Rilke in Paris

By Rainer Maria Rilke

2012

First Published

3.51

Average Rating

120

Number of Pages

3H39M

Audio Length

One of the most significant German-language poets of the last century offers a compelling portrait of Parisian life, art, and culture at the beginning of the 20th century In 1902, the young German writer Rainer Maria Rilke traveled to Paris to write a monograph on the sculptor Auguste Rodin. He returned many times over the course of his life, by turns inspired and appalled by the city's high culture and low society, and his writings give a fascinating insight into Parisian art and culture in the last century. Paris was a lifelong source of inspiration for Rilke. Perhaps most significantly, the letters he wrote about it formed the basis of his prose masterpiece, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge . Much of this work, despite its perennial popularity in French, German, and Italian, has never before been translated into English. This volume brings together a new translation of Rilke's essay on poetry, "Notes on the Melody of Things," and the first English translation of Rilke's experiences in Paris as observed by his French translator.

Avg Rating

3.51

Number of Ratings

104

5 STARS

11%

4 STARS

38%

3 STARS

46%

2 STARS

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.