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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Rainer Maria Rilke

18:46 / 17.12.02

always hearing about this poet. Care to steer me towards what english translations of the poet are worth having?

21:04 / 17.12.02

I haven't read his poetry, though I hear good things about his Sonnets to Orpheus.

But, Letters to a Young Poet is... it is the single most valuable book I have ever read. I buy several copies a year, but can't hold onto them for more than a month - I keep meeting people who are suffering from a lack of this book in their lives. I really can't say enough about it.

(M.D. Herter Norton did the translation I read)

23:27 / 17.12.02

I have a paperback set of his NEW POEMS from 1906 which contain both the original German poems alongside the English translations. Pretty good stuff. You should be able to find copies at a good used book store, preferably one in a college town, or via Amazon.com used. I wish I could offer more exposition but I've never delved deeply into Rilke's work, although I have always enjoyed it.

06:11 / 18.12.02

I've got a bilingual edition of Neue Gedichte / New Poems translated by the English scholar-poet J. B. Leishman (New Directions, 1964). It's got a long, critical introduction that's useful, and notes to individual poems, but it came to me via a friend and is almost certainly out of print. C. F. MacIntyre did the translation for my bilingual edition of Sonnets to Orpheus (University of California Press, 1960) and David Young the edition of Duino Elegies (W. W. Norton & Company, 1978).You might find these in second hand bookshops; but there's bound to be something more recent in Penguin or Everyman at a reasonable price.