 With news of the death of his daughter's friend, Wera Knoop (1900 – 1919), Rilke set to work on Sonnets to Orpheus. The Sonnets frequently refer to Wera, both directly where he addresses her by name and indirectly in allusions to a "dancer" or the mythical Eurydice. Rilke wrote to the young girl's mother stating that Wera's ghost was "commanding and impelling" him to write. In a rush of inspiration, Rilke worked on the Sonnets and renewed his focus towards completing the remainder of Duino Elegies. In one week, Rilke completed the unfinished elegies, and from 2 February to 23 February 1922 he completed all the 55 sonnets of the two parts of Sonnets to Orpheus. Rilke considered both collections to be "of the same birth". In a letter to Klossowska on 9 February 1922, Rilke wrote: "what weighed me down and caused my anguish most is done ... I am still trembling from it. ... And I went out to caress old Muzot, just now, in the moonlight." Two days later, completing the last of his work on the Elegies in the evening, he wrote to Lou Andreas-Salomé that he had finished "everything in a few days; it was a boundless storm, a hurricane of the spirit, and whatever inside me is like thread and webbing, framework, it all cracked and bent. No thought of food."
