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Rainer Maria biography, Rainer Maria discography
For the poet, see Rainer Maria Rilke.Rainer Maria was an indie rock band originally from Madison, Wisconsin, later residing in Brooklyn, New York.Rainer Maria Rilke, they formed in the late summer of 1995 and released five full length albums, a live DVD, numerous live recordings, and EPs.The gender ambiguity of the name Rainer Maria paralleled this and was one of the reasons it was selected as the band's name.The band's many tours and intimate live shows at venues such as Brooklyn's North Six (which lead singer Caithlin De Marrais referred to as "home" during her final show due to the fact that it also served as the band's rehearsal space), Washington DC's The Black Cat, and the Bowery Ballroom in NYC helped to grow its fan base and fuel album sales.It was accompanied by this statement:
"We are grateful to our new listeners and especially our longtime fans for their endless support and attention.Caithlin and Kyle were at one point romantically involved, however the two were no longer together when the band broke up.Band members
2 Discography
2.External links
Video interview from 2006 SXSW with some live footage
Rainer Maria Catastrophe Keeps Us Together Review (UpBeetMusic.All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.He wrote in both verse and a highly lyrical prose.Rilke's literary style
3 Rilke's influence
3.His childhood and youth in Prague were sorrowful.The relationship between Phia and her only son was encumbered by her prolonged mourning for her elder daughter who was lost after only a week of life.The parents' marriage fell apart in 1884.In 1895 and 1896, he studied literature, art history, and philosophy in Prague and Munich.But even after their separation, Lou continued to be Rilke's most important confidante until the end of his life.Having trained from 1912 to 1913 as a psychoanalyst with Sigmund Freud, she shared her knowledge of psychoanalysis with Rilke.In 1898, Rilke undertook a journey lasting several weeks to Italy.In 1899, he traveled with Lou and her husband, Friedrich Andreas, to Moscow where he met the novelist Leo Tolstoy.Later, "Rilke called two places his home: Bohemia and Russia".Still, the relationship between Rilke and Clara Westhoff continued for the rest of his life.Between October 1911 and May 1912, Rilke stayed at the Castle Duino, near Trieste, home of Countess Marie of Thurn and Taxis.The outbreak of World War I surprised Rilke during a stay in Germany.He spent the greater part of the war in Munich.He spent the subsequent time once again in Munich, interrupted by a stay on Hertha Koenig's Gut Bockel in Westphalia.Only in the summer of 1921 was he able to find a permanent residence in the Chateau de Muzot, close to Sierre in Valais.Before and after, he wrote both parts of the poem cycle Sonnets to Orpheus containing 55 entire sonnets.Rilke afterwards called it "the great giving."Gong and Mausoleum), as well as a comprehensive lyrical work in French.Rilke had believed that his death would be from blood poisoning as the result of having been pricked by a rose thorn.He chose his own epitaph as:
Rose, oh reiner Widerspruch, Lust,
Niemandes Schlaf zu sein unter soviel
Lidern.Rilke often worked with metaphors, metonymy and contradictions (e.The essay's theme is largely explored through the examination of an "improvised verse" (short poem) Rilke wrote in 1924.Prochnow, and Katja Riemann) interpreting Rilke's texts to make Rilke accessible to new generations.Audrey Niffenegger mentions and quotes from Rilke frequently in The Time Traveler's Wife.Douglas Coupland quotes Rilke's Letters To A Young Poet in Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture.Rilke translation inspired Lost in Translation, a celebrated 1974 poem by James Merrill.Auden's Journey to a War, published in 1939.Character Play"
The relationship of Rilke and Clara Westhoff and her early death is the subject Adrienne Rich's poem, 'Paula Becker to Clara Westhoff'.In 1901, Clara married the poet Rainer Maria Rilke; soon after, Paula married the painted Otto Modersohn.In Milan Kundera's novel "Immortality" Rilke is called to the Eternal Trial of Goethe, relating to Goethe's treatment of Bettina, and Kundera quotes a passage from The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge as Rilke's testimony.In a chapter called "El Aplauso" (The Ovation), fragments from The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge are quoted and discussed.Philip Roth's 1972 novella The Breast concludes with Rilke's poem "Archaic Torso of Apollo."Television
