Like Pinsky's translation of The Inferno of Dante, Rilke's 'Selectee Poetry' is one of those poet translations I believe is a must in a literate library. I'm not sure exactly how many languages he reads, but his ability to turn German poetry into English poetry his ability to turn Latin poetry into English poetry - hell, it amazes me. I should also mention that I love Stephen Mitchell as a translator. Rilke dances in that void between love, sex and death and makes the gravity of it ALL work. This is both the poetry of my youth (I first read Rilke in HS) and my maturity. He is wrestling with angels, looking for the THING, peeling back the skin on tangerines while counting the seeds. Rainer Maria Rilke seems to stretch his words from the dirt to the stars with his poems. ― Rainer Maria Rilke, The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke “Yet, no matter how deeply I go down into myself, my God is dark, and like a webbing made of a hundred roots that drink in silence.” Originally published: New York : Random House, 1982. Mitchell has brought off with seeming effortlessness. Few translators of any poet have arrived at the delicate balance of fidelity and originality that Mr.
Mitchell is impeccable in his adherence to Rilke’s text, to his formal music, and to the complexity of his thoughts at the same time, his work has authority and power as poetry in its own right.
In Stephen Mitchell’s versions, many readers feel that they have discovered an English rendering that captures the lyric intensity, fluency, and reach of Rilke’s poetry more accurately and convincingly than has ever been done before. His poems of ecstatic identification with the world exert a seemingly endless fascination for contemporary readers. Rilke is unquestionably the most significant and compelling poet of romantic transformation, of spiritual quest, that the twentieth century has known. The influence and popularity of Rilke’s poetry in America have never been greater than they are today, more than fifty years after his death. Parallel German text and English translation.
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