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A Year with Rilke: Daily Readings from the Best of Rainer Maria Rilke
One of the most beloved poets of the twentieth century, Rainer Maria Rilke is widely celebrated for his depth of insight and timeless relevance. He has influenced generations of writers with his classic Letters to a Young Poet, and his reflections on the divine and our place in the world are disarmingly profound. A Year with Rilke provides the first ever reading from Rilke for every day of the year, including selections from his luminous poetry, his piercing prose, and his intimate letters and journals. Rilke is a trusted guide amid the bustle of our daily experience, reflecting on such themes as impermanence, the beauty of creation, the voice of God, and the importance of solitude. With new translations from the editors, whose acclaimed translation of Rilke's The Book of Hours won an ardent readership, this collection reveals the depth and breadth of Rilke's acclaimed work.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published October 29, 2009
372 people are currently reading
1517 people want to read
About the author
Rainer Maria Rilke
1,799 books6,938 followersA mystic lyricism and precise imagery often marked verse of German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, whose collections profoundly influenced 20th-century German literature and include
The Book of Hours
(1905) and
The Duino Elegies
(1923).
People consider him of the greatest 20th century users of the language.
His haunting images tend to focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety — themes that tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist poets.
His two most famous sequences include the Sonnets to Orpheus , and his most famous prose works include the Letters to a Young Poet and the semi-autobiographical The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge .
He also wrote more than four hundred poems in French, dedicated to the canton of Valais in Switzerland, his homeland of choice.
People consider him of the greatest 20th century users of the language.
His haunting images tend to focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety — themes that tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist poets.
His two most famous sequences include the Sonnets to Orpheus , and his most famous prose works include the Letters to a Young Poet and the semi-autobiographical The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge .
He also wrote more than four hundred poems in French, dedicated to the canton of Valais in Switzerland, his homeland of choice.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 63 reviews
November 4, 2021
3.5 stars
If you do not know anything about Rainer Maria Rilke - an early-20th century Austro-German lyric poet, writer, and thinker, this book will give you a glimpse into his poetry and philosophy.
The book offers a sort of calendar or diary where each day of the year is marked by a message from Rilke. The entries mainly include poems, excerpts from journals, and letters written by the poet over the years. During his relatively short life – Rilke died at the age of fifty-one - he wrote around 15,000 letters, many of them were published posthumously. His correspondence reveals Rilke’s philosophy and attitude towards life and death, towards God and suffering. Life for him is transient and fragile yet beautiful and rewarding.
Letters to a Young Poet, which consists of ten letters written in response to a young man asking Rilke’s advice on his career, are considered one of his most influential works. Among other things, they let Rilke reveal his personality as a thinker. Rilke emphasizes the importance of solitude for those who want to become a writer or an artist. He encourages us to search within ourselves for inspiration and incentives to create.
To Rilke, life and death are two halves of the same circle. We should accept both.
Rilke comes to be very suspicious of industrial technology. He sees it as The Machine that robs humans of their dignity and power and is capable of making life miserable.
His poetry reminds the reader how beneficial solitude can be at times. According to Rilke, we should develop our capacity to be alone “so that we can more fully know what we are seeing and feeling.” As an introvert, I can relate to that.
Everything we need is inside us, Rilke might have said. However, praising solitude does not mean preaching seclusion. On the contrary, encounters with the world, Rilke believes, have to bring about the transformation which can be achieved through "our seeing and naming of the world." Well, it may sound somewhat confusing, but that is Rilke. He knows how to leave the reader nonplussed.
I cannot refrain from sharing with you some of his writings.
Let’s begin with an entry reserved for the 1st of November. It contains an excerpt from Sonnets to Orpheus.
Fish are mute, we used to think. Who knows?
We may, in the end, find that their silence
says more to us than our words.
A note on friendship:
Friends can only be compared to dance and music. You cannot approach them intentionally, but only out of some involuntary need. Friends must be the ends and not the means. Otherwise they can get in the way.
I can still only think of God as the One who allows everything, the One who is not caught up in the whole inexhaustible drama. (from a letter dated December 5, 1914)
Only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing, even the most incomprehensible, will live the relationship with another as something alive and will sound the depths of his own being.
