Rainer Maria Rilke

Lyric poet writing in German. The Duino Elegies and the letters to a young poet sit on either side of his work — one the great public artefact, the other the great private counsel.

Works

• 1903–1908

  Letter

  Letters to a Young Poet

  Ten letters from Rilke to a young military cadet who had asked for an opinion on his poems. Rilke barely answers the question and instead writes about solitude, doubt, and what it is to take one's own work seriously.

• 1912–1922

  Poem

  Duino Elegies

  Ten elegies begun at Duino Castle in 1912 and finished a decade later at Muzot. Rilke's late masterwork — a sustained meditation on beauty, terror, the angelic, and the human.