Most Popular Books by Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke was one of the twentieth century''s great lyric poets. Born in Prague in 1875, he was educated in Germany and later in his life moved to Switzerland, where he wrote his two last works, the Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus, both published in 1923. For poets, Orpheus represents the ultimate journey into life and death - the mythical poet who could enchant any living thing - even the beasts and the trees. In this, his fifth collection of poems, Don Paterson, himself a master of the sonnet form, offers a radiant and at times distressing version of the great work. Since his work was translated by J. B. Leishman and Stephen Spender in the 1930s, Rainer Maria Rilke(1875-1926) has never lost his significance for English-speaking poets. In their various acts of translation, poets such as Auden, Lowell and Randall Jarrell or - more recently - Jo Shapcott, Michael Hofmann and Seamus Heaney, have all testified to Rilke''s continuing and primary importance. Don Paterson now joins this company with an entirely new complete translation of the Sonnets to Orpheus. Published in 1923, near the end of his life, the 55 Sonnets to Orpheus were completed in less than a month and famously described by Rilke as ''perhaps the most mysterious - in the way they arrived and entrusted themselves to me - the most enigmatic dictation I have ever received: the whole first part was taken down in a single breathless act of obedience, between the 2nd and 5th of February 1922, without one word being in doubt or having to be changed''. The result was both a masterpiece of German literature and a landmark of modern poetry, pondering the dismembered fate of Orpheus in a belated world - the mythical poet and son of Apollo who could enchant beasts and birds and spirits with his song, and who might have brought his Eurydice back from the dead, had he not turned to look before she set foot in the world of the living. Don Paterson''s translation is an act of intensely sustained creative attention, which has produced new poems of remarkable independence. At the same time - and for the first time - the lucidity of this great sequence has been honoured, as well as Rilke''s intuition that ''it was the task of transforming the sonnet, of picking it up and, as it were, taking it along on the run, without destroying it, that was in this instance my particular problem and my project''.

Rilke is one of the most widely read poets of the 20th century. In his poetry, Rilke addresses the problems of death, God, and "destructive time," and attempts to overcome and transform these problems into an indestructive inner world.

Tout à la fois influencé par les maîtres de l’Antiquité, le génie de Michel-Ange et la sculpture baroque, Auguste Rodin est l’un des artistes les plus reconnus de l’histoire. Bien qu’il soit considéré comme l’un des fondateurs de la sculpture moderne, Rodin n’a jamais critiqué la tradition classique. Nombre de ses sculptures furent critiquées et controversées en raison de leur sensualité ou de leur réalité crue. Ses œuvres les plus originales se détachaient des traditionnels thèmes mythologiques ou allégoriques pour étreindre le corps humain, célébrer l’individualisme et la matérialité. Ce livre dévoile la vie et la carrière de cet artiste en explorant ses œuvres majeures telles que La Porte de l’Enfer, Le Penseur et le fameux Baiser.

Rilke’s French poetry appears here for the first time in readable, musical versions. Largely unknown and rarely collected, these poems were written during the euphoria Rilke felt after having completed his greatest German works, the Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus. At the same time, Rilke was growing increasingly ill with a rare, undiagnosed form of leukemia. He died just four short years into the production of these poems, and death appears in them as “a kindly, unfamiliar figure” to be faced with courage and surrender. Five series of poems are featured: Roses, Windows, Affectionate Tribute to France, Valaisian Quatrains, and Orchards.

The Notebook of Malte Laurids Brigge is semi-autobiographical and is written in an expressionistic style, dealing with themes of alienation, unfamiliarity, death by illness, longing, childhood memories and the Parable of the Prodigal Son. It was conceptualized and written whilst Rilke lived in Paris. This amazing novel was the only work of prose of considerable length that he wrote and published.

Influenced by the masters of Antiquity, the genius of Michelangelo and Baroque sculpture, particularly of Bernini, Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) is one of the most renowned artists in history. Though Rodin is considered a founder of modern sculpture, he did not set out to critique past classical traditions. Many of his sculptures were criticised and considered controversial because of their sensuality or hyperrealist qualities. His most original works departed from traditional themes of mythology and allegory, and embraced the human body, celebrating individualism and physicality. This book uncovers the life and career of this highly acclaimed artist by exploring his most famous works of art, such as the Gates of Hell, The Thinker and the infamous The Kiss.

The first-ever English translation of Rilke’s landmark poetry cycle, by Vita and Edward Sackville-West u00ad– reissued for the first time in 90 years In 1931, Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s Hogarth Press published a small run of 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 eventually be rendered in English over 20 times, influencing countless poets, musicians and artists across the English-speaking world. 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.

Traduit de l’allemand par Josette Calas et Fanette Lepetit. Postface de Jérôme Vérain. « Personne ne peut vous apporter aide et conseil, personne. Il n’est qu’une seule voie. Entrez en vous-même. Recherchez au plus profond de vous-même la raison qui vous impose d’écrire. » De février 1903 à Noël 1908, Rainer Maria Rilke correspond avec le jeune Franz Xaver Kappus et l’encourage dans sa vocation de poète en devenir. Dans ces lettres, la sensibilité lyrique épouse étroitement la lucidité philosophique du grand poète autrichien.

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, facing the original German texts, make it marvellously clear how the poem is committed to the real world observed with acute and visionary intensity.

Bilingual edition of nearly 200 poems from Rilke''s "Neue Gedichte", with the translations facing the original German texts first published in 1907 and 1908. For contents, see Author Catalog.

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).