Including pain And sorrow Part VIII Amsterdam, June 30 2021– According to Robert Musil, Rainer Maria Rilke was the greatest German-speaking poet since the Middle Ages. He had made the poem “perfect for the first time.” Musil made his oft-quoted statements in a 1926 article shortly after Rilke’s death, and at first glance his preference seems…
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Life Itself Part VII Amsterdam, June 30 2021– Different people have different opinions on Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926). Thomas Mann thought he was an “Austrian snob” whose “large-scale affectation” was unpalatable. Robert Musil, on the other hand, called him the most important German-speaking poet since the Middle Ages, a great modernist and prose innovator, too.…
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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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Learning from Art Part V Amsterdam, June 30 2021– “Spiritually speaking, I stay miles away from my bookcase when I write,” says Stefan Hertmans. “Yet reminiscences of other literature haunt my books, quite unconsciously and unintentionally. You can find traces of Rilke’s The Diary of Malte Laurids Brigge in all my prose work.” The poet,…
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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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