In 1916, Rainer Maria Rilke presented his friend Rudolf Kassner with a notebook, containing 22 poems meticulously inscribed in his own hand and bearing the title Poems to Night.
This evocative sequence of poems, which echoes some of the great themes of German romanticism, is now thought to represent one of the key stages in the creative breakthrough and spiritual evolution of the preeminent European poet of the twentieth century.
This translation was the 1st to bring all the poems together in English and is enhanced by the translator’s valuable introduction and a rich selection of further poems Rilke dedicated to night at various stages of his life, providing fascinating insight into Rilke’s development.
The poems recall all of the great poet’s important themes: death and longing, the troubling reconciliation of beauty and suffering, and a search for transcendence.
These deep questions circle the imagery of night in Rilke’s intensely lyrical style: darkness, the stars and the moon wheel through the verses, and the play of light and dark becomes an evocation of life’s duality.
No other poet was as singularly devoted to beauty or as capable of gifting its consolations to the reader—a volume to cherish on stormy nights and peaceful ones.
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