During several episodes of the TV show "Beauty and the Beast," starring Ron Perlman and Linda Hamilton, Rilke's poems were quoted many times.Rilke's poem The Panther is quoted in the 1990 film Awakenings (based on the 1973 book of the same name by neurologist and author Oliver Sacks), expressing the emotional undertone of the story.Rilke is referenced pejoratively in the film Igby Goes Down when Igby, played by Kieran Culkin says, "Every Christmas, some asshole gives me this copy of Young Poet with this patronizing note on the flap about how it's supposed to change my life."Music
The indie rock band Rainer Maria takes its name from Rilke, and at least some of their merchandise bears the poet's image.The Cocteau Twins song "Rilkean Heart", on the 1996 album Milk and Kisses, is an homage to Jeff Buckley who was a lifelong lover of Rilke's work.The British composer Oliver Knussen has set texts of Rainer Maria Rilke to music in his unaccomapanied 'Rilke songs' and in 'Requiem:Songs for Sue'.British composer Baron Raffaello de Banfield Tripcovich set several poems of Rilke for soprano and large orchestra, including 'Serale' and 'Liebeslied' (1968), 'Der Tod des Geliebten' and 'Der Sturm' (1972), and 'Four Rilke songs' (1986).The Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich set several of Rilke's poems to music in his Symphony No."Rose" poems to music in a choral piece titled "Les Chansons des Roses."The contemporary Norwegian composer Arne Nordheim has set Rilke's "Todeserfahrung" in his Wirklicher Wald.Fleming at Carnegie Hall in 2006, which was recorded and released on the album "Love Sublime."Engel, welcher einst) at the end of her piece Stufen.He also recorded readings of his translations, the Duino Elegies recording was made with keyboardist Tom Constanten.Contemporary rock group Sixpence None the Richer's song entitled "Still Burning" was influenced by Rilke's imagery of the heart as a hand.Chicago jazz vocalist Kurt Elling combined a Rilke poem with a melody from the Dave Brubeck Quartet to form his song "Those Clouds Are Heavy, You Dig?"The American country music songwriter and vocalist, Ray Wylie Hubbard, quotes Rilke in his song "The Messenger."Art
Fragments of Rilke's poetry are inscribed in certain paintings by Cy Twombly.In 1968, American artist Ben Shahn illustrated a set of verses from Rilke's The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge called For the Sake of a Single Verse...Religion
Rilke's poem "You, Neighbour God" is included in the most commonly used edition of Liturgy of the Hours.Rilke had a high opinion of Islam.This can be read (in German) in his letters.Rilke's Duino angels and the angels of Islam.Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies)(Critical Essay), Publication Title: Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, Author: Campbell, Karen J.Frankfurt am Main (1976)
Rainer Maria Rilke, Werke (Works).Selections
Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies and The Sonnets To Orpheus translated by A.The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, ed.Reissue edition March 13, 1989)
Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, ed.Robert Bly New York, 1981)
The Unknown Rilke, trans.Franz Wright (Oberlin College Press, expanded ed.The Book of Fresh Beginnings: Selected Poems, trans.Galway Kinnell and Hannah Liebmann (Hopewell, NJ, 1999)
Uncollected Poems, trans.Edward Snow (North Point Press, New York, 1966)
Two Prague Stories, trans.Kidder (Livonia, MI 2005)
Duino Elegies, Sonnets to Orpheus, Letters to a young poet: Box set, ed.West (Hogarth Press, London, 1931)
Duino Elegies, trans.Norton, New York, 1939)
Duino Elegies, trans.Jessie Lemont (Fine Editions Press, New York, 1945)
Duineser Elegien: The Elegies of Duino, trans.Boney (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1975)
Duino Elegies, trans.Sonnets to Orpheus
Sonnets to Orpheus, trans.Berkeley Press, 1961)
Sonnets to Orpheus, trans.Norton, New York, 1962)
Sonnets to Orpheus, trans.Stephen Mitchell (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1985)
Sonnets to Orpheus, trans.Leslie Norris and Alan Keele (ed.Other works
Stories of God, trans.Poems from The Book of Hours trans.The Book of Hours: Prayers to a Lowly God, trans.Kidder (Evanston, 2001)
Larenopfer, trans.Alfred de Zayas, with drawings by Martin Andrysek (Red Hen Press, Los Angeles, 2005)
Rainer Maria Rilke's The Book of Hours: A New Translation with Commentary, trans.Biographies
Ralph Freedman, Life of a Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke, New York 1996.Becker, Northwestern University Press, 1998.Studies
A Companion to the Works of Rainer Maria Rilke, ed.Manfred Engel and Dorothea Lauterbach, Stuttgart and Weimar 2004.Rilke's Russia: A Cultural Encounter.Biography in English