If we imagine our being as a room of any size, it seems that most of us know only a single corner of that room, a spot by the window, a narrow strip on which we keep walking back and forth. That gives a kind of security. But isn’t insecurity with all its dangers so much more human? We are not prisoners of that room. (from Letters to a Young Poet)
Allow your judgments their own undisturbed development, which, like any unfolding, must come from within and can by nothing be forced or hastened. Everything is gestation and then birth. To allow each impression and each embryo of a feeling to complete itself in the dark, in the unsayable, the not-knowing, beyond the reach of one’s own understanding, and humbly and patiently to await the dawning of a new clarity: that alone is the way of the artist—in understanding as in creating. (Ibid)
If you do not know anything about Rainer Maria Rilke - an early-20th century Austro-German lyric poet, writer, and thinker, this book will give you a glimpse into his poetry and philosophy.
The book offers a sort of calendar or diary where each day of the year is marked by a message from Rilke. The entries mainly include poems, excerpts from journals, and letters written by the poet over the years. During his relatively short life – Rilke died at the age of fifty-one - he wrote around 15,000 letters, many of them were published posthumously. His correspondence reveals Rilke’s philosophy and attitude towards life and death, towards God and suffering. Life for him is transient and fragile yet beautiful and rewarding.
Letters to a Young Poet, which consists of ten letters written in response to a young man asking Rilke’s advice on his career, are considered one of his most influential works. Among other things, they let Rilke reveal his personality as a thinker. Rilke emphasizes the importance of solitude for those who want to become a writer or an artist. He encourages us to search within ourselves for inspiration and incentives to create.
To Rilke, life and death are two halves of the same circle. We should accept both.
Rilke comes to be very suspicious of industrial technology. He sees it as The Machine that robs humans of their dignity and power and is capable of making life miserable.
Though the Machine
insists on our praise,
who can listen
with all this noise?
See, it rolls over everything,
weakening us
and taking our place.
His poetry reminds the reader how beneficial solitude can be at times. According to Rilke, we should develop our capacity to be alone “so that we can more fully know what we are seeing and feeling.” As an introvert, I can relate to that.
Everything we need is inside us, Rilke might have said. However, praising solitude does not mean preaching seclusion. On the contrary, encounters with the world, Rilke believes, have to bring about the transformation which can be achieved through "our seeing and naming of the world." Well, it may sound somewhat confusing, but that is Rilke. He knows how to leave the reader nonplussed.
I cannot refrain from sharing with you some of his writings.
Let’s begin with an entry reserved for the 1st of November. It contains an excerpt from Sonnets to Orpheus.
Fish are mute, we used to think. Who knows?
We may, in the end, find that their silence
says more to us than our words.
A note on friendship:
Friends can only be compared to dance and music. You cannot approach them intentionally, but only out of some involuntary need. Friends must be the ends and not the means. Otherwise they can get in the way.
I can still only think of God as the One who allows everything, the One who is not caught up in the whole inexhaustible drama. (from a letter dated December 5, 1914)
Only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing, even the most incomprehensible, will live the relationship with another as something alive and will sound the depths of his own being.
If we imagine our being as a room of any size, it seems that most of us know only a single corner of that room, a spot by the window, a narrow strip on which we keep walking back and forth. That gives a kind of security. But isn’t insecurity with all its dangers so much more human? We are not prisoners of that room. (from Letters to a Young Poet)
Allow your judgments their own undisturbed development, which, like any unfolding, must come from within and can by nothing be forced or hastened. Everything is gestation and then birth. To allow each impression and each embryo of a feeling to complete itself in the dark, in the unsayable, the not-knowing, beyond the reach of one’s own understanding, and humbly and patiently to await the dawning of a new clarity: that alone is the way of the artist—in understanding as in creating. (Ibid)
January 18, 2014
i thought i loved rilke, but it turns out i actually love rilke filtered through the collaborative translations of joanna macy and anita barrows. everybody always hatin on them for being non-literal and taking liberties and so on, but i feel ok about it. rilke through the lens of these two ladies is about the most beautiful and comforting and illuminating thing that has ever existed in the world.
January 7, 2021
A YEAR WITH RILKE (2009) offers a short reading of Ranier Maria Rilke's writings for every day of the year: some of his poetry is included in this book, as well as fragments of his letters, journals and prose.
Anita Barrows, poet, clinical psychologist and translator and Joanna Macy, a scholar of systems theory and Buddhist thought, worked together in order to select and translate the short(ish) pieces selected for this book. I can read no German, so I am not able to comment on the quality of the translation. I will certainly read more of Rilke's work in other translations.
Rilke writes about the transient nature of all things and about impermanence and death. He confronts suffering, the hopelessness of prisoners, beggars, abandoned animals and gives them their full attention and compassion. Nothing of life is left out, every living being deserves respect and attention in his writings. He is the poet of solitude, because solitude allows us to be completely receptive to the world. He teaches us to accept our mortality, our finitude, like Orpheus, who confronted death and came back singing, embracing the fullness of life: "Be forever dead in Eurydice, and climb back singing. /Climb praising as you return to connection. /Here among the disappearing, in the realm of the transient, /be a ringing glass that shatters as it rings" (Sonnets to Orpheus, II). His poetry is stunning, exquisite, lucid.
This book gives you a carefully curated sample of Rilke's writings spanning his entire productive life, in an accessible translation. It is a great introduction, especially suited for beginners.
Anita Barrows, poet, clinical psychologist and translator and Joanna Macy, a scholar of systems theory and Buddhist thought, worked together in order to select and translate the short(ish) pieces selected for this book. I can read no German, so I am not able to comment on the quality of the translation. I will certainly read more of Rilke's work in other translations.
Rilke writes about the transient nature of all things and about impermanence and death. He confronts suffering, the hopelessness of prisoners, beggars, abandoned animals and gives them their full attention and compassion. Nothing of life is left out, every living being deserves respect and attention in his writings. He is the poet of solitude, because solitude allows us to be completely receptive to the world. He teaches us to accept our mortality, our finitude, like Orpheus, who confronted death and came back singing, embracing the fullness of life: "Be forever dead in Eurydice, and climb back singing. /Climb praising as you return to connection. /Here among the disappearing, in the realm of the transient, /be a ringing glass that shatters as it rings" (Sonnets to Orpheus, II). His poetry is stunning, exquisite, lucid.
This book gives you a carefully curated sample of Rilke's writings spanning his entire productive life, in an accessible translation. It is a great introduction, especially suited for beginners.
January 2, 2015
This is the second year I have used a book of daily readings. Once again, I didn't do too well keeping up on a daily basis. But I have liked trying to be disciplined.
I have a love/hate relationship with Rilke. 35 years ago I read "Letters to a Young Poet" which I still enjoy and recommend to others. That has led me to want to read his poetry, but that has been tough. I have struggled to appreciate poetry now for about 20 years, with very mixed success. Rilke is someone who seems genuinely deep to me. That makes him attractive, but hard. So, maybe a daily dose of "deep but hard" was more than I bargained for. In any case, I expect I'll continue to come back to Rilke, and continue to be frustrated by him. But maybe that's the mark of a great writer.
I have a love/hate relationship with Rilke. 35 years ago I read "Letters to a Young Poet" which I still enjoy and recommend to others. That has led me to want to read his poetry, but that has been tough. I have struggled to appreciate poetry now for about 20 years, with very mixed success. Rilke is someone who seems genuinely deep to me. That makes him attractive, but hard. So, maybe a daily dose of "deep but hard" was more than I bargained for. In any case, I expect I'll continue to come back to Rilke, and continue to be frustrated by him. But maybe that's the mark of a great writer.
December 31, 2014
January 4 - "I have experienced a truth more completely than ever before: that life's bestowal of riches already surpasses any subsequent impoverishment. What, then, remains to be feared? Only that we might forget this! But around and within us, how much it helps to remember!"
December 28, 2018
I was inspired to pick up this book after hearing one of the two translators, Joanna Macy, on an episode of "On Being." I knew next to nothing about Rilke, but her enthusiasm for his work was so infectious I knew I needed to read more. This book seems to be the perfect way to gain access to his work, since it contains selections from a wide range of his writings, including The Book of Hours, Uncollected Poems, Sonnets to Orpheus and Letters to a Young Poet.
