Customer Reviews

Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties: Translations and Considerations

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I recieved this book as a gift many years ago and it has been with me ever since. There are passages in this book that can be read through out life and never lose their initial power on the reader.

I particularly liked Blood Rememberings and Dragon Princess. Among best and most intense essays on the making of art.

Approximately 1 year ago, I was introduced to Rilke. Since then I have purchased a few of his books. This is one of my favorites, at this point in my life. He seems to have this way of reaching into your inner soul and grabbing a hold of your reality and making you face it, in a very non-threatening, passionate sort of way. I would highly recommend this book to anyone on a self-discovery path.

"Do not seek the answers which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now." Perhaps then without noticing it everything will resolve gradually along some distant day into the answer."

Rilke is a poet who brings mystery and existensial questioning into every rich and suggestive line he writes. His poetry is ripe and weighted with meaning.
In this small book there are selections from his letters, in which he spontaneously reflects on Love as he addresses intimately his correspondents. There are too his poems on Love whose metaphoric questioning and ambiguity also seem to bring the reader into a poetic space of special mystery and beauty.

"The more one is, the more abundant is everything one experiences. If you want to have a deep love in your life, you must save up for it and collect and gather honey."

Rilke's own personal love life bears not only the mark of his questioning , and deep search for meaning. It also marks the record of his meeting and abandonment. The real love of his life despite his many deep love connections was with his own vocation for which he left his wife and young daughter.

"What ruthless magnificence and yet how terrible to ignite love; what conflagration, what disaster, what doom.To be on fire yourself, of course , if one is capable of it: that may well be worth life and death."

One may not always understand, one may not always agree, one may not always approve but when one reads Rilke what knows one is in the presence of great and deep poetry.

Everyone should own a copy of this short collection of insightful ideas. Buy at least two copies and give one to the one you care most about.
You do not need to be guided through this. It is poetry; read it and re-read it.
Many careful thinkers, including Albert Einstein, believe that one's human relationships is the paramount value. Your relationships begin with your reflections on yourself.

This translation and selection is really made with love. Yet I could not fail but noticing an unbalance between Rilke's radical work on Love and the difficulty of the translator and critic to approach it without being surrendered. As the title suggests. Read it!

There have been very few poets with such creative mind, potency and inexhaustibleness as R.M.R. He was a cosmic poet of introspective flight loaded if you want of musical intimacy, his thoughts seem to be Chopin's Nocturnes and he sings his rapture homage to the night as a few indeed but the most impressive character is behind that radiant language's use there is a shaman speaking by him.

You may not argue the lack of time concerning to Rilke: the poetry simply doesn't understand about absences and coordinates of space or time, simply it appears and seduces you with the exemplary serenity of an astonished child. O course his nocturnal visions were expanded by Nietzsche and Lou Andreas Salomé.

This fundamental text will lead you to another spheres where the Fourth Wall, in what dreams and love walk freely without rules, engagement in the most absolute disobey 's spirit , the essential premise of the artists, children and heroes.

"Life and death: they are one, at core entwined. Who understands himself from his own strain, presses himself into a drop of wine and throws himself into the purest flame".

Nothing bad to report really. The book cover was not the same, which is a little dissapointing cuz I liked the cover shown in the picture. But other than that it got here relatively fast (it got sent back to the sender, they contacted me and re-sent it, which was nice!).

Some 25 years ago i was given a copy of this enlightening book by the author, himself. It continues to be one i re-read and enjoy. Dr. Mood is an inspiration, in that he is both a sexy man as well as one who has been blessed with the love of an extraordinarily brilliant woman, which leads me to believe he's eminently qualified to speak on the subject as one who has given, as well as enjoyed a great love in spite of difficulties. An excellent addition to the library of anyone in search of truths.