RILKE, RAINER MARIA. – Bohemian poet of German family, born in Prague on 4 December 1875, died at Muzot (Switzerland) on 29 December 1926. Of an ancient Carinthian family, he studied in his native city, then in Munich and Berlin; he travelled extensively throughout Europe, as far as Russia, Egypt, Algeria, and Tunisia. He lived for long periods in Germany and in Paris, where for 10 years he was Rodin’s secretary (hence the volume Auguste Rodin, 1913).
In R.’s earliest lyrics, between 1894 and 1899, the beginnings of his future poetry are already clear; but one can still strongly perceive the imprint received during adolescence from Austrian Prague and his particular sensitivity to the Slavic world. Decisive in this respect was his stay in Russia, and the Das Stundenbuch, comprising “The Book of Monastic Life,” “The Book of Pilgrimage,” and “The Book of Poverty and Death,” published shortly thereafter (1905), demonstrates precisely a religiosity more Slavic than Germanic, full of fervour and affection, but lacking any dogmatic allusion.
In the Geschichte vom lieben Gott (1900), thirteen serene parables in which Tolstoy’s influence, always attributable to his stay in Russia, is clear, the restlessness and search for God that emerge from the Frühe Gedichte (1899) seem to have found fulfilment; but they reappear in the Buch der Bilder (1912). To this book, in its poetic world and style, is linked the Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke, to which the poet owed a large part of his fame.
The Neue Gedichte (1907–1908), written during his stay in Paris, contain a broader world, with cultural elements and 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 scenes by the primitive painters, various episodes from the life of the Virgin: the Nativity, the Presentation in the Temple, the Annunciation, etc. After the long silence of the First World War, his final works appeared in 1923: the Duineser Elegien and the Sonette an Orpheus—perhaps the swan song, but also a pinnacle of R.’s poetry. In prose, Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge (1910) deserves mention, in which the poet transforms himself, through a lyrical and fantastic projection, into the protagonist.
The principal themes of Rilkean criticism have been the poet’s personal and solitary religiosity and mysticism. But R. is religious insofar as he senses the poetry of religion and the Gospel, at times in childish ways, at times in aestheticizing ones, but no less lyrically for that. Even the Greek myths (Alcestis, Orpheus and Eurydice, the birth of Venus) are experienced with that intimate and modest religiosity characteristic of all his poetry. This religion is joined to a classicist, almost Hellenizing, linearity. The religious quest is expressed in all his works, above all in the Elegie di Duino, in which he addresses the deepest problems of existence. But despite his search for God and his strong ties with the Catholic atmosphere, and above all despite his works’ attempt to adopt a Catholic position, R. never arrives at a genuine “relationship” with religion. Despite this religious incompleteness, R. exerted a great influence on modern Catholic and non-Catholic lyric poetry.