Sonnets to Orpheus and Duino Elegies

During three feverish weeks in 1922 Rainer Maria Rilke composed the 55 sonnets that constitute <i>Sonnets to Orpheus</i>. Inspired by the death of a friend's daughter the poet felt that he was being compelled to write by the girl's ghost. At about the same time he also completed <i>Duino Elegies </i>which he had begun ten years earlier. Intimately connected to the <i>Sonnets</i> in themes and sensibilities the <i>Elegies </i>offer meditations on love death God and life's meaning that express Rilke's irresolvable conflict between a longing for solitude and a painful loneliness. <br> Although his poetry was recognized and admired by leading European artists the Austro-Bohemian poet was virtually unknown during his lifetime achieving international acclaim only with these final masterpieces. This edition presents translations by Jessie Lemont praised by London's <i>Times Literary Supplement</i> for their presentation of Rilke as a writer of short individual lyrics often of incomparable impressionist vividness plastic vitality and symbolic suggestiveness.