In a case of finding the right reading material at exactly the right time, I found this book just after my father was diagnosed with incurable cancer. Reading the daily poem in this book each night helped me deal with the pain of the situation and death. . . there are some truly beautiful passages about death and dying here that really did give me perspective.
I like the format, with one passage per day, and all the days labeled. It's nice to have "permission" to only read one piece per day, it gives me time to reflect on each piece.
In a case of finding the right reading material at exactly the right time, I found this book just after my father was diagnosed with incurable cancer. Reading the daily poem in this book each night helped me deal with the pain of the situation and death. . . there are some truly beautiful passages about death and dying here that really did give me perspective.
I like the format, with one passage per day, and all the days labeled. It's nice to have "permission" to only read one piece per day, it gives me time to reflect on each piece.
July 26, 2021
adoro mucho este libro, muchas gracias 😭
November 2, 2023
I enjoyed taking my time with this. I loved reading it by the river. I wish I could talk to Rilke. I relate to him a lot. The Sonnets to Orpheus were my least favorite. When I looked into the story of Orpheus and Eurydice though, I also found it compelling, so I get it. Overall, a beautiful collection of poems that made me feel and think. Glad I read them.
December 31, 2017
Reading one Rilke quote or poem per day, every day of the year 2017. How cool and exciting! Something to look forward to every day ♥
Thanks Rim for suggesting this marvelous idea!
December 31, 2017:
I just read the last quoted Rilke excerpt. I feel bittersweet about finishing this book and turning the last page. It has been there for me throughout the whole of 2017. Some days, the passage was ok, other days it was butterflies-in-my-stomach amazing!!
I highly recommend this awesome experience.
Happy 2018 everybody 💗💗💗
Thanks Rim for suggesting this marvelous idea!
December 31, 2017:
I just read the last quoted Rilke excerpt. I feel bittersweet about finishing this book and turning the last page. It has been there for me throughout the whole of 2017. Some days, the passage was ok, other days it was butterflies-in-my-stomach amazing!!
I highly recommend this awesome experience.
Happy 2018 everybody 💗💗💗
December 1, 2012
I have been dipping in and out of this book with mixed success for a while. Some days readings are extraordinary. Others less so.
August 23, 2013
I stopped reading this after a while. The entries were not as interesting or inspirational as I had hoped. I'll get back to it sometime later.
September 27, 2020
Incredible poetical depth exhibited by one of my favorite poets of all time. The translation from German is superb and I think that the meaning behind Rilke's poetry does not lose any of the original substance. I for one, do not subscribe to those who think that translations hinder the work, especially if the translators did their best to remain true to the meaning. I think that if the poetry has substance, then any faithful translation cannot escape it, and must bring it forth in that particular tongue. I have found this to be true with Dostoyevsky, Goethe, and the Quran (To name a few). Although to be fair, the Quran is sublime and beyond words when hearing the recitation in the original Arabic. I am only speaking of the meaning of the works here, and not the sounds that the language might strike in the ear of the beholder. The turns of phrase and various other poetical nuances like rhyming of course are never going to be done justice in another language. We concern ourselves with the meaning of the work when reading it in another tongue, and this book excels in rendering that meaning (to my mind) faithfully. Highly recommended reading for anyone who wants to see the world through the depth of a poet's perspective.
December 31, 2018
Time with Rilke is always time well spent.
September 12, 2022
If you love Rilke this book is a wonderful way to engage with a short passage of his work each day. Unfortunately the book is out of print.
September 22, 2022
Dog-eared many pages
Read
March 19, 2016I first encountered Rainer Maria Rilke when a friend gave me a copy of LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET when I was in my early twenties.
It spoke to me very powerfully, and I went on to read many of Rilke’s poems and letters.
I re-discovered Rilke again when I was writing my latest novel THE BEAST’S GARDEN, which is a retelling of Beauty & the Beast set in Nazi Germany.
I was drawn to read his work again because I remembered that Rilke was obsessed with roses, (a potent motif in the fairy tale) and wrote many poems about them.
