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Rainer Maria Rilke’s Followers (6,545)

Rainer Maria Rilke

Born

in Prague, Bohemia, Austro-Hungarian empire

December 04, 1875

Died

December 29, 1926

Genre

Poetry, Literature & Fiction

Influences

Hölderlin, Lou Andreas-Salomé, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Jens Peter J ...more

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A mystic lyricism and precise imagery often marked verse of German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, whose collections profoundly influenced 20th-century German literature and include The Book of Hours (1905) and The Duino Elegies (1923).

People consider him of the greatest 20th century users of the language.

His haunting images tend to focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety — themes that tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist poets.

His two most famous sequences include the Sonnets to Orpheus , and his most famous prose works include the Letters to a Young Poet and the semi-autobiographical The Notebooks of Malt ...more

Combine Editions
Rainer Maria Rilke’s books

Average rating: 4.25 · 188,982 ratings · 19,576 reviews · 1,681 distinct works • Similar authors

	Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, Franz Xaver Kappus (Introduction), Reginald Snell (Translator) 4.29 avg rating — 108,779 ratings — published 1929 — 568 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke by Rainer Maria Rilke, Stephen Mitchell (Goodreads Author) (Editor/Translator), Robert Hass (Introduction) 4.37 avg rating — 16,879 ratings — published 1926 — 83 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Duino Elegies 4.39 avg rating — 9,628 ratings — published 1922 — 306 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge 3.94 avg rating — 9,489 ratings — published 1910 — 20 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God by Rainer Maria Rilke, Anita Barrows (Translator), Joanna Macy (Translator) 4.34 avg rating — 8,513 ratings — published 1905 — 173 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Sonnets to Orpheus 4.25 avg rating — 3,962 ratings — published 1923 — 181 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus 4.44 avg rating — 2,720 ratings — published 1923 — 99 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties: Translations and Considerations by Rainer Maria Rilke, John J. L. Mood (Translator) 4.13 avg rating — 1,883 ratings — published 1975 — 23 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Poetry of Rilke by Rainer Maria Rilke, Edward Snow (Translator), Adam Zagajewski (Introduction) 4.15 avg rating — 1,779 ratings — published 1978 — 151 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Dark Interval: Letters on Loss, Grief, and Transformation by Rainer Maria Rilke, Ulrich Baer (Goodreads Author) (Translator) 4.17 avg rating — 1,698 ratings — published 2018 — 9 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Rainer Maria Rilke…

Series by Rainer Maria Rilke

Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge (2 books)
by

Rainer Maria Rilke,

William Needham (Translator)

3.94 avg rating — 9,492 ratings

Quotes by Rainer Maria Rilke (?)

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

tags: love

11859 likes

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now 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 you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

tags: ambiguity, virtue

5810 likes

“Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

tags: enjoy-life, fearlessness, live-in-the-moment

5372 likes

See all Rainer Maria Rilke's quotes »

Polls

April 2021 Short Story/Novella Poll

Gooseberries by Anton Chekhov, 15 pages, 1898

59 votes, 24.7%

Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, 80 pages, 1929

58 votes, 24.3%

Passing by Nella Larsen, 122 pages, 1929

45 votes, 18.8%

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf by Nt, Sueozake Shange, 80 pages, 1975

30 votes, 12.6%

Signs and Symbols by Vladimir Nabokov, 16 pages, 194

18 votes, 7.5%

The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono, 74 pages, 1953

16 votes, 6.7%

The Dialogue of the Dogs by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, 112 pages, 1613

13 votes, 5.4%

239 total votes

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