Kita mesti menyatu dengan getaran universum, lalu melalui tindakan ruhani jangan cuma mencipta hal-hal ruhani, melainkan—barangkali—bahkan mencipta bintang-bintang baru. (Rilke) Tebaslah tangan, kaki, lidah, dan leher Rilke, ia bakal tetap bersikeras membopong cinta dengan darahnya. Sayap-sayap asmara menyusun kembali jiwanya menjadi angsa yang anggun dan kikuk berenangan di danau kenangan. (Agus R. Sarjono, "Rilke")
Author
A mystic lyricism and precise imagery often marked verse of German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, whose collections profoundly influenced 20th-century German literature and include The Book of Hours (1905) and The Duino Elegies (1923). People consider him of the greatest 20th century users of the language. His haunting images tend to focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety—themes that tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist poets. His two most famous sequences include the Sonnets to Orpheus , and his most famous prose works include the Letters to a Young Poet and the semi-autobiographical The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge . He also wrote more than four hundred poems in French, dedicated to the canton of Valais in Switzerland, his homeland of choice.
