rainer maria rilke's letters to a young poet

His early poems show the influence of the German folk song tradition and have been compared to the lyrical work of Heinrich Heine. Rilke’s early verse, short stories, and plays are characterized by their romanticism. After spending the summer of 1897 with her in the Bavarian Alps, Rilke accompanied Salome and her husband to Berlin in late 1897 and to Italy the following year. Visiting Venice in 1897, Rilke met Lou Andreas-Salome, a married woman fifteen years his senior, who was also a strong influence.

After a short stint at Charles-Ferdinand University, Rilke left Prague for Munich where he mingled in the city’s literary circles, had several of his plays produced, published his poetry collections, Larenopfer and Traumgelkront, and was introduced to the work of Danish writer Jens Peter Jacobsen, who was a decisive influence during Rilke’s formative years. In 1894 his first book of verse, Leben und Lieder: Bilder und Tagebuchblatter, was published. Shortly thereafter he began receiving private instruction toward passing the entrance exams for Prague’s Charles-Ferdinand University. He immediately returned to Prague, only to find that his parents had divorced in his absence. At age eleven Rilke began his formal schooling at a military boarding academy in 1891 he was discharged due to health problems that would plague him throughout his life. For him Art was what mattered most in life.” The only child of a German-speaking family in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Rilke was the son of a retired officer in the Austrian army who worked as a railroad official his mother was a socially ambitious and possessive woman.

Bowra observed in Rainer Maria Rilke: Aspects of His Mind and Poetry, “Where others have found a unifying principle for themselves in religion or morality or the search for truth, Rilke found his in the search for impressions and the hope these could be turned into poetry.

Widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets, Rainer Maria Rilke was unique in his efforts to expand the realm of poetry through new uses of syntax and imagery and in an aesthetic philosophy that rejected Christian precepts and strove to reconcile beauty and suffering, life and death.

Rainer maria rilke's letters to a young poet