Diaries of a Young Poet - Hardcover

Reseña del editor

In April 1898 Rainer Maria Rilke, not yet 23, began a diary of his Florence visit. It was to record, in the form of an imaginary dialogue with his mentor and then-lover, Lou Andreas-Salome, his firsthand experiences of early Renaissance art. Two others followed. In these "Schmargendorf" and "Worpswede" diaries, Rilke began to reach toward other people - among them the sculptor Clara Westhoff, whom he would marry and the painter Paula Becker, whose death would haunt him all his life. These diaries, translated into English here for the first time by Edward Snow and Michael Winkler as Diaries of a Young Poet, span what is arguably the most crucial phase in Rilke's development. They emerge in this fluent, copiously annotated translation as central to the Rilke canon, early prose counterweights to the later Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge.

Reseña del editor

Translated for the first time into English, these diaries offer unique insight into Rilke's development as one of the greatest poets and prose stylists of the twentieth century.

In April 1898 Rainer Maria Rilke, not yet twenty-three, began a diary of his Florence visit. it was to record, in the form of an imaginary dialogue with his mentor and then-lover, Lou Andreas-Salome, his firsthand experiences of early Renaissance art. The descriptive project quickly expanded to include not only thoughts on life, history, and artistic genius, but also unguarded moments of revulsion, self-doubt, and manic expectation. The result is an intimate glimpse into the young Rilke, full of Nietzschean fervor and dreamy Botticellian fantasy, anxiously enamored of a woman fifteen years his senior, already experimenting brilliantly with language and metaphor.

Rilke completed his Florence diary in early July. Two others followed. In these diaries, Rilke's voice grows more inward, and his quintessential blend of landscape, longing, and memory comes into being as we read.

The three works span what is arguably the most crucial phase in Rilke's development, and -- especially in this fluent, annotated translation -- emerge as central to the Rilke canon, early prose counterweights to the later Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge.