Rainer Maria Rilke, poet, was born 147 years ago today.
A Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist, Rilke is one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets, writing in both verse and highly lyrical prose. Several critics have described his work as inherently "mystical."
Rilke’s writings include one novel, several collections of poetry and several volumes of correspondence in which he invokes haunting images that focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude and profound anxiety. These deeply existential themes tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist writers.
Rilke was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, travelled extensively throughout Europe, including Russia, Spain, Germany, France and Italy. In his later years, settled in Switzerland. These settings were key to the genesis and inspiration for many of his poems.
While Rilke is most known for his contributions to German literature, over 400 poems were originally written in French and dedicated to the canton of Valais in Switzerland.
In the later 20th century, his work has found new audiences through its use by New Age theologians and self-help authors, and through frequent quoting in television programs, books and motion pictures. In the United States, Rilke remains among the more popular, best-selling poets.
In the summer of 1902, Rilke left home and travelled to Paris to write a monograph on the sculptor, Auguste Rodin. Before long his wife left their daughter with her parents and joined Rilke there. The relationship between Rilke and Clara Westhoff continued for the rest of his life.
A mutually agreed-upon effort at divorce was bureaucratically hindered by Rilke's "official" status as a Catholic, though a non-practicing one.
Rilke became deeply involved in the sculpture of Rodin, and then with the work of Paul Cézanne. For a time, he acted as Rodin's secretary, also lecturing and writing a long essay on Rodin and his work.
Rodin taught him the value of objective observation, and under this influence, Rilke dramatically transformed his poetic style from the subjective and sometimes incantatory language of his earlier work into something quite new in European literature.
In the United States, Rilke is one of the more popular, best-selling poets — along with 13th-century Sufi mystic, Rumi (1207–1273), and 20th-century Lebanese-American poet, Khalil Gibran (1883–1931).
In 1929, a minor writer, Franz Xaver Kappus (1883–1966), published a collection of ten letters that Rilke had written to him when he was a 19-year-old officer cadet studying at the Theresian Military Academy in Wiener Neustadt.
The young Kappus wrote to Rilke, who had also attended the academy, between 1902 and 1908 when he was uncertain about his future career as a military officer or as a poet. Initially, he sought Rilke's advice as to the quality of his poetry, and whether he ought to pursue writing as a career.
While he declined to comment on Kappus's writings, Rilke advised Kappus on how a poet should feel, love and seek truth in trying to understand and experience the world around him and engage the world of art.
These letters offer insight into the ideas and themes that appear in Rilke's poetry and his working process. Further, these letters were written during a key period of Rilke's early artistic development after his reputation as a poet began to be established with the publication of parts of Das Stunden-Buch (The Book of Hours) and Das Buch der Bilder (The Book of Images).
In 1926, Rilke was diagnosed as having leukemia. He died at the age of 51 in the arms of his doctor on December 29, 1926 in the Valmont Sanatorium in Switzerland.