More than 200 poems in English translation
Twelve selected poems in English and German
Quotations
Works by Rainer Maria Rilke at Project Gutenberg
Poems, drama and prose writing by Rilke (in German)
International Rilke Association (in German)
Rilke site (in German)
All Poems and Books of R.This page was last modified on 18 May 2008, at 05:17.It was ten years ago I stumbled upon a book entitled Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties by John J.Indexes to his works are provided, as well as a selected bibliography of Rilke's works, translations, and books about him.All emotions are pure which gather you and lift you up; that emotion is impure which seizes only one side of your being and so distorts you.All the soarings of my mind begin in my blood.Believe that with your feelings and your work you are taking part in the greatest; the more strongly you cultivate this belief, the more will reality and the world go forth from it.He reproduced himself with so much humble objectivity, with the unquestioning, matter of fact interest of a dog who sees himself in a mirror and thinks: there's another dog.All becoming has need me..Love is like the measles.More belongs to marriage than four legs in a bed.Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.One had to take some action against fear when once it laid hold of one.Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.The Earth is like a child that knows poems.The deepest experience of the creator is feminine, for it is experience of receiving and bearing.The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.Truly to sing, that is a different breath.It lifts: and the scenery is falling apart.The video has been added to your playlist.Please login to add to your playlists.Please login to add to flag a video.This video has no Responses.Change the value of a comment by clicking on a thumb."Rainer Maria, last show, last song..."Rainer Maria, last show, last song...Rainer Maria, last show, last song...He became famous with
such works as DUINESER ELEGIEN and DIE SONETTE AN ORPHEUS.They both appeared in 1923.Works of art are indeed always products of having been in danger, of having gone to the very end in an experience, to where man can go no further.Karl Wilhelm Johann Joseph Maria Rilke in Prague, as the son of Josef Rilke, a railway official and the former Sophie Entz, the daughter of a bank official with the title of Imperial Counsellor.Later Rilke blamed his mother for his dark childhood, but she also encouraged him to read and write poetry.Rilke also learned early many of Schiller's ballads by heart.Rilke spent miserable years at St.Rilke continued his studies at the universities of Prague, Munich, and Berlin.As a poet Rilke made his debut at the age of nineteen with LEBEN UND LIEDER (1894), written in the conventional style of Heinrich Heine.Russian army officer, who was 14 years his senior.Russia, visiting among others Leo Tolstoy.Rilke was deeply impressed by what he learned of Russian mysticism.During this period he started to write The Book of Hours: The Book of Monastic Life, which appeared in 1905.He spent some time in Italy, Sweden, and Denmark, and joined an artists' colony at Worpswede in 1903.There is only one single way.Search for the reason that bids you to write; find out whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write.She was born seven months after the marriage, which lasted only one year.The work expressed his spiritual yearning.In the Spring of 1906 the overworked poet left Rodin abruptly.He also wrote The Tale of the Love and Death of Cornet Christopher Rilke, which became a great popular success.New Poems) Rilke wrote a notebook named DIE AUFZECHNUNGEN DES MALTE LAURIDS BRIGGE (1910), his most important prose work.It took the form of a series of semiautobiographical spiritual confessions but written by a Danish expatriate in Paris.Duino Elegies was born in two bursts of inspiration separated by ten years.Hohenlohe in 1910 at Duino, her remote castle
on the coast of the Adriatic, and returned again next year.After serving in the army, Rilke was afraid that he would never be able to finish it but finally in 1922 he completed Duineser Elegien (Duino Elegies) in a chateau in Muzot, Switzerland.He also wrote an addition, the Sonnets to Orpheus, which was a memorial for the young daughter of a friend.Merwin, John Ashbery, and W.Auden, who had Rilkean angels appear in the collection In Times of War (1939).Georg Gadamer, a proponent of hermeneutics.Moreover, the nature of the poetry in it is so unwaveringly accurate in its vision and so coolly, surgically presented to the reader that one hesitates to use the world at all...Lawrence Durrell on Malte Laurids Brigge, in German Life and Letters, 1963)
