Rilke : the life of the work /

The life of Rilke's work is in its words, and this book attends closely to the development of that life as it unfolds over Rilke's career. What is a poem, and how does it act upon us when we read? This is a question of the greatest interest to Rilke, who addresses it in several poems and f...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Louth, Charlie (Author)
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2020.
Edition:First edition.
Subjects:
Online Access:Connect to the full text of this electronic book
Description
Summary:The life of Rilke's work is in its words, and this book attends closely to the development of that life as it unfolds over Rilke's career. What is a poem, and how does it act upon us when we read? This is a question of the greatest interest to Rilke, who addresses it in several poems and for whom the experience of reading affords an interaction with the world, a recalibration of our ways of attending to it, which set it apart from other kinds of experience. Rilke's work is often approached in periods - he is the author of the Neue Gedichte, or of Malte, or of the Duino Elegies, or of the Sonette an Orpheus - as if the different phases of his work had little to do with one another, but in fact it is a concentrated and evolving exploration of the possibilities of poetic language, a working of the life of words into precise and exacting forms in dialogue with the texture of the world. This book traces that trajectory in a series of close readings that do not neglect the lesser-known, uncollected poems and the poems in French, as well as Rilke's activity as a translator of Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Barrett Browning, Mallarme and Valery among many others. These encounters were part of Rilke's engagement with the world, his way of extending the reach of his language to get it ever closer to the ungraspable movements, the risk and promise, of life itself.
Physical Description:1 online resource.
Bibliography:Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
ISBN:9780192542687
0192542680
9780192542694
0192542699
9780191893377
0191893374