Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke ([ˈʁaɪnɐ maˈʁiːa ˈʁɪlkə] also Rainer Maria von Rilke) (Prague, Bohemia, then Austro-Hungarian Empire, December 4, 1875-Val-Mont, Switzerland, December 29, 1926) was an Austrian poet and novelist considered one of the most important in German and world literature. His fundamental works are the Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus . In prose, the Letters to a young poet and The notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge stand out. He is also the author of several works in French.

Biography

1875-1896

René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke was born in Prague, in the street then called in German Heinrichsgasse, 19 (the house has disappeared), on December 4, 1875. His childhood and adolescence, which were spent in Prague, were not very happy. His father, Josef Rilke (1838-1906), after a mediocre military career due to his health problems, worked as a railway officer. His mother, Sophie (Phia) Entz (1851-1931), came from a family of Prague industrialists (of Jewish origin, but converted to Christianity to escape anti-Semitism). The marriage broke up in 1884, as Sophie left Prague to settle at the court in Vienna, trying to assert her noble claims. The relationship between the mother and her only child was problematic. Sophie had not been able to get over the early death of her firstborn and she dressed René (in French, & # 39; Reborn & # 39;) as a girl until she was five years old. Sophie Entz survived her son by five years.

Forced by his father, René entered the Sankt Pölten Secondary Military School in 1886, which he would later describe as an "alphabet of horrors." In 1891 René left the military school due to health problems. He was also at the Linz business school. Between 1892 and 1895 he received private lessons to prepare for the university entrance examination, which he passed successfully in 1895. In 1895 and 1896 he studied literature, art history, and philosophy in Prague and then in Munich. After leaving Prague, Rilke changed his first name from René to Rainer, perhaps to express his dislike for the family.

His first book of poems, Life and Songs (Leben und Lieder), heavily influenced by the poetry of Heinrich Heine, was published in 1894. In the following years He printed other works: Ofrenda a los lares (Larenopfer), in 1895; and Crown of Dreams (Traumgekrönt), in 1896.

1897-1902

In Munich, in 1897, Rainer Maria Rilke met Lou Andreas-Salomé (1861-1937), a former acquaintance of Friedrich Nietzsche, married and fourteen years his senior, with whom he had a passionate affair that would last until 1899. Even after their separation, Lou Andreas-Salomé remained Rilke's main confidante until the poet's death in 1926. Through her, who was a student of Sigmund Freud in 1912 and 1913, Rilke came to know about psychoanalysis.

In 1898 Rilke undertook a several-week tour of Italy. In 1899 he traveled to Russia, and in Moscow he met Leo Tolstoy. Between May and August 1900 he made a second trip to Russia, accompanied by Lou Andreas-Salomé, in which he visited Moscow and Saint Petersburg. In these years he worked on The Book of Hours ( Das Stundenbuch ), which would be published in 1905.

In the autumn of 1900, Rilke took up residence in the artists' colony of Worpswede, near Bremen, where he met the painter Paula Modersohn-Becker, author of a well-known portrait of the poet, and the sculptor Clara Westhoff (1878- 1954), whom he married the following spring. Their daughter Ruth (1901-1972) was born in December 1901. However, a few months later, in the summer of 1902, Rilke moved to Paris with the intention of write an essay on the sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840-1917). Although he maintained his relationship with Clara Westhoff for the rest of his life, Rilke did not know how to adapt to living in a middle-class home.

1902-1910

At the beginning of his stay in Paris, Rilke experienced serious difficulties, which he refers to in his semi-autobiographical work The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. However, his encounter with Parisian artists and intellectuals was very stimulating for him. He was enthusiastic about the sculpture of Auguste Rodin and the painting of Paul Cézanne (1839-1906). At this time he also met the Spanish painter Ignacio Zuloaga. In the following years, Paris ended up becoming the main residence of the writer, who would continue making continuous trips to Italy, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium and France, as well as various cities in Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, always staying in houses of friends. Between 1905 and 1906 he was secretary of Auguste Rodin.

