The Sonnets to Orpheus

The fifty-five Sonnets to Orpheus were written by Rilke in February 1922 in less than two weeks. Their central themes are Orpheus and his song of praise; what is sung is Dasein being- here the presence in the world. Rilke considered as a betrayal of his poetry any translation that would not reproduce together with his thinking his internal movement his rhythm his rhymes his music. The goal of the translator has been to make that orchestration heard as much as possible to try and reproduce the structure rhyme and rhythm of Rilke's Sonnets in order for these translations to sound as echoes of the originals.