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Sonnets to Orpheus, Bilingual Edition

Rainer M Rilke author C F MacIntyre translator

Format:Paperback

Publisher:University of California Press

Published:16th May '01

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Sonnets to Orpheus, Bilingual Edition cover

Written with astonishing rapidity in two weeks of February 1922, when Rilke was finally completing the Duino Elegies that had occupied him intermittently for a decade, Sonnets to Orpheus is a series of fifty-five brilliant and affirmative songs. It is in a sense a spontaneous creative dividend generated by a larger work. Because the sonnets were written only four years before Rilke's death, they belong properly to his final and philosophic period, and offer a sharp and striking contrast to the less mystical Das Buch der Bilder and Neue Gedichte. Rainer Maria Rilke was one of Germany's most important poets. His influences include the paintings of the Worpswedders and the French Impressionists, the sculpture of Rodin (to whom he was both friend and secretary), and the poetry of Baudelaire, Verlaine, Mallarme, and other symbolists. His poetry is innovative, enigmatic, and entertainingly idiosyncratic. C.F. MacIntyre's translations are both true to the original and poetic in their own right, and in each book he includes an introduction and notes. German text faces the English translation.

ISBN: 9780520229228

Dimensions: 184mm x 108mm x 13mm

Weight: 136g

160 pages