1909/1910, Rilke's Paris time came to an end;....These were the years of an inner crisis, and in his utter restlessness and despair he moved from country to country. Anxious to explore new territories, he traveled in the winter 1910/1911 to North African countries, Algiers, Tunis, and Egypt, and from November 1912 to February 1913 he lived in Spain. Amid the profound hopelessness and frustration of these years, however, was one event which was to change Rilke's whole literary career: Princess Marie of Thurn and Taxis offered him the hospitality of her Castle Duino, near Trieste, on the Dalmatian coast. Here in 1912 he began to compose a series of elegies that were to become his ultimate poetic achievement. They were not, however, completed until 10 years later.
.....
'When the war broke out in August 1914, Rilke was caught in Leipzig and was forced to remain in Germany. Most of the next 5 years he spent in and around Munich, except for 7 months' service in the Austrian army. In the first days of the war, Rilke passed through a brief period of exaltation and wrote his patriotic Fünf Gesänge (Five Songs). But this initial enthusiasm and solidarity with his patriotic countrymen soon gave way to indifference and, finally, to outright opposition to the German war effort.

'In June 1919 Rilke accepted an invitation for a lecture tour in Switzerland, where he remained, except for a few sojourns in Italy and France, including a 7-month stay in Paris in 1925, until the end of his life. During the first year or two, he searched desperately for a refuge where he could take up the cycle of poems that he had left unfinished for so long. He discovered in the summer of 1921 Muzot, a deserted medieval tower, hardly habitable, near Sierre in the canton of Valais. Here in February 1922 he completed within a few days the cycle of poems he had begun in Duino in 1912. Dedicated to his hostess and benefactress, Princess Marie, he called them in gratitude Duineser Elegien (Duino Elegies). Their publication in 1923 marked the high point of his career, and even Rilke himself, critical of his own work, regarded them as his most important achievement. .... They were followed by the Sonette an Orpheus (Sonnets to Orpheus), a total of 55 poems which represent the other aspect of Rilke's vision: his sense of joy, affirmation, and praise.

'In his last years (1923-1926) Rilke turned more and more to French literature, not only translating André Gide and Paul Valéry, but also writing poems in French .... He died of leukemia on Dec. 29, 1926, in a sanatorium in Valmont above Montreux...

'....Though his work was respected by a number of European artists at the time of his death, Rilke was virtually unknown to the general reading public. That anonymity came to an end in 1936, however, when his work was introduced into the English literary world by several translators. In addition to influencing such poets as Stephen Spender, Robert Bly, and W. H. Auden, Rilke's work has interested several philosophers over the years, including Ludwig Wittgenstein. ....'


We conclude this post with some lines from Rilke's "Black Cat."

...
She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen
into her, so that, like an audience,
she can look them over, menacing and sullen,
and curl to sleep with them. But all at once


as if awakened, she turns her face to yours;
and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny,
inside the golden amber of her eyeballs
suspended, like a prehistoric fly.