Rainer, Maria, Rilke and Rilke traveled together in Russia

Author: (German) Salome, translated by Wang Xuemei
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-06-01
Features: This book contains two works: "Rainer Maria Rilke" and "Playing with Rilke in Russia." The first work is a detailed collection of materials for studying Rilke as a person and his works. The second work is Rilke's diary from his time in Russia. Rainer Maria Rilke was an Austrian poet. Born into a railway worker family, he studied philosophy, art, and literary history at university. After 1897, he traveled across Europe with a heart full of loneliness and solitude. He met Tolstoy, served as a secretary for the great sculptor Rodin, and was deeply influenced by the French Symbolist poet Baudelaire and others. During World War I, he was drafted into the army, and after 1919, he moved to Switzerland. His early works had a distinct Prague regional flavor and the charm of Bohemian folk songs, but the content leaned toward mystery, dreams, and melancholy. After his travels in Europe, he changed his early romantic style that focused on subjective expression, writing "objective poems" that used intuition and imagery to symbolize life and express his own thoughts and emotions, protesting the phenomenon of "alienation" in capitalism and expressing utopian ideals of equality and mutual love among humans. His famous works include the long poem "Book of Prayers" (1905), "New Poems" (1907), and "Continuation of New Poems" (1908), which praise God to reveal the spiritual contradictions of capitalism. In his later years, his thoughts grew more pessimistic. His representative works include the long poem "Duino Elegies" (1923) and numerous quatrains. Despite being filled with loneliness, suffering, and pessimistic nihilistic ideas, Rilke's poetry is highly artistic. It not only showcases the musical and sculptural beauty of poetry but also expresses some inexpressible content, expanding the artistic expressive realm of poetry and having a profound impact on the development of modern poetry. This book introduces the biography of this great poet.