All Formats & Editions

An accomplished poet's first and only sonnet sequence.

Sonnets to Orpheus is Rainer Maria Rilke's first and only sonnet sequence. It is an undisputed masterpiece by one of the greatest modern poets, translated here by a master of translation, David Young.

Rilke... Read Full Overview

To Rilke himself the Sonnets to Orpheus were perhaps the most mysterious in the way they came up and entrusted themselves to me, the most enigmatic dictation I have ever held through and achieved; the whole first part was written down in a single breathless act of obedience,... Read Full Overview

An accomplished poet's first and only sonnet sequence.

Rainer Maria Rilke's fifty-five Sonnets to Orpheus were written over a few days in an astonishing burst of inspiration. Described by Rilke himself as "a spontaneous inner dictation," the sequence is among the most famous works of modernist literature, and Christiane Marks's... Read Full Overview

The fifty-five Sonnets to Orpheus were written by Rilke in February 1922, in less than two weeks. Their central themes are Orpheus and his song of praise; what is sung is "Dasein", "being- here", the presence in the world. Rilke considered as a betrayal of his poetry any translation... Read Full Overview

COMPOSED IN A BURST of inspiration near the end of the poet's life, Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus represents the consummation of the writer's career, distilling the essence of his poetic wisdom in a gem-like sequence. This new translation--with the original German on facing pages--offers... Read Full Overview

For ten years, Rilke struggled to create the Duino Elegies: a cycle of ten unrhymed, free-form poems. By contrast, the fifty-five Orphic sonnets presented here were composed in just three weeks, in and as the wake of the final elegy. In this, the first sonnet-form translation... Read Full Overview

An accomplished poet's first and only sonnet sequence.

Rainer Maria Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus, first published in German in 1923, has been hailed by critics as some of the finest lyrical verse of the twentieth century. Rick Anthony Furtak's translation of this legendary collection is the first edition for an English-speaking... Read Full Overview

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), eksterordinara figuro ne nur de la ger-mana sed ankaŭ de la monda literaturo, estas poeto malfacile kaptebla, kiu postlasis spurojn en la formo de bildoj kaj pensoj tra la kultura historio de la lastaj cent jaroj. Li verkis kun intensa... Read Full Overview

An accomplished poet's first and only sonnet sequence.