Duino Elegies

Thus begins the first movement of Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies. Started in a period of spiritual crisis in 1912 and completed in a second burst of inspiration in 1922, these ten loosely connected lyrics have come to define the Rilkean sensibility. With their symbolic landscapes, vatic pronouncements, complex tropes, and often haunting intensity, the Elegies rank among the outstanding visionary works of the century. Edward Snow, whom Denise Levertov called "far and away Rilke's best contemporary translator", offers his versions of these challenging, provocative poems, which should serve as the authoritative translation for years to come.