As part of my journey of rediscovery, I bought A YEAR WITH RILKE. It brings together a collection of his writings – excerpts from poetry (both published and unpublished), letters, and diaries – each chosen to match a certain day of the year.
The idea is to read one page a day, every day, for the full year. I have kept the book next to my bed to read, and did so most evenings. Occasionally I had to read two or three – or even ten - pages to catch up. It didn’t matter.
The excerpts are each so small and so easily read, and sometimes I would read the same poem over and over again, trying to let it soak into my soul. Occasionally the reading for the day was so uncannily prescient, so necessary to what I needed to read just then, it seemed fore-ordained.
It’s a beautiful way to read his work – and a perfect way to be introduced to him.
The only complaint I have to make is that it is designed for an audience in the northern hemisphere and so some of the seasonal pieces (like the poem for March 21, which was ‘Spring!’) are out-of-whack for an Australian reader. But it's a minor complaint – and I simply went back and read them again at the tight time.
It spoke to me very powerfully, and I went on to read many of Rilke’s poems and letters.
I re-discovered Rilke again when I was writing my latest novel THE BEAST’S GARDEN, which is a retelling of Beauty & the Beast set in Nazi Germany.
I was drawn to read his work again because I remembered that Rilke was obsessed with roses, (a potent motif in the fairy tale) and wrote many poems about them.
As part of my journey of rediscovery, I bought A YEAR WITH RILKE. It brings together a collection of his writings – excerpts from poetry (both published and unpublished), letters, and diaries – each chosen to match a certain day of the year.
The idea is to read one page a day, every day, for the full year. I have kept the book next to my bed to read, and did so most evenings. Occasionally I had to read two or three – or even ten - pages to catch up. It didn’t matter.
The excerpts are each so small and so easily read, and sometimes I would read the same poem over and over again, trying to let it soak into my soul. Occasionally the reading for the day was so uncannily prescient, so necessary to what I needed to read just then, it seemed fore-ordained.
It’s a beautiful way to read his work – and a perfect way to be introduced to him.
The only complaint I have to make is that it is designed for an audience in the northern hemisphere and so some of the seasonal pieces (like the poem for March 21, which was ‘Spring!’) are out-of-whack for an Australian reader. But it's a minor complaint – and I simply went back and read them again at the tight time.
December 31, 2011
I find these daily doses of some of Rilke's works an excellent way to start the day. I admire both his poerty and prose. If you start reading is works, you will thirst for more.
"You said live out loud
and die you siad lightly
and over and over again you said be"
This is part of the entry for Aug 12th.
"You said live out loud
and die you siad lightly
and over and over again you said be"
This is part of the entry for Aug 12th.
July 29, 2010
This book has me back in the practice of daily devotional.
July 25, 2017
This is OK, but you don't need it. Just read Rilke is his entirety, I think. Letters to a Young Poet, and then Duino Elegies or Sonnets to Orpheus.
January 23, 2025
Full confession - I started this in good faith on January 1, 2024. I read a passage daily for about six months. Then, life derailed me and I tried to keep up in fits and starts. By the end of the year, I'd only made it to October, so I took a marathon sprint this month so I could finish the book in close to a year's time. No literary crime, but worth mentioning.
As for the collection itself, in Rilke, I found that poet I truly connect with - a mystic, a dreamer, a realist, romantic, and doubter. Mary Oliver, Mary Karr, Patti Smith, and Leonard Cohen have always been faithful, but they are all of these times. Rilke has been gone almost a century now, and with that distance, I can feel the eternal quality of his work when I read him.
These passages, taken from his poetry collections, novel, and multiple correspondences (most famously, Letters to a Young Poet, are a wondrous way to start one's day. I found that I highlighted and noted scores of entries. I'd recommend this to anyone who is interested in exploring Rilke's work in an incredibly digestible manner. It's also just a great companion to a morning cup of coffee.
As for the collection itself, in Rilke, I found that poet I truly connect with - a mystic, a dreamer, a realist, romantic, and doubter. Mary Oliver, Mary Karr, Patti Smith, and Leonard Cohen have always been faithful, but they are all of these times. Rilke has been gone almost a century now, and with that distance, I can feel the eternal quality of his work when I read him.
