num_pages: 204
description: We have a marvelous, almost legendary image of the circumstances in which the composition of this great poem began. Rainer Maria Rilke was staying at Duino Castle, on a rocky headland of the Adriatic Sea near Trieste. One morning he walked out onto the battlements and climbed down to where the cliffs dropped sharply to the sea. From out of the fierce wind, Rilke seemed to hear a voice: Wer, wenn ich schriee, horte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen? (If I cried out, who would hear me up there, among the angelic orders?). He wrote these words, the opening of the first Duino Elegy, in his notebook, then went inside to continue what was to be his major opus—completely only after another ten, tormented years of effort—and one of the literary masterpieces of the century. Duino Elegies speaks in a voice that is both intimate and majestic on the mysteries of human life and our attempt, in the words of the translator David Young, “to use our self-consciousness to some advantage: to transcend, through art and the imagination, our self-deception and our fear.”
language: English
title: Duino Elegies
titlecomplete: Duino Elegies
genres: Germany, 20th Century, Religion, Philosophy, Poetry, Literature, German Literature, Classics, Fiction, Spirituality
ratings_count: 8746
awards: awardedAt: 978336000000
name: Harold Morton Landon Translation Award, awardedAt: 946713600000
name: Schlegel-Tieck Prize
category: Patrick Bridgwater
publisher: W. W. Norton  Company