A Companion to the Works of Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) is the best-known German poet of his generation and is widely appreciated today by readers in Europe the United States and world-wide. Because of the inventiveness and musicality of his poetic language and the visionary intuition of his thinking Rilke's influence extends well beyond poetry to include religion philosophy the social sciences and the arts. His works have been widely translated into English and new renderings of such cycles as the Duino Elegies appear frequently. Critics regard The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge as a seminal modern novel and Rilke is one of the very few writers in German to be recognized internationally among the twentieth century's greatest authors. The Companion to Rilke provides essential up-to-date analyses of a range of the major aspects of Rilke's works. The volume follows the chronology of Rilke's career emphasizing those works that have met with the greatest critical interest. The essays include: Patricia P. Brodsky Colored Glass and Mirrors: Life with Rilke; James Rolleston The Poetry and Poetics of the Young Rilke 1895-1902; Judith Ryan Rilke's Early Narratives; Ralph FreedmanDas Stunden-Buch Das Buch der Bilder>: Harbingers of Rilke's Maturity; Lawrence Ryan Neue Gedichte-New Poems; George C. Schoolfield Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge; Kathleen Komar Rethinking Rilke's Duineser Elegien; Alan Keele Poesis and the Great Tree of Being: A Holistic Reading of Rilke's Die Sonette an Orpheus; Gerhard Bucher Rilke's Poetry in the French Language: The Enigma of Mythopoietic Reversal; Karl E. Webb Rilke and the Visual Arts. ~~~~~ ERIKA METZGER and MICHAEL METZGER (SUNY Buffalo) have written extensively on various aspects of German literature and have edited significant Baroque texts.