Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angelic orders? and even if one of them pressed me suddenly to his heart: I'd be consumed in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we can just barely endure, and we stand in awe of it as it coolly disdains to destroy us. Every angel is terrifying. -from "The First Elegy" Over the last fifteen-years, in his two volumes of New Poems as well as in The Book...

In 1984, Edward Snow won the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award of the Academy of American Poets for the first volume of these translations of Rainer Maria Rilke's watershed work, NEW POEMS, 1907. His work was praised for the resonance of the English and its faithfulness to the density and meaning of the German. In 1902, Rilke left Germany for Paris where he acted as the secretary to the sculptor Auguste Rodin. Rodin's craftsman-like approach,...

The formative work of the legendary poet who sought to write "not feelings but things I had felt" When Rainer Maria Rilke arrived in Paris for the first time in September 1902, commissioned by a German publisher to write a monograph on Rodin, he was twenty-seven and already the author of nine books of poems. His early work had been accomplished, but belonged tonally to the impressionistic, feeling-centered world of a late-nineteenth-century aesthetic. Paris...

Selected work from the modernist poet thematically centered on our relation to the physical world and our minds, featuring original texts and translations.
The Inner Sky is a selection of poems and prose by the great poet Rainer Maria Rilke, set with the original text and a translation, and including more than a dozen works that have never before appeared in English. The translations, by the NEA and PEN Award–winning author

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Rainer Maria Rilke was an Austrian poet and novelist. Acclaimed as an idiosyncratic and expressive poet, he is widely recognized as a significant writer in the German language. His work is viewed by critics and scholars as possessing undertones of mysticism, exploring themes of subjective experience and disbelief. Rilke traveled extensively throughout Europe, finally settling in Switzerland, the inspiration for many of his poems. While Rilke is best...

Rainer Maria Rilke is perhaps the most import German poet. His powerful and lyrical poetry has, captured generations of readers. Both mystical and compelling his influence cannot be overstated. Collected here are more than 40 poems, full of beauty and mastery of language. It's not hard to see why Rilke remains one of the most popular and bestselling poets to this very day.

Rilke's French poetry appears here for the first time in readable, musical versions. Largely unknown and rarely collected, these poems were written during the euphoria Rilke felt after having completed his greatest German works, the Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus. At the same time, Rilke was growing increasingly ill with a rare, undiagnosed form of leukemia. He died just four short years into the production of these poems, and death appears...

Breathing, you invisible poem! World-space in pure continuous interchange with my own being. Equipose in which I rhythmically transpire. Written only four years before Rilke's death, this sequence of sonnets, varied in form yet consistently structured, stands as the poet's final masterwork. In these meditations on the constant flux of our world and the ephemerality of experience, Rilke envisions death not only as one among many of life's transformations...

Influenced by the masters of Antiquity, the genius of Michelangelo and Baroque sculpture, particularly of Bernini, Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) is one of the most renowned artists in history. Though Rodin is considered a founder of modern sculpture, he did not set out to critique past classical traditions. Many of his sculptures were criticized and considered controversial because of their sensuality or hyperrealist qualities. His most original works...

Tout à la fois influencé par les maîtres de l'Antiquité, le génie de Michel-Ange et la sculpture baroque, Auguste Rodin est l'un des artistes les plus reconnus de l'histoire. Bien qu'il soit considéré comme l'un des fondateurs de la sculpture moderne, Rodin n'a jamais critiqué la tradition classique. Nombre de ses sculptures furent critiquées et controversées en raison de leur sensualité ou de leur réalité crue. Ses œuvres les plus originales...