The most important works of the Parisian period were Neue Gedichte (New Poems) (1907), Der neuen Gedichte anderer Teil (Second part of the New Poems) (1908), Requiem (1909) and the novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, begun in 1904 and completed in January 1910. This last work consists of a series of spiritual confessions supposedly written by a Dane in exile in Paris, and has an important autobiographical component.

1910-1919

Duino Castle.

After the publication of The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (1910), Rilke suffered a prolonged creative crisis that did not cease completely until February 1922, the year in which he completed the Elegies of Duino, which had begun in 1912. This book of poems owes its name to Rilke's stay in the castle of Duino (near Trieste), owned by his friend and protector Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis, between October 1911 and May 1912. To face this crisis, he undertook the translation of Louise Labé's sonnets, and continued to work slowly on his poetic work.

In September 1912, while in Venice, he wrote a letter "I want to be Toledo", and two months later he traveled to Spain. He visited several cities (Toledo, Córdoba, Seville). He lived for more than two months in the Malaga city of Ronda, working on the Sixth of the Elegías de Duino . An admirer of El Greco and a lover of the city of the Tagus, he wrote:""City where the gazes of the living, the dead and angels converge... There is nothing like Toledo -if one he abandons to his influence- that he gives such an elevated image of the supersensible; things have an intensity there that is not common, and that is not visible on a daily basis: it is the intensity of an apparition...". Toledo is for the poet "the natural homeland of angels".

The outbreak of World War I surprised Rilke in Germany. He was unable to return to Paris, where his property was confiscated and auctioned off as a subject of an enemy country. He spent most of the war in Munich. Between 1914 and 1916 he had a turbulent affair with the painter Lou Albert-Lasard.

In early 1916, Rilke was called up and forced to join the Austro-Hungarian army in Vienna. Influential friends interceded for him and on June 9 of that same year he was released from military service. He returned to Munich, where he stayed until the end of the war, with a brief stay in Bieren (Westphalia), at the home of Hertha König. The traumatic experience of military service, which reminded her of his formative years at the Sankt Pölten Military School, nearly ended his career as a poet.

1919-1926

Tomb of Rilke in the cemetery of Raron, Switzerland.

On June 11, 1919, Rilke traveled from Munich to Switzerland. The ostensible reason for the trip was an invitation to hold a conference in Zurich, but the real reason was a desire to escape the postwar chaos and continue his work with the Duino Elegies . He found it difficult to find a suitable place to settle, and he successively resided in various Swiss towns, such as Soglio, Locarno and Berg am Irchel. Only in the summer of 1921 did he establish his permanent residence at the castle of Muzot, near Sierre, in Valais. In May 1922 Rilke's patron, Werner Reinhart (1884-1951), bought the building to save Rilke from paying rent.

In an intensely creative period, Rilke completed the Duino Elegies within a few weeks, in February 1922. Before and after that date he worked on The Sonnets to Orpheus.

From 1923 Rilke had to face a serious health problem that required a prolonged stay in the Schöneck sanatorium and then in the Val-Mont sanatorium. His trip to Paris, where he lived between January and August 1925, was also an attempt to escape the disease, considering that a change of residence and habits could be beneficial.

Despite his illness, he wrote numerous poems between 1923 and 1926, including "Gong" and "Mausoleum," as well as an extensive lyrical work in French. During these years he had a relationship with the artist Baladine (Elisabeth Dorothea Spiro), whose son became over the years the well-known painter Balthus (Balthasar Klossowski).

Only after his death was it known that Rilke's disease was leukemia. The poet died on December 29, 1926 in the Swiss sanatorium of Val-Mont, and was buried on January 2, 1927 in the Raron cemetery (Valais town). He himself chose the epitaph for him:

Rose, oh reiner Widerspruch, Lust,
Niemandes Schlaf zu sein unter soviel
Lead.

Rosa, oh pure contradiction, delight
to be nobody's dream under so many
eyelids.

