Book of Images is the best. Der Schutzengel, or "The Guardian Angel" is a microcosm of all of Rilke's main themes: angels, mystical aspirations, overwhelming desire and finite expressions, silence (or stillness, Stille), and abounding openness.
Chris, Good to watch this video and to hear your thoughts. You now my relationship with Rilke, so it brings me great joy to hear that you enjoyed reading his writing and saw in it what I have over the years. Discovering his writing and then immersing myself in it transformed my own writing. I look forward to sharing my words with you. Steve
First time I got in touch with Rilke’s poetry was through an ex boyfriend of mine, in 2016, who showed me a stunning poem Rilke wrote/dedicated to Lou Salomé. Since then he became one of my favorite poets 🖤
It's hard for me to get into poetry, but I love very carefully crafted prose and adored The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Looking forward to the work you talked about in this video!
Leaf by leaf returns to form after a very hungry divertissement- although throughout the video i was expecting your head to explode or the Thinker to start dancing on your bookcase. Thank you for the link to a very interesting documentary. Speaking of lonely German-speaking writers, have you read any Rober Walser yet?
The result of "Briefe an einen jungen Dichter" where Rilke did not offer criticism or advice to Kappus the young poet was that he pursued his military career and though worked as a newspaper editor later in life never achieved fame except as the recipient of these letters.
Very cool that people outside of Germany are interested in Rilke. I'm making songs from his poetry so it means a lot to me that people from all over the world are interested in his poetry, though it is really hard to translate because he plays so much with sound. I wouldn't quite file him under romanticism and there is also a lot of mystification going on around him, but I actually not all that interested into disproving this mystification. :) Thank you for this great video.
Rilke is such a treasure! I would love to be able to read him in the original. The first poem of his I read was "Imaginary Career" (translated by Stephen Mitchell) and I was hooked!
