RILKE, RAINER MARIA. - Bohemian poet of a German family, b. in Prague on 4 Dec. 1875, d. at Muzot (Switzerland) on 29 Dec. 1926. From an old Carinthian family, he studied in his native city, then in Munich and Berlin; he traveled widely throughout Europe, as far as Russia, Egypt, Algeria, and Tunisia. He lived for a long time in Germany and in Paris, where for 10 years he was Rodin's secretary (whence the volume Auguste Rodin, 1913).
In R.'s early lyrics, between 1894 and 1899, the seeds of his future poetry are already clear; but one still strongly perceives the imprint received in adolescence from Austrian Prague and his particular sensitivity to the Slavic world: decisive in this regard was his stay in Russia, and Das Stundenbuch, comprising "The Book of Monastic Life," "The Book of Pilgrimage," "The Book of Poverty and Death," published shortly afterward (1905), demonstrates precisely a religiosity more Slavic than Germanic, full of fervor, of affection, but in which any dogmatic allusion is lacking.
In the Geschichte vom lieben Gott (1900), thirteen parables full of serenity, in which the Tolstoyan influence is clear, due always to his stay in Russia, the restlessness, the search for God, that transpire from the Frühe Gedichte (1899), seem satisfied; but they reappear in the Buch der Bilder (1912); to this book is linked, in its poetic world and in its style, the Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke, to which the poet owes in large part his fame.
The Neue Gedichte (1907-1908), written during his Parisian stay, contain a vaster world, with cultural motifs, on difficult and varied themes. In 1912 R. wrote the Requiem, three short poems on the death of a friend; in 1913, Das Marienleben, in which he interprets in 15 lyrics, analogous to the scenes of the primitive painters, various scenes from the life of the Virgin: the birth, the presentation in the Temple, the annunciation, etc. After the long silence of the First World War, in 1923, his last works are the Duineser Elegien and the Sonette an Orpheus: the swan song, perhaps, but also a summit of R.'s poetry. In prose, Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge (1910) is to be noted, in which the poet transforms himself, in a lyrical and fantastic projection, into the character.
The main themes of Rilkean criticism have been the poet's religiosity and mysticism, personal and solitary. But R. is religious insofar as he feels the poetry of religion and of the Gospel, in ways at times childish, at times aestheticizing, but no less lyrical for that. Even the Greek myths (Alcestis, Orpheus and Eurydice, the birth of Venus) are felt with that intimate and modest religiosity proper to all his poetry. A religion that unites with a classicist, almost Hellenizing linearity. The religious search is expressed in all his works, above all in the Duino Elegies, in which he treats the deepest problems of existence. But despite his search for God and his strong ties to the Catholic atmosphere, and above all despite the attempt at a Catholic stance in his works, R. never arrives at a true and proper "relationship" with religion. Despite this religious incompleteness, R. has had a great influence on modern Catholic and non-Catholic lyric poetry.