Ahead of All Parting: The Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke

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Random House Publishing Group, Aug 1, 1995 - Poetry - 640 pages
The reputation of Rainer Maria Rilke has grown steadily since his death in 1926; today he is widely considered to be the greatest poet of the twentieth century. This Modern Library edition presents Stephen Mitchell’s acclaimed translations of Rilke, which have won praise for their re-creation of the poet’s rich formal music and depth of thought. “If Rilke had written in English,” Denis Donoghue wrote in The New York Times Book Review, “he would have written in this English.” Ahead of All Parting is an abundant selection of Rilke’s lifework. It contains representative poems from his early collections The Book of Hours and The Book of Pictures; many selections from the revolutionary New Poems, which drew inspiration from Rodin and Cezanne; the hitherto little-known “Requiem for a Friend”; and a generous selection of the late uncollected poems, which constitute some of his finest work. Included too are passages from Rilke’s influential novel, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, and nine of his brilliant uncollected prose pieces. Finally, the book presents the poet’s two greatest masterpieces in their entirety: the Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus. “Rilke’s voice, with its extraordinary combination of formality, power, speed and lightness, can be heard in Mr. Mitchell’s versions more clearly than in any others,” said W. S. Merwin. “His work is masterful.”
 

Contents

I live my life in widening rings
5
Lament
13
The Blindmans Song
19
The Dwarfs Song
25
The Panther
31
Going Blind
39
Portrait of My Father as a Young
45
Tombs of the Hetaerae
51
Now it is time that gods came walking out
193
Gong
199
For Veronika Erdmann
205
Dove that ventured outside
211
SECOND PART
217
Faces
245
Fears
251
Ibsen
258

Orpheus Eurydice Hermes
55
Alcestis
61
Archaic Torso of Apollo
67
The Flamingos
73
Requiem for a Friend
79
To Lou AndreasSalomé
97
The Spanish Trilogy
103
Ariel
109
Ignorant before the heavens of my life
115
Behind the innocent trees
121
Turningpoint
127
We Must Die Because We Have Known Them
133
Again and again however we know the landscape of love
139
You you only exist
145
We in the struggling nights
151
Imaginary Career
157
For Max Picard
163
As once the wingèd energy of delight
169
Duration of Childhood
175
Palm
181
O Lacrimosa
187
Neighbors
266
The Prodigal Son
272
The Lion Cage
281
Acrobats
288
Primal Sound
299
The Young Workmans Letter
308
DUINO ELEGIES 1923
329
The Second Elegy
339
The Third Elegy
345
The Fourth Elegy
351
The Fifth Elegy
357
The Sixth Elegy
365
The Eighth Elegy
377
The Ninth Elegy
383
The Tenth Elegy
389
Fragment of an Elegy
399
Antistrophes
405
IV
541
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
599
INDEX OF TITLES AND FIRST LINES ENGLISH
609
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About the author (1995)

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) is one of the greatest lyric German poets. Born in Prague, he published his first book of poems, Leben und Lieber, at age nineteen. He met Lou Salomé, the talented and spirited daughter of a Russian army officer, who influenced him deeply. In 1902 he became a friend, and for a time the secretary, of Rodin, and it was during his twelve-year Paris residence that Rilke enjoyed his greatest poetic activity. In 1919 he went to Switzerland where he spent the last years of his life. It was there that he wrote his last two works, Duino Elegies (1923) and The Sonnets to Orpheus (1923).
 
Stephen Mitchell was born in Brooklyn in 1943 and studied at Amherst, the University of Paris, and Yale. Considered one of the preeminent translators of his generation, he has translated many classic texts including Gilgamesh, The Bhagavad Gita, Tao Te Ching, and The Book of Job.

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