Rainer Maria Rilke

René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke was born 4 December 1875 and died 29 December 1926. He spent years moving through Europe before settling in Switzerland, where the landscape fed his poems. He wrote in German and French, producing collections, a semi-autobiographical novel called The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, and volumes of correspondence. His two major poetry collections, Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus, explore subjective experience, mysticism, and disbelief with a language critics call idiosyncratic and expressive. Ten letters he wrote to an aspiring poet were publish…