RILKE, RAINER MARIA. Bohemian poet of German family, b. in Prague on 4 Dec. 1875, d. at Muzot (Switzerland) on 29 Dec. 1926. Of an ancient Carinthian family, he studied in his native city, then in Munich and Berlin; he traveled extensively throughout Europe, as far as Russia, Egypt, Algeria, and Tunisia. He lived for a long time in Germany and in Paris, where for ten years he was secretary to Rodin (hence the volume *Auguste Rodin*, 1913).
In R.’s earliest lyrics, between 1894 and 1899, the seeds of his future poetry are already evident; yet one still strongly senses the influence exerted on him in adolescence by 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,” and “The Book of Poverty and Death,” published shortly afterward (1905), indeed reveals a religiosity more Slavic than Germanic, full of fervor and affection, but lacking any dogmatic element.
In *Geschichte vom lieben Gott* (1900), thirteen parables of serene tone in which the influence of Tolstoy—always due to his stay in Russia—is clear, the unrest and search for God that permeate the *Frühe Gedichte* (1899) seem to be assuaged; yet they reappear in *Buch der Bilder* (1912). To this book is linked, both in poetic world and style, the *Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornet Christoph Rilke*, to which the poet largely owed his fame.
The *Neue Gedichte* (1907–1908), written during his Parisian sojourn, contain a vaster world, with cultural undertones 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 fifteen lyrics, akin to the scenes of primitive painters, various episodes in the life of the Virgin: the Nativity, the Presentation in the Temple, the Annunciation, etc. After the long silence of the First World War, in 1923 his final works appeared: the *Duineser Elegien* and the *Sonette an Orpheus*—perhaps his swan song, but also a pinnacle of R.’s poetry. In prose, noteworthy is *Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge* (1910), in which the poet transforms himself, in a lyrical and fantastic projection, into a character.
The principal 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 the Gospel, at times in childlike ways, at times in aestheticized fashions, yet no less lyrical for that. Even Greek myths (Alcestis, Orpheus and Eurydice, the Birth of Venus) are felt with that intimate and chaste religiosity characteristic of all his poetry. A religiosity that is joined to a classical linearity, almost Hellenizing. The religious quest is expressed in all his works, above all in the Duino Elegies, where he treats the deepest problems of existence. Yet despite his search for God and his strong ties to the Catholic atmosphere—and especially 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. exerted a great influence on modern Catholic and non-Catholic lyric poetry.