In 1913 Rilke returned to Paris, but he was forced to return to Germany because of the First World War.August 1914 to the front.After 1919 Rilke lived in Switzerland, occupied by his work and roses in his little garden.For time to time he went to Paris for a few months or to Italy.Being who stands for the recognition in the Invisible of a higher degree of reality.The Russian poet and novelist Boris Pasternak was a great admirer of Rilke's work; Pasternak's father Leonid had met Rilke in Russia and Italy.Rilke's Life and Work by D.Rainer Maria Rilke by Heiz F.Rilke: Man and Poet by N.Rainer Maria Rilke by R.Rainer Maria Rilke by H.Rainer Maria Rilke: The Ring of Forms by F.Rainer Maria Rilke by by E.Rainer Maria Rilke by H.Letters to a Young Poet (tr.Fifty Selected Poems, 1940 (tr.Letters to Benvenuta
RAINER MARIA RILKE ET MERLINE.BRIEFWECHSEL, 1954
Selected Works, 1954 (2 vols.RAINER MARIA RILKE UND INGA JUNGHANSS: BRIEFWECHSEL, 1959
Selected Works, 1954, 1960 (2 vols.Selected Works: Prose and Poetry, 1960 (2 vols.Chapter One
Poems are not .For the sake of a single poem, you must see many cities, many people and things .The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
"It would not be enough for a poet to have memories," said Rainer Maria Rilke's protagonist and oracle, the young poet Malte Laurids Brigge."You must be able to forget them."It is not difficult to imagine a setting for these remarks: the dingy room on the Left Bank of Paris by the flickering kerosene lamp, the poet's pen scratching on paper pulled out of stacks heaped on table and chairs; or perhaps, as so often in the Bibliotheque Nationale, amid silence, clearing throats, and shuffling feet; or a few years later in a cottage near Rome, or later still in the dying Swedish summer, under a beech tree.Until the end, the poet knew that real life finally exists only within.As he said in his Seventh Elegy:
Nowhere, Beloved, will world be but within U.Our life passes in transformation.The poet's life began in Prague.He grew up during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when the facades of the great buildings along the Vltava River still looked splendid.The area surrounding it was the focus of Rilke's childhood.This was the place where Rilke was baptized and where his mother offered her devotions during his early years.The geography of the world surrounding the young Rilke reflects in many important ways the topography of the future poet's mind.German remained the language of the Austrian governing elite, the military officer corps, and the professional establishment.The complex history of Prague and Bohemia as part of the Austrian empire created tensions akin to those in a colonial city where a German minority dominated community and economic life and a Czech majority were looked down upon and too often relegated to the lower reaches of the social scale.Being part of the governing minority produced some of their anxieties and those of many of their compatriots.Rilke's father, Josef, born in 1838, had failed in his ambitions even within the bourgeoisie.Sophie (or, as she called herself, Phia) Entz was the daughter of a highly placed bank official with the title of Imperial Counsellor; her mother, Caroline, came from.German family, well established and distinguished as manufacturers and landowners.Although Carl Entz never achieved the rank of nobility, he had risen to prominence within his class, and the mansion in the Herrengasse where Phia was raised with her sister and two brothers would remain in her memory as a treasured ideal: a baroque edifice with high ceilings, broad stairways, and many rooms filled with polished furniture.At one point she shocked everyone by rebelliously draining a bottle of champagne.The act was symptomatic of the same drive toward personal freedom that would later energize her son.Josef Rilke's military bearing implied.Since Jaroslav Rilke had been recently elevated to the peerage, Phia may have hoped that this privilege might also be extended to his younger brother.Unfortunately for her, this turned out not to be the case.Phia's expectations of Josef were not ungrounded.Waborski, a prosecuting attorney in Prague, by whom she had four children.His law office represented a great number of important German families in Prague and the Bohemian territory, many of them landowners who depended on his expertise in real estate.He was also politically active as a delegate to the Bohmische Landtag, the legislative assembly of the Bohemian territory.Yet Jaroslav, too, was possessed by the lust for nobility.In 1873 Jaroslav acquired the title of Knight of Ruliken, but only for himself and his children.At one time he had employed most of his office for weeks in an effort to trace his family origins, but he could not prove his nobility."The Poet"
The poet entered a world without moorings that allowed him no place to rest.Rene Karl Wilhelm Johann Joseph Maria Rilke, born prematurely on December 4, 1875, was at first so weak that his parents had to wait a fortnight before they dared take him to the Church of St.In fact, during Rilke's early years she acted as if she sought to recover the lost girl through the boy.She who should have regarded him as her primary duty loved him only when she could parade him "in front of some astonished friends" in a new little dress.Phia, by contrast, insisted that as a small child he liked his female role, playing with dolls and wanting a doll bed and kitchen as a present.Girls are after all so much nicer."For the growing child, this feminine posture was soon associated with a gift for writing verse.Phia urged poetry upon him before he was even able to read.At seven he started to copy poems, and he knew many of Schiller's lengthy ballads by heart before the usual German schoolboy would have been able to recite them.Her teaching insisted on refinement.But there was a countercurrent.Rene's father may not have been able to stand up to his wife, who hurt his sensibilities by parading their son in female dress, but he managed to supply him with toy soldiers and dumbbells for exercise.For all his attachment to his mother, the child also sought to please his father, and it was more than a superficial connection."Whenever he was home, only my papa bestowed upon me love combined with care and solicitude."Poetry seemed to him always frivolous compared with a "real" job like a bank clerk's.But he also supported his son with an allowance whenever he could, even after Rene's marriage.His father, Rene told a correspondent, was of "unspeakable goodness," making the son's life, which Josef could not understand, an object of touching daily concern."Josef with real understanding despite their conflict.Inchoately at first, he seems to have sensed that he provided the arena in which his parents' battles were fought out.But as Josef's military "manliness" and Phia's poetry became part of Rilke's psyche, the combination bore fruit in his work.At the height of his powers, Rilke's childhood conflict infiltrated Malte Laurids Brigge, where the qualities represented by his parents are distilled into archetypal figures to whom he attached varying judgments at different points of his life: a young, beautiful, and loving maman and her delicate sister Abelone on one side; a stern, distant, soldierly father bedecked with decorations on the other.In an almost classical way, the child Rene anticipated the adult poet Rainer by balancing Phia's "poetic spirit" against Josef's "soldierly virtues," which he identified with all masculine pursuits in business and commerce as well.Yet the poet's style was that of his mother.Rilke wrote decades later in the very different context of his "Requiem to a Friend."It was a cosmic game of dressing up.It brought him close to his mother, since it was the one occasion when she dared not leave his side.Again and again, as he suffered from the headaches that were to plague him all his life and as he fought off sudden, unexplained fevers, his mother would be drawn to his bedside, holding his hand and soothing him in his pain.They lived in constant fear of coughs, sore throats, swollen glands.Anxiety and illness were almost synonymous in Rene's childhood.And Malte adds: "I pleaded for my childhood, and it has come back, and I feel it's still as hard as it was then, and growing older has been of no use at all."This was not just Malte's condition, for to Rilke as well childhood illnesses were distressing memories."Far back in my childhood," he recollected in 1903, "within the great fevers of those illnesses, dwelt those great, indescribable fears .The pressures even in the preschooler's life were often suffocating.He longed for change, and for one brief moment in 1881 it seemed possible.The baroque castle that would have been the manager's residence fitted in well with Phia's and Rene's fantasies.Nor were his grandparents in the nearby Herrengasse any help, for the very awe of her parents' home, which Phia had instilled in him, made Rene feel constrained.He thought of his grandfather Entz as forbidding, and dinner in the mansion was an agony.As he told his wife many years later, he felt as though each spoonful of soup in that house were