LARENOPFER

By Rainer Maria Rilke

1896

First Published

3.20

Average Rating

176

Number of Pages

5H22M

Audio Length

René Maria Rilke was born in Prague on 4 December 1875 and died near Montreux in Switzerland, on 29 December 1926. The foremost lyric German poet of the last century, he is remembered primarily for his Duino Elegies, the Sonnets to Orpheus, the Neue Gedichte, the Buch der Bilder and the Stundenbuch. Although his mature poetry has been translated into many languages, his early poetry remains accessible only in the original German. This translation of the Larenopfer, or offerings to the household god Lar, are songs that Rilke sings to his hometown Prague and to his beloved Bohemia, short poems on the parks, fountains, churches, bridges and palaces of Prague, not forgetting Rabbi Löw s legends, the Jewish cemetery, the Thirty Years War and, of course, young love. This cycle of 90 poems offers the reader a unique view into Rilke s fascinating world, the turn-of-the-century atmosphere of Prague, then the third largest city in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Here a young German of the settled bourgeoisie shows great appreciation of contemporary Czech literary works and enthusiasm for the cause of Czech cultural identity. The book therefore possesses not only literary merit but is also of considerable sociological and historical interest.

Avg Rating

3.20

Number of Ratings

5 STARS

10%

4 STARS

30%

3 STARS

30%

2 STARS

30%

1 STARS

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Author

Rainer Maria Rilke

Author · 74 books

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.