Selection of works

Complete Works

• Rainer Maria Rilke, Sämtliche Werke in 12 Bänden (Complete Works in 12 Volumes), published by Rilke Archive in association with Ruth Sieber-Rilke, supplied by Ernst Zinn. Frankfurt am Main (1976)
• Rainer Maria Rilke, Werke (Works). Edition in four volumes with commentary and supplementary volume, published by Manfred Engel, Ulrich Fülleborn, Dorothea Lauterbach, Horst Nalewski and August Stahl. Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig (1996 and 2003)

Volumes of poetry

Réquiem from Rilke.

• Leben und Lieder (Life and songs) (1894)
• Larenopfer (Ophage to the Lares) (1895)
• Traumgekrönt (Coron of dreams) (1897)
• Advent (Advent) (1898)
• Mir zur Feier (1909)
• Das Stunden-Buch (The Hour Book)
  • Das Buch vom mönchischen Leben (The Book of Monastic Life) (1899)
  • Das Buch von der Pilgerschaft (The Book of Pilgrimage) (1901)
  • Das Buch von der Armut und vom Tode (The Book of Poverty and Death) (1903)
• Das Buch der Bilder (The Book of Images) (four parts, 1902-1906)
• Neue Gedichte (New poems) (1907)
• Duineser Elegien (Elegías de Duino) (1923)
• Sonette an Orpheus (Sounds to Orpheus) (1923)

Prose

• Geschichten vom Lieben Gott (History of the Good God) (Collection of narrations, 1900)
• Auguste Rodin (1903)
• Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke (The Song of Love and Death of the Ensign Cristóbal Rilke) (Irical Narration, 1906)
• Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge (The notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge) (Novela, 1910)

Letters

Complete letters

• Gesammelte Briefe in sechs Bänden (Collected Letters in Six Volumes), published by Ruth Sieber-Rilke and Carl Sieber. Leipzig (1936-1939)
• Briefe (Letters), published by the Rilke Archive de Weimar. Two volumes, Wiesbaden (1950, reprinted in 1987 in one volume).
• Briefe in Zwei Bänden (Letters in two volumes(Horst Nalewski, Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1991)

Other volumes of letters

• Briefe an Auguste Rodin (Insel Verlag, 1928)
• Briefwechsel mit Marie von Thurn und Taxis, two volumes, edited by Ernst Zinn with a forward by Rudolf Kassner (Editions Max Niehans, 1954)
• Briefwechsel mit Thankmar von Münchhausen 1913 bis 1925 (Suhrkamp Insel Verlag, 2004)
• Briefwechsel mit Rolf von Ungern-Sternberg und weitere Dokumente zur Übertragung der Stances von Jean Moréas (Suhrkamp Insel Verlag, 2002)

Books about Rilke

Biographies

• Ralph Freedman, Life of a Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke, New York 1996.
• Donald Prater, A Ringing Glass: The Life of Rainer Maria Rilke, Oxford University Press, 1994.
• Paul Torgersen, Dear Friend: Rainer Maria Rilke and Paula Modersohn-BeckerNorthwestern University Press, 1998.

Studies

• A Companion to the Works of Rainer Maria Rilkeed. Erika A and Michael M. Metzger, Rochester 2001.
• Rilke Handbuch: Leben - Werk - Wirkunged. Manfred Engel and Dorothea Lauterbach, Stuttgart and Weimar 2004.
• Goldsmith, Ulrich, ed. (1980). Rainer Maria Rilke, to see concordance to his complete lyrical poetry. Leeds: W.S. Maney.
• Mood, John J. L. Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties. New York: W. W. Norton 1975, reissue 2004. ISBN 0-393-31098-1.
• Mood, John. Rilke on Death and Other Oddities. Philadelphia: Xlibris, 2006. ISBN 1-4257-2818-9.
• Pechota Vuilleumier, Cornelia. Heim und Unheimlichkeit bei Rainer Maria Rilke und Lou Andreas-Salomé. Literarische Wechselwirkungen. Olms, Hildesheim 2010. ISBN 978-3-487-14252-4
• Schwarz, Egon. Poetry and politics in the works of Rainer Maria Rilke. Frederick Ungar, 1981. ISBN 978-0-8044-2811-8.