New Releases by Rainer Maria Rilke

Rilke entre 1898 et 1900. Le ##Journal florentin## écrit pour Lou Andreas-Salomé parle de l'art de la Renaissance. Les deux journaux suivants sont alimentés par deux éléments nouveaux qui vont assurer la maturation de Rilke: deux voyages en Russie en compagnie de Lou à la fois maîtresse, amie et mère, et la découverte de Worpswede, petit village près de Brême où vit une petite colonie de peintres (cf. la préface de Jaccottet, p. I-II).

Rilke''s association with Rodin in 1902 inspired in him a new poetic method. ''Somehow, '' he wrote, ''I too must come to make things... realities that emerge from handiwork. Somehow I too must discover the smallest basic element, the cell of my art, the tangible immaterial means of representation for everything.'' Until this work, Rilke''s voice had come from the interior, expressing feelings and moods. New Poems represented a turning point, an intoxication with the materiality of the world.

Breathing, you invisible poem World-space in pure continuous interchange with my own being. Equipose in which I rhythmically transpire. Written only four years before Rilke''s death, this sequence of sonnets, varied in form yet consistently structured, stands as the poet''s final masterwork. In these meditations on the constant flux of our world and the ephemerality of experience, Rilke envisions death not only as one among many of life''s transformations but also as an ideally receptive state of being. Because Orpheus has visited the realm of death and returned to the living, his lyre, a unifying presence in these poems, is an emblem of fluidity and musical transcendence. And Eurydice, condemned to Hades as a result of Orpheus''s backward glance, becomes in Rilke''s universe a mythical figure of consolation and hope. Edward Snow, in his translations of "New Poems," "The Book of Images," "Uncollected Poems," and "Duino Elegies," has emerged as Rilke''s most able English-language interpreter. Adhering faithfully to the intent of Rilke''s German while constructing nuanced, colloquial poems in English, Snow''s "Sonnets to Orpheus" should serve as the authoritative translation for years to come.

For poetry lovers and students of literature and literary criticism, Robert Bly, the National Book Award-winning poet, brings his prowess as a translator and critic to bear on the work of one of the major German poets of the century.