Poem1912–1922German

Duino Elegies

Rainer Maria Rilke

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.

In Res

The opening line of the first elegy — that beauty is the beginning of terror we are still just able to bear — is one of the few things written in the twentieth century that earns the comparison to the Greeks.

Subjects

  • poetry
  • metaphysics
  • death
  • beauty
  • the sublime

Editions

  • 2009

    Paperback

    Vintage International· English / German· 256 pp.

    TranslatorStephen Mitchell

    ISBN-13 9780307473738