shoved into his mouth like something foreign.Actually, he felt easier with his grandmother, who was handsome and more approachable than her husband.Rilke remained on friendly terms with her, even when as an old woman she lived with his mother, from whom he had become estranged.But when Rilke was a child, the atmosphere in her house was no less burdensome than the frosty silences in his own home.Phia put Rene into his "first little trousers" and took him to school.Phia's tastes for patrician elegance.The building and courtyard of the school were located in the Herrengasse just across the street from his grandparents.The school was attended by children of some of the first families of Prague, and Rene's parents considered themselves lucky that Rene was granted a stipend.The first year was tolerable, but in the second year he missed two hundred class hours, and in the third, two entire quarter!However, except for arithmetic and physical education, he managed to earn high marks.In May 1884, just after starting the third grade at the beginning of school that Easter, Rene wrote a poem to celebrate his parents' wedding anniversary.Soon it fell apart, and Rene's parents began to live in two different places.Under the pressure of this loneliness, with few playmates outside school, he became more and more absorbed by writing verse.Without resources or a real home for him since their separation, his parents had to find a boarding school that offered a chance for a full scholarship.The obvious answer was a military school where Uncle Jaroslav could obtain a free place for him.In his loneliness he welcomed the idea of being with many boys of his own age, and he had colorful visions of military splendor.Rank and title, shining swords and glinting helmets, enlivened his imagination.Ellen Key, he turned that experience into an accusation against his parents, especially his mother.For four years he would endure this institutional life "despite illness and resistance."Again and again Rilke recounted these years as a time of absolute suffering.Yet two photographs Phia preserved bear angry captions: "The prison of my poor sick child" and "The Institution, the precious home of my dearest, my most beloved child.There was no home to go back to at the end of the school day, and while he was no longer alone, his schoolmates presented new problems.His peers were bound to be put off by a boy of their own age acting like a miniature adult.Still, Rene's almost daily letters to his mother, though surely unusual for an aspiring cadet, project an ordinary child's pleasures and concerns.Hugo, his father's younger brother, was himself an army officer, so his appearance in the school may have been particularly welcome to Rene.He was also sure to bring some special delicacy as a gift.The often poor state of his health would therefore be a natural topic.But there was a new aspect to the illnesses as they became part of his school life.Or he would cry out: "Now I must bear this another week!Phia would come and go on many more such missions: he needed her and looked forward to their talks; he begged her to bring food; he was ill again and looked for comfort.His dependence on his mother was probably greater in St.The intensity of this closeness while Phia was trying to lead her own life in Vienna may well account for Rene's violent anger later on.However often Phia rushed to her child's bedside, however strongly she supported him in his resistance to the military, it could never be enough because she had to leave again.And yet there was an inferno.To his fiancee he said in 1894: "What I suffered in those days can only be compared to the world's most violent anguish, though I was a child and perhaps because I was a child."He endured his schoolmates' blows without returning them or even talking back because he actually believed that "the will of an infinite, unchangeable fate" demanded of him a posture of heroic patience.He took pride in the way he bore his tortures.Following the example of Phia's impetuous religiosity, the child believed that his capacity for patient suffering resembled Christ's, a notion he articulated to his torturers.When a classmate hit him in the face so violently that his knees buckled, he responded in a quiet voice: "I suffer as Christ suffered, quietly and without complaint, and as you hit me I pray to our dear Lord that He will forgive you."Rene fled to a remote window recess of a nearby building and swallowed his tears, which burst forth at night while the large dormitory resounded with the regular breathing of the sleeping boys.Loneliness and introspection under these pressures heightened the tendency toward excessive