Monday, September 5, 2016

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 – 1926) ...Bohemian-Austrian Poet ... Lyrically Intense and Mystical

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Journal Éveillé is an informal exploration of awakened mind in the art of poetry....

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René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926)—better known as Rainer Maria Rilke ......—was a Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist, "widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets", writing in both verse and highly lyrical prose. Several critics have described Rilke's work as inherently "mystical".His writings include one novel, several collections of poetry, and several volumes of correspondence in which he invokes haunting images that focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety. These deeply existential themes tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist writers.

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The Sonnets to Orpheus and the Duino Elegies are considered Rilke's masterpieces and the highest expressions of his talent.

The Sonnets to Orpheus (German: Die Sonette an Orpheus) are a cycle of 55 sonnets written in 1922 by the Bohemian-Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926). It was first published the following year. Rilke, who is "widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets," wrote the cycle in a period of three weeks experiencing what he described a "savage creative storm."

There are 55 sonnets in the sequence, divided into two sections: the first of 26 and the second of 29. The sonnets follow certain trends, but they include many different forms......All of the sonnets are composed of two quatrains followed by two tercets.

The sonnet tradition is not as pronounced in German literature as it is, for example, in English and Italian literature. A possible model for Rilke might have been Charles Baudelaire's 'Les Fleurs du Mal'. Rilke does not at all stick to the formal standards of the German sonnet fashioned by August Wilhelm Schlegel. The rhyme schemes vary, and are generally ABAB CDCD or ABBA CDDC in the quartets, and EEF GGF, EFG EFG or EFG GFE in the triplets. The sonnets are also all metered, but their meters vary more greatly between poems; dactylic and trochaic are the most common feet, with line length varying greatly, sometimes even within a particular sonnet. Due to the frequent use of enjambment Rilke even breaks through the verse structure. Difficulties in understanding the text arise from pronouns lacking clear reference.

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At the same time in February 1922, Rilke had completed work on his deeply philosophical and mystical ten-poem collection entitled Duino Elegies which had taken ten years to complete. The Sonnets to Orpheus and the Duino Elegies are considered Rilke's masterpieces and the highest expressions of his talent.

The Duino Elegies are intensely religious, mystical poems that weigh beauty and existential suffering.

The Duino Elegies (German: Duineser Elegien) are a collection of ten elegies written by the Bohemian-Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926). Rilke, who is "widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets," began writing the elegies in 1912 while a guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis (1855–1934) at Duino Castle, near Trieste on the Adriatic Sea. The poems, 859 lines long in total, were dedicated to the Princess upon their publication in 1923.

While at Duino, Rilke and Princess Marie discussed the possibility of collaborating on a translation of Dante Alighieri's La Vita Nuova (1295)......After the Princess left to join her husband at their Lautschin estate, Rilke spent the next few weeks at the castle preparing to focus on work. While walking along the cliffs overlooking the Adriatic Sea near the castle, Rilke claimed to hear a voice calling to him speaking the words of the first line, Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen? ("Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the hierarchies of angels?") which he quickly wrote in his notebook. Within days, he produced drafts of the first two elegies in the series and drafted passages and fragments that would later be incorporated into later elegies—including the opening passage of the tenth elegy.

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