Duino Elegies

Perhaps no cycle of poems in any European language has made so profound and lasting an impact on an English-speaking readership as Rilke's Duino Elegies. These luminous new translations by Martyn Crucefix make it marvellously clear how the poem is committed to the real world observed with acute and visionary intensity. Completed in 1922, the same year as the publication of Eliot's The Waste Land, the Elegies constitute a magnificent godless poem in their rejection of the transcendent and their passionate celebration of the here and now. Troubled by our insecure place in this world and our fractured relationship with death, the Elegies are nevertheless populated by a throng of vivid and affecting figures: acrobats, lovers, angels, mothers, fathers, statues, salesmen, actors and children. This bilingual edition offers twenty-first century readers a new opportunity to experience the power of Rilke's enduring masterpiece.

Perhaps no cycle of poems in any European language has made so profound and lasting an impact on an English-speaking readership as Rilke's Duino Elegies. These luminous new translations by Martyn Crucefix make it marvellously clear how the poem is committed to the real world observed with acute and visionary intensity. Completed in 1922, the same year as the publication of Eliot's The Waste Land, the Elegies constitute a magnificent godless poem in their rejection of the transcendent and their passionate celebration of the here and now. Troubled by our insecure place in this world and our fractured relationship with death, the Elegies are nevertheless populated by a throng of vivid and affecting figures: acrobats, lovers, angels, mothers, fathers, statues, salesmen, actors and children. This bilingual edition offers twenty-first century readers a new opportunity to experience the power of Rilke's enduring masterpiece.

The captivating original English translation of Rilke's landmark poetry cycle, by Vita and Edward Sackville-West In 1931, Virginia and Leonard Woolf's Hogarth Press published a beautiful edition of Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies , in English translation by the writers Vita and Edward Sackville-West. This marked the English debut of Rilke's masterpiece, which would go on to influence countless poets, musicians and artists across the English-speaking world. Now published for the first time in 90 years, the Sackville-Wests' translation is both a fascinating historical document and a magnificent blank-verse rendering of Rilke's poetry cycle. Featuring a new introduction from critic Lesley Chamberlain, this reissue casts one of European literature's great masterpieces in fresh light. Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: timeless storytelling by icons of literature, hand-picked from around the globe. Translated by Vita Sackville-West and Edward Sackville-West Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) is considered one of the greatest German-language writers to have ever lived. He is best known for his Duino Elegies , Sonnets to Orpheus , and The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge .

The captivating original English translation of Rilke's landmark poetry cycle, by Vita and Edward Sackville-West In 1931, Virginia and Leonard Woolf's Hogarth Press published a beautiful edition of Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies , in English translation by the writers Vita and Edward Sackville-West. This marked the English debut of Rilke's masterpiece, which would go on to influence countless poets, musicians and artists across the English-speaking world. Now published for the first time in 90 years, the Sackville-Wests' translation is both a fascinating historical document and a magnificent blank-verse rendering of Rilke's poetry cycle. Featuring a new introduction from critic Lesley Chamberlain, this reissue casts one of European literature's great masterpieces in fresh light. Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: timeless storytelling by icons of literature, hand-picked from around the globe. Translated by Vita Sackville-West and Edward Sackville-West Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) is considered one of the greatest German-language writers to have ever lived. He is best known for his Duino Elegies , Sonnets to Orpheus , and The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge .

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angelic orders? and even if one of them pressed me suddenly to his heart: I'd be consumed in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we can just barely endure, and we stand in awe of it as it coolly disdains to destroy us. Every angel is terrifying. -from The First Elegy Over the last fifteen years, in his two volumes of New Poems as well as in T he Book of Images and Uncollected Poems , Edward Snow has emerged as one of Rainer Maria Rilke's most able English-language interpreters. In his translations, Snow adheres faithfully to the intent of Rilke's German while constructing nuanced, colloquial poems in English. Written in a period of spiritual crisis between 1912 and 1922, the poems that compose the Duino Elegies are the ones most frequently identified with the Rilkean sensibility. With their symbolic landscapes, prophetic proclamations, and unsettling intensity, these complex and haunting poems rank among the outstanding visionary works of the century.

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angelic orders? and even if one of them pressed me suddenly to his heart: I'd be consumed in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we can just barely endure, and we stand in awe of it as it coolly disdains to destroy us. Every angel is terrifying. -from The First Elegy Over the last fifteen years, in his two volumes of New Poems as well as in T he Book of Images and Uncollected Poems , Edward Snow has emerged as one of Rainer Maria Rilke's most able English-language interpreters. In his translations, Snow adheres faithfully to the intent of Rilke's German while constructing nuanced, colloquial poems in English. Written in a period of spiritual crisis between 1912 and 1922, the poems that compose the Duino Elegies are the ones most frequently identified with the Rilkean sensibility. With their symbolic landscapes, prophetic proclamations, and unsettling intensity, these complex and haunting poems rank among the outstanding visionary works of the century.

