Duino Elegies [Paperback]

Rainer Maria Rilke (Author), David Young (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1992

Named after the Castle of Duino on a rocky headland of the Adriatic, the "Duino Elegies" speak in a voice that is both intimate and majestic on the mysteries of human life and our attempt, in the words of the translator, "to use our self-consciousness to some advantage: to transcend, through art and the imagination, our self-deception and our fear".

Editorial Reviews

Review

The Duino Elegies: 1
The Duino Elegies: 10
The Duino Elegies: 2
The Duino Elegies: 3
The Duino Elegies: 4
The Duino Elegies: 5
The Duino Elegies: 6
The Duino Elegies: 7
The Duino Elegies: 8
The Duino Elegies: 9
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder® --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Language Notes

Text: English, German (translation) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 101 pages
• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc (August 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393309312
• ISBN-13: 978-0393309317
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.3 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,988,946 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #74 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Single Authors > Continental European

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Epitome of Poetry, March 28, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Duino Elegies (Paperback)

For me, at least, Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies are the very epitome of poetry. I know others who, even though they admire Rilke above all other poets, prefer other "Rilke" poems, such as "Evening." For me, however, it has always been, and always will be, the Elegies. Certainly they are the most extravagant and elusive of Rilke's poems, even for those who count others among their favorites.

Rilke, who longed for a place of solitude in the country, arrived at the fortress-like Castle Duino, high above the Adriatic, near Trieste, in December 1911. His hostess was Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis-Hohenlohe, who had invited Rilke to translate Dante's Vita Nuova with her. Princess Marie, however, soon left for more sociable climes and Rilke was left alone on the stormy, wind-swept cliffs of Duino. Rilke, at this time of his life, was known to commit himself to a strict regimen of work. Nevertheless, his poems, he has written, always seemed to burst upon him suddenly, like a thunderstorm on a hot summer's afternoon. And, one afternoon at Duino, the opening line of the first elegy burst upon Rilke like a flash of lightening.

There is no problem with the Duino Elegies...if one reads and comprehends German. If one doesn't, however, the problems of translation can be enormous. Translation, always a fragile task, becomes even more so when it involves poetry, and reaches its zenith with a work as sublime as Rilke's Duino Elegies. So many versions of these gorgeous poems exist (at least twenty), that the Elegies are certainly suffering from a case of "translation overkill."

In the original German, the Duino Elegies are the most sublime expressions of awe, of terror, of love, of splendor, of Life, that have ever been set down by the hand of man. In hands other than Rilke's, however, they can seem clumsy and more than a bit melodramatic. Rilke wrote delicately-calibrated poetry, without excess words and, the dread of all translators, the hyphenated word. But, all that aside, reading the Elegies in translation, any translation, is better than not reading them at all.

No matter how "angelic" these poems may seem, never doubt that they are expression of life in the here and now. As Rilke, himself, tells us, "the world exists nowhere but within us." These gorgeous poems are about the difficulties of living in this world, of not being heard by the angels, and of the tragedy that can so easily befall us. They are about Rilke's desire for solitude and his desire to escape it, i.e., the need and the utter impossibility of understanding and being understood completely in this life.

Although many of the translations are flawed, as translation by its very nature must be, the Duino Elegies remain the epitome of poetry. They are a cry of terror, of awe, of joy, of splendor at the lonely and solitary condition of man.

33 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Disrespectful Translation: Rilke & William Carlos Williams?, February 15, 2001

By 

Volkswagen Blues "cead1" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Duino Elegies (Paperback)

Rilke's "Duino Elegies" form one of the most perfect collections of lyric poetry you can ever hope to get your hands on. Unfortunately for the David Young translation, however, there is much less Rilke than there ought to be; a series of strange decisions on Young's part casts a shadow over even the brighter moments of his rendering of this masterpiece.

For example, Rilke was a genius at enjambment; that is, he was a master at placing his most important words at the very end or very beginning of a line, in order to highlight them. Think of the first line, which ends with "Engel," splitting it from the first word of the next line, "Ordnungen." (Young merely gives these words together, as "angelic orders," at the end of the third line.) By divorcing the angels from their orders in the poem's very first line, Rilke sets the tone that not all is right in the heavens.

And Rilke's line breaks are even more important than those of other poets, because they are few and far between, since his lines are nice and fat, often more than 13 syllables. Young's lines, on the other hand, are broken up into tiny 2- to 8-syllable, bite-sized chunks. This changes not only the rhythm of Rilke's verse--which obviously would have changed anyway, in translation--but its compositional emphases, as the structure of the most important lines is simply whisked away. And that is a tragedy.

Young's excuse for this unfortunate decision? He happened, while he was working on the translation, "to re-read some of William Carlos Williams' late poetry," and he liked Williams' stubbier, tri-partite lines. Rilke, however, is not William Carlos Williams, and Young's rendering of Rilke as Williams suffers because of this incongruity. (Oddly enough, though, Williams is another poet for whom every line break bears an awful lot of weight; too bad Young didn't carry that respect for enjambment into his work on the "Duino Elegies.")

Those interested in Rilke should do themselves a favor and pick up Mitchell's translation. I simply can't recommend this edition. It gets three stars because, despite the muddle, there are SOME beautifully rendered lines, and some of the power of Rilke manages to squeeze through. And that's always a wonderful thing.

12 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rilke tells us what the God really is, April 21, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Duino Elegies (Paperback)

When I first read this book I learned poetry because poetry must come from the heart. And Rilke is the heart of imagination. The teacher of writing. God's liar. Telling stories about the heaven and hell. Kissing the angels. Falling down to the deepest see. And what we see is what we dont. The universe is covered with dust. He is coming from mountains and through the lakes. Rilke has written like somebody is whispering to your ears. Those are the concertoes of Mozart and sculptures of Michaelangelo. You can see Rilke in the lines. You can see God whispering to your ears. And the whole tragedy is this: He is telling those words. There he is writing all alone. Looking to the mirror. Wishing that all his poems are telling the truth. He is crying for the others who had gone before him. Who is gonna find him in those lines?