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The Book of Fresh Beginnings: Selected Poems
This new selection, drawing primarily on Rilke's extremely rich middle period, the first decade of the 20th Century, and concluding with a selection from his late Sonnets to Orpheus, offers a clear, powerful, and contemporary Rilke.
- GenresPoetry
99 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1994
17 people want to read
About the author
Rainer Maria Rilke
1,846 books7,026 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 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 8, 2019
‘’So many statements about Rilke require contradiction or qualification as soon as they are made.’’ (7)
‘’The poet, according to this ardent championing of art’s mission, was a sort of secular priest, someone who longed for transcendence, rejecting the materialism and pettiness of the world around him’ and seeking escape from a compromised world through a spiritual affirmation of the artistic imagination.’’ (8)
‘’At the same time Rilke helped initiate a relocation of poetry’s subject matter, away from a symbolist preoccupation with the occult and with a yearning for transcendence and toward a profound celebration of this world, this life, the particulars that fill our senses and make up our daily existence.’’ (9)
William Carlos Williams followed in his footsteps.
Rilke was employed as Cezanne’s secretary.
‘’The notion of the artist as one who is totally caught up in hard work, ignoring theory and submerged in practice.’’ (9)
[Van Gogh and Cezanne] ‘’appropriated ordinary people and things for their fierce artistic attention’’ (10)
‘’That shift of attention to the mundane and ordinary would help Rilke redefine not only the artist but the focus of art’’ (10)
‘’the poet cannot escape the limitations of selfhood and historical context ... but Rilke did indeed achieve something unique and lasting in these poems, a self-transcendence and a renewal of artistic purpose in the midst of turn-of-the-century decadence.’’ (11)
‘’he was, always and at every point of his career, a poet drawn to, and capable of expressing, the ineffable and mysterious. His credit argued that life is only meaningful when it remains fully open to death, and his capability, as a writer, is always distinctive in part because of his sense of what lies beyond expression, beyond our senses, beyond life itself.’’ (12)
‘’If he brings us to a renewed appreciation of a myth, it is apt to be one like the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, where we visit the realm of death. If he trains his attention on an ancient statue, an Apollo or a Buddha, he makes it explode with cosmic meaning. His utmost delight is to mix the earthly and otherworldly inextricably together, creating a simultaneity that resonated with mystery and excitement’’ (12).
THE ANGELS
All of them have weary mouths
and bright souls without a seam.
And a longing (as toward sin)
goes sometimes through their dreams.
Each is like all the others;
hushed in God’s garden, silently,
like many, many intervals
in His night and melody.
Only when they spread their wings
are they walkers of a wind:
As if with His wide sculptor-hands
God was turning pages
in the dark book of first beginnings.
LONELINESS
Loneliness is like a rain.
It rises from the sea to meet their evenings;
from plains that stretch into the distance
it goes up to the sky, that always has it.
From the sky it falls upon the town.
It rains down in these mongrel hours
when all the streets are turning toward the day,
and when those bodies that got nothing from each other
go separate ways, sad and disappointed;
when people who feel hate for one another
must sleep together in one bed;
then loneliness goes down into the rivers . . .
THE PANTHER
His gaze, from passing all those bars,
is too tired for anything more.
It seems to him there are a thousand bars
and past those thousand bars no world.
The soft gait of supple flex and power
that pads around the smallest circle here
is like a dance if strength around a point
in which a mighty will stands dazed.
Once in a while the curtain of the pupil
parts silently—. An image goes in then,
runs through the trembling stillness of the limbs
and vanishes inside the heart.
PORTRAIT OF MY FATHER IN HIS YOUTH
Dream in his eyes. The forehead seems to be
in touch with something distant. A huge amount
of youth around the mouth and a seductiveness
that hasn’t learned to smile. Held before
the ornamental lacings of the slim
aristocratic uniform; the saber’s basket-hilt
and both the hands — they wait there
peacefully, they reach for nothing.
By now they’re scarcely visible, as though
they need, those graspers of the far, to be
the first to disappear. And all the rest
is curtained off, erased, as though
no one could fathom it, cloudy from its depths—.
You swiftly fading photograph
in my my more slowly fading hands.
‘’...the meadows, soft and full of patience’’ (53)
THE BOWL OF ROSES
But now you know how that’s forgotten:
this full bowl of roses stands before you,
unforgettable, filled to the brim
with the utmost expression of being, bending,
yielding, unable to give, simply existing,
that could ever be ours; utmost for us too,
Silent life, opening and opening, no end in sight,
a use of space that takes no space away
from space that things around it need,
an existence with almost no outlines, all background
and pure inwardness, and much strange softness
and self-illuminated — right to the rim:
do we know anything, anywhere, that’s like this?
