Sonnets to Orpheus

Technically great, occasionally beautiful and thought-provoking, often silly imagery and it can be a bit of a drag. I prefer other Rilke.

Regarding this edition, it features a Dutch translation & the original German right next to each other so you can fall back without having to use grab a dictionary; good presentation.

Great translation with lots of helpful notes and analytical essays

Even as the farmer labors
there where the seed turns into summer,
it is not his work. It is Earth who gives.

Despite the parched ground it is but a shade of spring outside. The world appears geared to disrupt such edenic days with the distant rumble of foreign thunder and a blurred blunder on the button.

There were flashes here which I truly admired but not others. My hazed judgement might conceal a concern or two -- perhaps it doesn't. This series didn't engender thought so I'm moving on.

Read a different edition than this. Had the original German across from the English verses, which I appreciated. I don't know enough Ovid to really appreciate this so lots of it was lost on me.

A seductive, if corny, idea that permeates Rilke's poetry is that death can bring about transformations in the world of the living—as in "the dead, those who strengthen the earth" in one of these Sonnets. For passionate readers, Rilke is the patron saint of poetry, a Mecca to be visited in life's most difficult or introspective moments. Most of the sonnets sing of life and death as a cosmic experience. Lines like "All that we have gained the machine threatens, while / it dares to exist as an idea, not an obedient tool" reflect our modern paranoia about the current Third Industrial Revolution, as well as Rilke's own anti-modernism. He was often conceptual through imagistic reflections, as, for example, in: "Desire for transformation. show more Ah, be a voracious fire in which something that rises in change forever escapes you; that directing Spirit that projects the flowering of the earth loves above all, in the élan of the figure, the moment of turning."
Rilke had an obsession with the now, with taking in the moment, with, at the same time, awareness and appreciation of death, of the temporariness of things. He seemingly wanted to embrace death. He also had a love of mythology that comes through, especially as an idea remembered, often returning to Orpheus to tie into a music in nature and in our deepest darkest mental spaces. NB however that most of the stuff seems to be swirling around unreachable places, and this left me with more feelings than understanding. Sometimes it just seemed he just out there. Also, poetry in translation always seems to have lost something. It was altogether more enjoyable that I had imagined. It was never unpleasant, but it is a little strange and frustrating that I never REALLY got Rainer Maria... show less

Estos sonetos, nacidos bajo la excusa de epitafio a la bailarina Wera Oukama, cuya enfermedad y muerte tanto impresionaron al poeta, constituyen una versión apolínea —y no sólo por el formalismo estrófico— de ciertos temas concretos vinculados a la iluminación general de las Elegías de Duino.

Rainer Maria Rilke, född René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke 4 december 1875 i Prag, död 29 december 1926 på Valmont-sanatoriet i Montreux, Schweiz, är en tyskspråkig lyriker som betraktas som en av det tyska språkets främsta poeter.

Han skrev både i vers och med en väldigt lyrisk prosa. Hans två mest kända versesekvenser är Die Sonette an Orpheus och Duineser Elegien medan hans två mest kända verk är Briefe an einen jungen Dichter och den semibiografiska Malte Laurids Brigges anteckningar. Hans omfattade brevväxling är också en viktig del av hans litterära verk. Han skrev dessutom över 400 dikter på franska, som dedicerades till hans valda hemland, kantonen Valais i Schweiz.

Under en intensiv kreativ period show more färdiggjorde Rilke Duineser Elegien inom bara några veckor i februari 1922. Före och efter skrev han båda delarna av poemet Die Sonette an Orpheus. Båda verken anses vara höjdpunkterna av Rilkes arbete. show less