Conversations with Rilke
Maurice Betz author Will Stone translator
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Pushkin Press
Publishing:24th Apr '25
£10.99
This title is due to be published on 24th April, and will be despatched as soon as possible.

'I owe Betz infinite gratitude...a first-rate poet, a creative spirit, and a friend to all creative spirits...an ornament to literary France...an artist with words, lovable and worthy of love' - Thomas Mann
'Maurice Betz is one of those artists whose importance only fully appears after they have disappeared' - Marcel Aymé
Walking in the Luxembourg Garden, describing encounters with enigmatic diva Eleonora Duse or an irascible Tolstoy: Rainer Maria Rilke's French translator Maurice Betz enjoyed a rare intimacy with the great poet. This account of their collaborative translation of Rilke's only novel brings the reader along on a tour of the glittering cultural scene of interwar Paris.
An elegant, poignant look at the great writer's final years, Betz's memoir, sensitively translated by Will Stone, is a portrait of genius, an evocation of a lost world, and a testament to enduring friendship.
Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: timeless storytelling by icons of literature, hand-picked from around the globe.
Translated by Will Stone.
Maurice Betz (1898-1946), as well as writing poetry and novels, was a prolific translator of Friedrich Nietzsche, Stefan Zweig and Thomas Mann. He worked closely with Rilke on the French translations of his works while Rilke was alive, and continued translating the poet into French in the decades following his death. He fought in both World Wars and was made a prisoner in the Second. Shortly after the war, he was found dead in a hotel room in Tours, having asked for an early wake-up call.
Will Stone is a poet, essayist and literary translator of French, Franco-Belgian and German literature. His previous translations include Rilke in Paris, also by Maurice Betz, several works by Stefan Zweig, and poems by Georg Trakl and Rainer Maria Rilke, all available from Pushkin Press.
'I owe Betz infinite gratitude...a first-rate poet, a creative spirit, and a friend to all creative spirits...an ornament to literary France...an artist with words, lovable and worthy of love...' -
'Maurice Betz is one of those artists whose importance only fully appears after they have disappeared' - MARCEL AYME
'The Betz translation of The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge constituted a conversation, even a confidence. And this is what makes its perfection so vital. Rilke is more present there than any author translated from book to book. For here was a translation from heart to heart' - JEAN CASSOU
ISBN: 9781805330288
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
224 pages