‘’The poet, according to this ardent championing of art’s mission, was a sort of secular priest, someone who longed for transcendence, rejecting the materialism and pettiness of the world around him’ and seeking escape from a compromised world through a spiritual affirmation of the artistic imagination.’’ (8)
‘’At the same time Rilke helped initiate a relocation of poetry’s subject matter, away from a symbolist preoccupation with the occult and with a yearning for transcendence and toward a profound celebration of this world, this life, the particulars that fill our senses and make up our daily existence.’’ (9)
William Carlos Williams followed in his footsteps.
Rilke was employed as Cezanne’s secretary.
‘’The notion of the artist as one who is totally caught up in hard work, ignoring theory and submerged in practice.’’ (9)
[Van Gogh and Cezanne] ‘’appropriated ordinary people and things for their fierce artistic attention’’ (10)
‘’That shift of attention to the mundane and ordinary would help Rilke redefine not only the artist but the focus of art’’ (10)
‘’the poet cannot escape the limitations of selfhood and historical context ... but Rilke did indeed achieve something unique and lasting in these poems, a self-transcendence and a renewal of artistic purpose in the midst of turn-of-the-century decadence.’’ (11)
‘’he was, always and at every point of his career, a poet drawn to, and capable of expressing, the ineffable and mysterious. His credit argued that life is only meaningful when it remains fully open to death, and his capability, as a writer, is always distinctive in part because of his sense of what lies beyond expression, beyond our senses, beyond life itself.’’ (12)
‘’If he brings us to a renewed appreciation of a myth, it is apt to be one like the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, where we visit the realm of death. If he trains his attention on an ancient statue, an Apollo or a Buddha, he makes it explode with cosmic meaning. His utmost delight is to mix the earthly and otherworldly inextricably together, creating a simultaneity that resonated with mystery and excitement’’ (12).
THE ANGELS
All of them have weary mouths
and bright souls without a seam.
And a longing (as toward sin)
goes sometimes through their dreams.
Each is like all the others;
hushed in God’s garden, silently,
like many, many intervals
in His night and melody.
Only when they spread their wings
are they walkers of a wind:
As if with His wide sculptor-hands
God was turning pages
in the dark book of first beginnings.
LONELINESS
Loneliness is like a rain.
It rises from the sea to meet their evenings;
from plains that stretch into the distance
it goes up to the sky, that always has it.
From the sky it falls upon the town.
It rains down in these mongrel hours
when all the streets are turning toward the day,
and when those bodies that got nothing from each other
go separate ways, sad and disappointed;
when people who feel hate for one another
must sleep together in one bed;
then loneliness goes down into the rivers . . .
THE PANTHER
His gaze, from passing all those bars,
is too tired for anything more.
It seems to him there are a thousand bars
and past those thousand bars no world.
The soft gait of supple flex and power
that pads around the smallest circle here
is like a dance if strength around a point
in which a mighty will stands dazed.
Once in a while the curtain of the pupil
parts silently—. An image goes in then,
runs through the trembling stillness of the limbs
and vanishes inside the heart.
PORTRAIT OF MY FATHER IN HIS YOUTH
Dream in his eyes. The forehead seems to be
in touch with something distant. A huge amount
of youth around the mouth and a seductiveness
that hasn’t learned to smile. Held before
the ornamental lacings of the slim
aristocratic uniform; the saber’s basket-hilt
and both the hands — they wait there
peacefully, they reach for nothing.
By now they’re scarcely visible, as though
they need, those graspers of the far, to be
the first to disappear. And all the rest
is curtained off, erased, as though
no one could fathom it, cloudy from its depths—.
You swiftly fading photograph
in my my more slowly fading hands.
‘’...the meadows, soft and full of patience’’ (53)
THE BOWL OF ROSES
But now you know how that’s forgotten:
this full bowl of roses stands before you,
unforgettable, filled to the brim
with the utmost expression of being, bending,
yielding, unable to give, simply existing,
that could ever be ours; utmost for us too,
Silent life, opening and opening, no end in sight,
a use of space that takes no space away
from space that things around it need,
an existence with almost no outlines, all background
and pure inwardness, and much strange softness
and self-illuminated — right to the rim:
do we know anything, anywhere, that’s like this?
August 29, 2024
Many of these translations are slightly klunky and awkward. Some of them work though.
It is a horrible translation of "From a Childhood".
BUT a wonderful "Bowl of Roses"
THe book paper is very good thick with plenty of space. It is a good selection of poems
It is a horrible translation of "From a Childhood".
BUT a wonderful "Bowl of Roses"
THe book paper is very good thick with plenty of space. It is a good selection of poems
January 10, 2011
This follows Rilke´s work as he transitions into new stylistic periods, and as I had never read Rilke before, this seemed like an appropriate place to start. I felt stunned by this work, totally in awe of its depth and grace. Notable favourites included "Blue Hydrangeas,""Evening,"The Voices,""Lovesong," which rivals any love poem by Neruda, Auden, or Gallagher, "The Carousel,""Fading," and of course "The Bowl of Roses." New Year´s resolution part II, to read more Rilke.
June 21, 2007
Poignant, beatiful, simple, wonderfully interpretted.
March 10, 2016
Some of Rilke's most beautiful poems!
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews