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Duino Elegies
are the ten magnificent poems that defined the Austrian poet, Rainer
Maria Rilke's artistic vision of life, death, eternity, and the human
condition. Marie
von Thurn und Taxis-Hohenlohe invited Rilke to stay at her castle in
Duino, on
the coast of the Adriatic Sea near Trieste.
He stayed alone in the castle for about four months and, on a cold day in
January, 1912, when he was contemplating how to answer a business letter that
he received, he walked out into the freezing windy morning and, walking along a
path by the bastions looking down at the violent waves of the Adriatic a couple
of hundred feet below him, he heard someone speak, but when he turned around,
he was alone and the voice that he heard spoke the famous opening lines of the
First Elegy: "Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel/ Ordnungen?"
("Who,
if I cried out, would hear me among the
Angelic/ Orders?"). Dr. Gartner presents a new translation of
Rilke's magnum opus as well as of a selection of ten famous poems from
Rilke's collected works.
About the author
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 4, 1875-December 29, 1926) was an Austrian poet and writer. Known for his lyrically potent work, he combined subjective mysticism with precise observation of the objective world. At the time of his death, Rilke's work was incredibly admired by certain circles of European artists, but mostly unknown to the public. Since then, his popularity has grown steadily, and he has come to be universally regarded as a master of verse.
