The great German poet regarded these meditations on love, death, God, and life's meaning as his greatest achievement. Innovative and enigmatic, the enduringly popular elegies express Rilke's longing for solitude and his painful loneliness. These excellent translations are both true to the originals [...]

In 1902, a nineteen-year-old aspiring poet named Franz Kappus wrote to Rilke, then twenty-six, seeking advice on his poetry. Kappus, a student at a military academy in Vienna similar to the one Rilke had attended, was about to embark on a career as an officer, for which he had little inclination. To[...]

Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet are arguably the most famous and beloved letters of the twentieth century. Written when the poet was himself still a young man, with most of his greatest work before him, they were addressed to a student who had sent Rilke some of his own writing, asking for advice on[...]

This is the definitive, widely acclaimed translation of the major prose work of one of our century's greatest poets -- "a masterpiece like no other" (Elizabeth Hardwick) -- Rilke's only novel, extraordinary for its structural uniqueness and purity of language. First published in 1910, it has proven [...]

In this outstanding biography, Ralph Freedman traces Rilke's extraordinary career by combining detailed accounts of salient episodes from the poet's restless life with an intimate reading of the verse and prose that refract them.[...]

Now substantially revised by Edward Snow, whom Denise Levertov once called "far and away Rilke's best translator," this bilingual edition of "The Book of Images contains a number of the great poet's previously untranslated pieces. Also included are several of Rilke's best-loved lyrics, such as "Autu[...]

"Rainer Maria Rilke was one of Germany's most important poets. His influences include the paintings of the Worpswedders and the French Impressionists, the sculpture of Rodin (to whom he was both friend and secretary), and the poetry of Baudelaire, Verlaine, Mallarme and other symbolists. His poetry [...]

Originallly published as four clothbound editions ("The Roses and The Windows, "The Astonishment of Origins, "Orchards, and "The Migration of Powers), this large paperback brings together all of Rilke's French poems, as well as his hitherto unpublished "Dedications and Fragments, in an exquisite Eng[...]