Part VI Amsterdam, June 30 2021– Rainer Maria Rilke’s last great love was a woman he called Merline, whose real name was Baladine Klossowska. Rilke had met this painter, eleven years her junior, in Paris before the First World War. In 1919 he renewed contact with her when both were living in Switzerland, and until his…
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The Student and Teacher Part IV Amsterdam, June 30 2021– Strange, but true: Rilke is popular. New editions of his work appear regularly and he is widely read, especially in the circles of theo-, anthroposophists and ex-believers. In America there has been a small Rilke cult for some time. He is raved about, especially by…
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Read Rilke or the Artist as a Teacher Part III Amsterdam, June 30 2021– Writers are often asked: why do you write? Readers are never asked: why do you read? Literary theory does indeed look at all kinds of aspects of a work of art, but something is grossly neglected, according to literary scholar Jan…
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And yet so rich and easy Part II Amsterdam, 30 june 2021– One often hears that Rilke’s poetry is so difficult, so very incomprehensible. This is true for his mystical late work, but not for the poems from his middle period. These are surprisingly concrete and clear, if you make any effort to follow the…
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Part I Rainer Maria Rilke: Diary from Florence (Das Florenzer Tagebuch). Amsterdam, 30 june 2021–Rainer Maria Rilke was twenty-two when he traveled to Italy to view the art treasures of the early Renaissance. In his Florentine diary, which he wrote not in Florence but in the fashionable seaside resort of Viareggio, the young student makes…
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