Uncollected poems

Book

Uncollected poems / Rainer Maria Rilke ; selected and translated by Edward Snow.

Rilke, Rainer Maria, 1875-1926 (Author). Snow, Edward A. (Added Author).

Summary:

Between the New Poems of 1907 and 1908 and his death in 1926, Rainer Maria Rilke published only two major volumes of poetry - the Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus, both in 1923. But during this period he wrote poetry continually, often prolifically - in letters, in guest books, in presentation copies, and chiefly in the pocket-books he always carried with him. The body of this uncollected work in German exceeds five hundred pieces, a remarkable number of which must be counted among Rilke's finest poems. They range from finished poems of great poise and brilliance, to headlong statements that hurtle through their subjects, to hauntingly self-contained "fragments", to short bursts that arc into the unpursuable. Together they share a nakedness and an immediacy of voice that make them feel uncannily contemporary and draw the reader close. Edward Snow's selection of more than a hundred of these little-known and neglected poems - the first edition of such scope for the general reader - distills the best of the uncollected poems while offering a wide enough choice to convey Rilke's variety and industry during the years he wrote them.

Record details

ISBN: 0865474826
ISBN: 9780865474826
Physical Description: xix, 265 p. ; 24 cm.
Edition: 1st ed., Bilingual ed.
Publisher: New York : North Point Press, 1996.

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:: Includes bibliographical references (p. 255-257) and indexes.
Formatted Contents Note:: Forget, forget -- You don't know nights of love? -- Sharp castle-break -- Moonlit Night -- Judith's Return -- To Lou Andreas-Salome -- Pearls roll away -- Ah, as we prayed for human help -- O the curves of my longing through the cosmos -- Come when you should -- I, knower -- The almond trees in bloom -- The Spanish Trilogy -- The Raising of Lazarus -- The Spirit Ariel -- Straining so hard against the strength of night -- We don't know what we spend -- Long you must suffer -- The hawthorn -- Unknowing before the heavens of my life -- Overflowing heavens of squandered stars -- Narcissus [I] -- Narcissus [II] -- Christ's Descent into Hell -- Now we wake up with our memory -- Thinking you -- Assault me, music, with rhythmic fury! -- Behind the innocent trees -- Head of Amenophis IV in Berlin -- The way that bright planet, the moon -- Tears, tears that break out of me -- Once I took you face into / my hands -- The Great Night -- Looking up from my book -- You the beloved / lost in advance.
Language Note:: English and German.