It was around 1982-83 that I stumbled on the MacIntyre translation of the Duino Elegies. I wanted to learn everything, whether through experience or literature. I graduated from the somnolent state known as high school in 1975. With their symbolic landscapes, prophetic proclamations, and unsettling intensity, these complex and haunting poems rank among the outstanding visionary works of the century. Written in a period of spiritual crisis between 19, the poems that compose the Duino Elegies are the ones most frequently identified with the Rilkean sensibility. In his translations, Snow adheres faithfully to the intent of Rilke's German while constructing nuanced, colloquial poems in English. 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. 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.

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. To learn more about how and for what purposes Amazon uses personal information (such as Amazon Store order history), please visit our Privacy Notice. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie Preferences, as described in the Cookie Notice. Click ‘Customise Cookies’ to decline these cookies, make more detailed choices, or learn more.

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Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke