Rainer Maria Rilke & Traveling Russia with Rilke

Author: (German) Salome, translated by Wang Xuemei
Publisher:
Publishing Date: Not available
Features: This book contains two works: "Rainer Maria Rilke" and "Playing with Rilke in Russia." The first part is a detailed study of Rilke as a person and his works. The second part 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, filled with loneliness and solitude. He met Tolstoy, served as a secretary to the great sculptor Rodin, and was deeply influenced by the French Symbolist poet Baudelaire. 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 tended to focus on mystery, dreams, and sorrow. After his travels in Europe, he changed his early romantic style, which emphasized subjective expression, and began writing "object poems" that used intuition and imagery to symbolize life and express his thoughts and emotions. He protested the "alienation" phenomenon of capitalism and expressed utopian aspirations for human equality and mutual love. His famous works include the long poem "Book of Prayers" (1905), "New Poems" (1907), and "New Poems Continued" (1908), which praise God to reveal the spiritual contradictions of the capitalist decline period. In his later years, his thoughts grew more pessimistic. His representative works are 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.