Life of a Poet

Last week, I finished the Life of a Poet, Biography of Rainer Maria Rilke by Ralph Freedman. Rilke’s life story gave some insights about the meaning of Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus and about his earlier poems. The author related almost the linear poetic development of Rilke.

The poet’s life experiences and his associations with other artists-painters, sculptors,poets and philosophers- became distilled in his poems and approach to writing.

(photo:the reflections of the trees's shadow on the stream)

Edward Hirsch in his book-the demon and angel-referred to Rilke’s angel.

I can read again Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus with a new discernment.


from the Ninth Elegy (of Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke)

“But because truly being here is so much; because everything here

apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which is in some strange way

keeps calling to us.  Us, the most fleeting of all.

Once for each thing.  Just once; no more.  And we too,

just once.  And never again.  But to have been

this once, completely, even if only once:

to have been at one with the earth, seems beyond undoing.”