These passages, taken from his poetry collections, novel, and multiple correspondences (most famously, Letters to a Young Poet, are a wondrous way to start one's day. I found that I highlighted and noted scores of entries. I'd recommend this to anyone who is interested in exploring Rilke's work in an incredibly digestible manner. It's also just a great companion to a morning cup of coffee.
July 2, 2024
July 2
"A rose by itself is every rose.
And this one is irreplaceable,
perfect, one sufficient word
in the context of all things."
In "A Year With Rilke," by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows, entry for July 2, the above quotation is from Rainer Maria Rilke's poem "One Sufficient Word," in Les Roses. This book has 366 readings of prose and poetry.
Rilke said that he sometimes heard lines of his poems as a voice inside the wind while walking on cliffs.
The Economist praised Rilke as "the greatest German poet of the twentieth century."
Rilke's poetry is luminous and piercing; spending each day with one of his poems for a year is like breathing into a soft grace. Highly recommended.
"A rose by itself is every rose.
And this one is irreplaceable,
perfect, one sufficient word
in the context of all things."
In "A Year With Rilke," by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows, entry for July 2, the above quotation is from Rainer Maria Rilke's poem "One Sufficient Word," in Les Roses. This book has 366 readings of prose and poetry.
Rilke said that he sometimes heard lines of his poems as a voice inside the wind while walking on cliffs.
The Economist praised Rilke as "the greatest German poet of the twentieth century."
Rilke's poetry is luminous and piercing; spending each day with one of his poems for a year is like breathing into a soft grace. Highly recommended.
January 1, 2025
I really liked this one! This book is meant to be read a page a day, which I tried to do, but I confess I sometimes stopped and caught up. Anyway, I found that reading it throughout the year was meaningful to me. Each day was a short entry - a poem, a letter, or an excerpt of Rilke's writing. I read a few collections by Rilke before, and I found reading him in such small portions to be beneficial - it's all fresh and profound when you just read 1 small thing and contemplate it.
So I liked both the format and the content. Will pick up another "yearly" book in the new year too.
So I liked both the format and the content. Will pick up another "yearly" book in the new year too.
January 3, 2018
An extraordinary book to live with for a year...a poem or short passage a day and that's how I started my day: reading it before I got out of bed and it had a tremendous cumulative effect on me. Good translations and fantastic selections. I am not equipped to critically review Rilke but commend this project, this approach which indeed changed how I think gradually and cumulatively.
April 12, 2020
I hardly ever wait to finish these all in a year but I do like the idea of having them around later to pick a reading.
I especially like this because it was indeed like a survey of Rilke. It was a buffet from his journals, poetry and letter across his life. I only knew a couple of Rilke’s poems so this felt like a great introduction.
I especially like this because it was indeed like a survey of Rilke. It was a buffet from his journals, poetry and letter across his life. I only knew a couple of Rilke’s poems so this felt like a great introduction.
December 31, 2020
This was my daily ritual: tea with Rilke. It was the perfect year to read this book. There were so many uncertainties and heartbreaks this year, but daily words from Rainer Maria Rilke were always there for me. I'll read this again when I'm older as I've found with age there are things that become better, deeper, clearer.
September 5, 2020
My introduction to Rilke was having Taika Waititi reduce me to a weeping mess at the end of Jojo Rabbit. This is a far gentler but no less profound collection of Rilke's gorgeous & insightful poetry, and I'm sure to be reading it over & over again in the years to come
January 17, 2021
I had put this aside for a very long time, then started reading one entry per day last January 2020. Finished it the end of the year. It contains several of my favorites of his writings and some lovely ones that were new to me.
December 30, 2022
What a delight. I greatly enjoyed these poems and excerpts from Rilke. I also like them in context when possible, but this was a wonderful way to finish my days this year. Will keep in mind to use again in the future.
November 2, 2017
I wish I could read his original work instead of translations. His work leaves me awestruck each time. I would read him again and again.
February 16, 2018
A pile of fragments that are often too short to resonate with me. The proses within iterate ideas of grandeur. I don't find myself caring at all. Show, don't tell.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 63 reviews