Rainer Maria Rilke: Masks and the Man

by Heinz Frederick Peters

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0877521980
• ISBN13: 9780877521983
• Release Date: January 1977
• Publisher: Gordian Pr Inc
• Length: 226 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.0" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

The essence of a poet is his poetry

This is an excellent study of the poetry and thought of Rilke. It includes much biographical material, and analysis of Rilke's character but is by no means a full biography. One relationship that of Rilke with Lou- Andreas Salome is centered on here. And other important relationships in his life including his apprenticeship with Rodin, his affairs with a long line of mistresses, his relationship to his wife, Clara Westhoff, and to their daughter are not really treated here. There is however discussion of Rilke's relation to the mother who he in one sense was repelled by and who in another formed and remained central to his being. There is also an indication of the effect of his meeting with Paul Valery on the composition of the last great work, ' The Sonnets of Orpheus'. Peters opens with a chapter on Rilke's influence and fame, a fame which it would seem is more than just the misunderstandings gathered around a name, but rather sprung from a very wide appreciation of a great poet. The heart of the book is however in Peters' reading of the works of Rilke, his tracing the path of his early probings to the great climax in 'Duino Elegies' and 'Sonnets from Orpheus'. Peters understands Rilke as a poet who contains and holds contradictory elements within his poetry, light and darkness, life and death, intense inwardness and intense perception of the world, in Rilke's symbolic terms, the dolls and the angels, - As Peters sees it. " He found in the rose the symbols in which all these contradictions were jubilantly affirmed because they were seen to arise from a common source, the primoridal unity of being. " " Your innumerable state does it make you discern in a mixture where everything blends the unutterable harmony of nonbeing and being which we ignore?" Or in another seminal poetic passage. "Rose ,o pure contradiction, delight, to be nobody's sleep beneath so many eyelids." Rilke is a power of intense paradoxical power of great metaphorical brillance. Peters provides an excellent outline of the composition of the Duino Elegies, singling out for special treatment Elegy four in which Rilke's depression is most deeply expressed, and Elegy Nine which many believe to be his supreme work. Peters says, " The theme of the Elegies is transformation. It is our task- "whatsoever we are" to transform the world into invisible vibrations of the heart." I have been reading Rilke and his critics for some years without feeling I have truly grasped the essence, or understand his work line - by- line. This present work I think improved my understanding. I would recommend to all those who wish to better know his work.