7/7/2023 0 Comments Duino elegy 1![]() ![]() In "Duino Elegies" it seems as if Rilke is explaining the meaning of his life indirectly to God through divine messengers the presence of whom we can scarcely sense. Duino Elegies speaks in a voice that is both intimate and majestic on the mysteries of human life and our attempt, in the words of the translator David Young, “to use our self-consciousness to some advantage: to transcend, through art and the imagination, our self-deception and our fear.” He wrote these words, the opening of the first Duino Elegy, in his notebook, then went inside to continue what was to be his major opus-completely only after another ten, tormented years of effort-and one of the literary masterpieces of the century. From out of the fierce wind, Rilke seemed to hear a voice: Wer, wenn ich schriee, horte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen? (If I cried out, who would hear me up there, among the angelic orders?). One morning he walked out onto the battlements and climbed down to where the cliffs dropped sharply to the sea. Rainer Maria Rilke was staying at Duino Castle, on a rocky headland of the Adriatic Sea near Trieste. ![]() We have a marvelous, almost legendary image of the circumstances in which the composition of this great poem began. ![]()
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