Duino Elegies

Poetry. Begun in 1912, interrupted by the Great War, and completed early in 1922, the ten meditations on love and death in Rilke's DUINO ELEGIES are perhaps the twentieth century's most sustained outpouring of lyricism. Abstract, allusive, and rich with imagery, this sequence has been attempted by many translators. 

"Rilke speaks through the translator as through a microphone, with an unprecedented combination of utterly transfixing clarity, propulsive urgency, and emotive concentration. Nowhere else in English-nowhere else-have the Elegies achieved such unrelenting, enveloping intensity. This is a mind- and life-altering book. Much more than a translation, this is a work of total reincarnation."—Malachi Black