The Duino elegies
Rainer Maria Rilke, Harry Behn (Translator, Illustrator)
A collection of ten elegies written in a period of spiritual crisis between 1912 and 1922. The Elegies are intensely religious, mystical poems that use the symbolism of angels and salvation in a manner atypical of Christian interpretations. His use of angelic symbolism was influenced by their depiction in Islam to represent the embodiment of transcendental beauty. Rilke's themes include the human condition, angels, life and death. He "speaks out for an empatic monism of 'cosmic inner space,' gathering life and death, earth and space, and all dimensions of time into one all-encompassing unity. This Rilkean myth is articulated in an image-laden cosmology that, analogous to medieval models, sees all of reality--from animal to 'angel'--as a hierarchical order. This cosmology in turn results in a systematic, consistent doctrine of life and being in which man is assigned the task of transforming everything that is visible into the invisible through the power of his sensory perceptions ..."--Britannica
Print Book, English, 1957
Peter Pauper Press, Mount Vernon, New York, 1957