piety that Phia had nurtured in him.The image of suffering sainthood became a heraldic emblem.This theme is dramatized with particular pungency in "The Gym Class," where the atmosphere is developed with minute realism.The teacher is a hard, tanned lieutenant with steely eyes.The noncommissioned officers who assist him are frightened and tyrannical.After a heroic effort to climb to the top of a pole, the young hero, Gruber, suffers a heart attack.The lieutenant announces to the class that their comrade has just died of heart failure and marches them off in neat columns.Beneath the myth of Rilke's school years, reality consisted of two contrary levels of experience.One level was the uneventful everyday, in which he was recognized as odd but was appreciated for his talent.The other was the "inferno," not an uncommon feature of boarding schools yet exacerbated by the military scene.The child felt what the adult poet ultimately knew: that there were two truths, equally valid, equally unassailable.Rene's adolescence repeated the tensions of his childhood, but now his state of mind was an issue between his parents more clearly than it had been in the past.Josef, too, sought to comfort him, but Rene seems to have been afraid of revealing his inadequacy at school.He begged his Mother, for example, not to "tell Papa" that he had failed to win a special braid on his uniform denoting excellence because of his poor showing in gymnastics and sports.Especially he urged his estranged wife to dissuade the boy from writing poetry, which he considered subversive, although Phia's support of his writing was Rene's salvation.Instead of actively seeking death, as he sometimes daydreamed he might, Rene embarked on the next best thing during his last year at St.Armageddon between Catholics and Protestants began there.Polten in the spring of 1890 and returned home for the summer.He was determined to turn over a new leaf.The summer spent at Uncle Jaroslav's "Villa Excelsior" outside Prague with Aunt Gabriele and her daughters had turned out to be harrowing.Rene had to prepare himself for the entrance examinations, which required tutoring, especially in geometry and physics.Then came the trip to Vienna in early August to sit for the exams, and several agonizing weeks of waiting for the results.Finally, on September 4, Rene was able to report to his mother that he had passed.Weisskirchen began as a completely new experience.The main building was three stories high with wide portals.An elegant vestibule was bedecked with weapons and coats of arms; beyond it, a short hallway led to the huge lecture halls.Rene faced blackboards at one end and an imposing array of glass bookcases with precious volumes at the other.Long corridors connected the lecture rooms with the dining halls, the theater, and other public places.The dormitories were located across the way in a separate building.In the early fall he happily reported a boat excursion to the nearby town of Teplitz to which he had been invited by one of his teachers, Captain Schwarzloithner.Rene had dropped by Oskar's room the day after he was released from the infirmary.He looked dreadful, complaining of headaches, trembling all over, and finding it nearly impossible to stand on his feet.His ailment was finally diagnosed as pneumonia aggravated by severe nervous strain.His parents attributed his condition to different causes.How it happened is unclear and controversial.Yet in the letter he wrote several years later to his fiancee Valerie von Rhonfeld, he strongly suggested that his relationship with Rudolf Fried may have had something to do with his departure.Mutual sympathy and "fraternal liking" bound him to his new friend.Rudolf admired Rene's poems, and Rene in turn urged his friend to write as well.But when Rudolf returned from a few days' leave to attend his grandmother's funeral, he had changed radically.Still, despite this adolescent ambivalence, the mature poet would retain an image of only one reality: the pain of five excruciating years from age ten to fifteen.And four years later, explaining his dislike of his juvenilia to Hermann Pongs, he explained that those early writings had been produced at a time that followed years so traumatic he still could not comprehend how he had survived them.Some of these
people have put in a great deal of work to help bring Rilke to a world in dire need.And so it is, we bring to you, Letters to a
Young Poet.Rainer Maria Rilke Picture Gallery has some good quality Rilke pics.School of Medicine has a listing in their Resources.Just So Literary Postcards has a few cards with Rilke phrases on them.
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