Rainer Maria Rilke

The Sonnets to Orpheus are a cycle of 55 sonnets written in 1922 by the Bohemian-Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke. It was first published the following year. Rilke, who is "widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets," wrote the cycle in a period of three weeks experiencing what he …

Named after the Castle of Duino on a rocky headland of the Adriatic, the "Duino Elegies" speak in a voice that is both intimate and majestic on the mysteries of human life and our attempt, in the words of the translator, "to use our self-consciousness to some advantage: to transcend, through art and the imagination, …