A Guide to Rainer Maria Rilke’s Life and Poetry

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) was an Austrian poet and author famed for his lyrical, German-language poetry. He is best known for his posthumous collection of writings titled Letters to a Young Poet (Briefe an einen jungen Dichter) and his lyrical poetic style. Rilke wrote in both German and French. His work has been translated into many of the world's languages, and his English translations rank among the best-selling poetry collections in North America.

In his fifty-one years, Rainer Maria Rilke lived in many corners of Europe and produced over 400 poems, a novel, short stories, plays, and a famous series of letters to a young poet named Franz Xaver Kappus. In many ways, his creative output mirrors his personal biography.

• Early years: Rainer (originally René) Maria Rilke was born in Prague in 1875. His childhood was turbulent, and at the age of eleven, the young Rilke was sent to military school, from which he was later expelled. He would go on to attend universities in Prague and Munich, where he studied philosophy, literature, and art history.
• Love and Russia: As a young bohemian, Rilke wooed an older married woman named Lou Andreas-Salomé beginning in 1897. At her urging, he changed his first name to Rainer, which both he and Andreas-Salomé thought to be more Germanic. The pair made lengthy visits to Russia, where Rilke met the acclaimed novelist Leo Tolstoy. During this time period, Rilke published Vom lieben Gott und Anderes (Stories of God) (1899). He also wrote his first draft of Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke (The Story of the Love and Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke) but did not formally publish it until 1912. It would become his best-known work during his lifetime.
• Marriage to Clara Westhoff: By 1900, Rilke's affair with Lou Andreas-Salomé had ended. During a stay at an artists' colony at Worpswede, he met sculptor Clara Westhoff. By the next year, the two were married and Westhoff gave birth to a daughter named Ruth.
• Years in Paris: Between 1902 and 1910, Rilke spent most of his time in Paris, both with and without Westhoff. He spent his time in Paris writing a monograph on modernist French sculptor Auguste Rodin, a novel, Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge (The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge), and several volumes of poetry. These included 1905's Das Stunden-Buch (The Book of Hours), 1907's Neue Gedichte (New Poems), 1908's Der Neuen Gedichte Anderer Teil (Another Part of the New Poems), and two "Requiem" poems from 1909.
• Duino Castle: Rilke's next stop was Duino Castle near the town of Trieste, Italy. The castle was famous for being the home of Princess Marie of Thurn und Taxis. At Castle Duino, Rilke started a poem cycle he called The Duino Elegies.
• World War I stifles creativity: Rilke's work on The Duino Elegies, which he began in 1912, was disrupted by the onset of World War I in 1914. Rilke spent most of the war years in Munich, but in 1916, he was drafted for basic training in Vienna partly on account of his early years at a military academy. Rilke managed to avoid the battlefield, but his work as a poet was greatly disturbed during this period.
• Final years in Switzerland: World War I ended in 1918, and by 1919, Rilke decamped to Switzerland and resumed his work on The Duino Elegies, which he completed in February 1922. During this same era, he worked on and completed the Sonnets to Orpheus. These collections concluded the major works published during Rilke's life.
• Health problems and final published works: Rilke spent his final years in ill health. He spent time in Swiss sanatoriums for a variety of ailments. He continued to write during this period, including a sizable number of poems drafted in French. Rilke was diagnosed with leukemia in 1926 and succumbed to it in December of that year. Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, which now stands as one of his most famous collections, was not published until 1929, when the recipient of those letters, Franz Xaver Kappus, chose to share them with the world.

Many themes and defining traits continually assert themselves in Rainer Maria Rilke's poems.

1. 1. Inspiration from visual artists: Rilke drew great inspiration from the modernist sculptor Auguste Rodin and the post-impressionist painter Paul Cézanne. His poetic language reflects the impressionistic imagery of those two giants of French art. What's more, he was married to a sculptor, Clara Westhoff.
2. 2. Religion: Rilke's intense interest in religion presents itself in collections such as Vom lieben Gott und Anderes (Stories of God), a prose work, and Das Stunden-Buch (The Book of Hours) and Das Buch der Bilder (The Book of Images), which are volumes of poetry. Although he often dipped into Christian themes, Rilke tended to represent Jesus Christ as inherently human rather than ethereally divine. Rilke often described angels in his poetry, a tendency that rubbed off on British poet W. H. Auden, who considered himself a great admirer of Rilke's.
3. 3. Antiquity: Rilke found inspiration in Greek antiquity, and no work captures this as clearly as Sonnets to Orpheus, a 1922 collection inspired by the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice. He also took a noted interest in the Muses, the Ancient Greek goddesses who inspired masters of literature, science, and the arts.
4. 4. Intense lyricism: From his poetry to his lone novel to his famed letters to Franz Xaver Kappus, Rilke brought intensity, lyricism, romanticism, and drama to all manner of writing.

Rilke's most acclaimed poetry is collected in the following volumes:

1. 1. Leben und Lieder (Life and Songs) (1894)
2. 2. Larenopfer (Offerings to the Lares) (1895)
3. 3. Traumgekrönt (Dream-Crowned) (1897)
4. 4. Advent (Advent) (1898)
5. 5. Das Stunden-Buch (The Book of Hours: Love Poems to God) (four volumes between 1899 and 1903)
6. 6. Das Buch der Bilder (The Book of Images) (four volumes between 1902 and 1906)
7. 7. Neue Gedichte (New Poems) (1907)
8. 8. Duineser Elegien (Duino Elegies) (1922)
9. 9. Die Sonette an Orpheus (Sonnets to Orpheus) (1922)

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