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) is one of Germany's major Modernist poets, notable for the lyric intensity of his work. He considered the Duino Elegies - a cycle of ten poems written in inspirational bursts between 1912 and 1922 - to be his major achievement. The restless movement of these poems reflects his lifelong struggle to reconcile the dichotomies of joy and suffering, life and death, masculine and feminine, that ruled his life. They remain powerful testaments to Rilke's struggles with the mysteries of existence and the endlessly opening miracle of the everyday. Alison Croggon's radical new translation captures the energies of the German poems with an urgent, acute clarity. As she says in her introductory essay: 'The turbulent currents that make the Elegies so enthralling are generated by the dynamic contradictions of a mind acutely conscious of its own movements.... The poems are not "about" life: rather, they are a startling mimesis of its instability and transience.' 'Alison Croggon's transformative and impassioned translation of Rilke's Duino Elegies attempt the extraordinary... Signature, regret, pain, trauma, wonder, euphoria, wonder, rapture and an immersion in the senses are all contained in the crispness and experiential sensibility that guides Croggon's relationship with the original poems. Croggon lives in the wild beauty of these elegies and makes them glow in translation... This is an incendiary work.' - John Kinsella Printed en face with the German text and with an afterword and notes by the translator. Preface by John Kinsella. Shortlisted for the 2023 NSW Premier's Literary Awards Translation Prize 'Alison Croggon's poems offer something intense, difficult and fragile, but simultaneously intimate and hugely rewarding in the reading.' - Cordite Poetry Review 'Alison Croggon is one of the most powerful lyric poets writing today.' - Australian Book Review

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) is one of Germany's major Modernist poets, notable for the lyric intensity of his work. He considered the Duino Elegies - a cycle of ten poems written in inspirational bursts between 1912 and 1922 - to be his major achievement. The restless movement of these poems reflects his lifelong struggle to reconcile the dichotomies of joy and suffering, life and death, masculine and feminine, that ruled his life. They remain powerful testaments to Rilke's struggles with the mysteries of existence and the endlessly opening miracle of the everyday. Alison Croggon's radical new translation captures the energies of the German poems with an urgent, acute clarity. As she says in her introductory essay: 'The turbulent currents that make the Elegies so enthralling are generated by the dynamic contradictions of a mind acutely conscious of its own movements.... The poems are not "about" life: rather, they are a startling mimesis of its instability and transience.' 'Alison Croggon's transformative and impassioned translation of Rilke's Duino Elegies attempt the extraordinary... Signature, regret, pain, trauma, wonder,euphoria, wonder, rapture and an immersion in the senses are all contained in the crispness and experiential sensibility that guides Croggon's relationship with the original poems. Croggon lives in the wild beauty of these elegies and makes them glow in translation... This is an incendiary work.'- John Kinsella Printed en face with the German text and with an afterword and notes by the translator. Preface by John Kinsella. Shortlisted for the 2023 NSW Premier's Literary Awards Translation Prize 'Alison Croggon's poems offer something intense, difficult and fragile, but simultaneously intimate and hugely rewarding in the reading.' - Cordite Poetry Review 'Alison Croggon is one of the most powerful lyric poets writing today.' - Australian Book Review

We have a marvelous, almost legendary, image of the circumstances in which the composition of this great poem began. Rilke was staying at a castle (Duino) on the sea near Trieste. One morning he walked out on the battlements and climbed down to where the rocks dropped sharply to the sea. From out of the wind, which was blowing with great force, Rilke seemed to hear a voice: Wer, wenn ich schriee, horte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen? (If I cried out, who would hear me up there, among the angelic orders?). He wrote these words, the opening of the first Duino Elegy, in his notebook, then went inside to continue what was to be his major work and one of the literary masterpieces of the century.

We have a marvelous, almost legendary, image of the circumstances in which the composition of this great poem began. Rilke was staying at a castle (Duino) on the sea near Trieste. One morning he walked out on the battlements and climbed down to where the rocks dropped sharply to the sea. From out of the wind, which was blowing with great force, Rilke seemed to hear a voice: Wer, wenn ich schriee, horte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen? (If I cried out, who would hear me up there, among the angelic orders?). He wrote these words, the opening of the first Duino Elegy, in his notebook, then went inside to continue what was to be his major work and one of the literary masterpieces of the century.