Review (PDF) The Selected Poetry Of Rainer Maria Rilke
"This miracle of a book, perhaps the most beautiful group of poetic translations this century has ever produced," (Chicago Tribune) should stand as the definitive English language version.From the Trade Paperback edition.
File Size: 3537 KB
Print Length: 356 pages
Publisher: Vintage (January 30, 2013)
Publication Date: January 30, 2013
Sold by: Random House LLC
Language: English
ASIN: B004KABEI8
Text-to-Speech: Enabled
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Lending: Not Enabled
Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled
Best Sellers Rank: #225,086 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store) #62 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Regional & Cultural > European > German #712 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Poetry
With this particular volume of Rilke, you get two things: (1) perhaps the finest example of German poetry (the book is bilingual) this side of Schiller, and (2) without a doubt the finest translation of Rilke, or probably any poet, you will ever encounter in English. Hefty praise, but I can say no less about this magnificent book. I often find myself reading the English more than the German, the translations are so elegant. In its review of the volume, the New York Times Book Review said that "it is easy to feel that, if Rilke had written in English, he would have written in this English." I concur. I am no fan of Mitchell's Daodejing translation, though I know that he says up front that he is interpreting more than translating in that work. But Rilke volume is a triumph. Often, translators of poetry feel that they have to re-write the poem in order to get der Sinn, and Mitchell, himself a minor poet, could have done that easily and given us a nice book (even bad Rilke by a good translator is better than no Rilke at all). Mitchell did not do that; he very simply gave us Rilke, Rilke's poems, in English. They say what Rilke said, I don't know how else to say that. Mitchell wisely does not try to reproduce Rilke's rhyme schemes, though he does seem to match Rilke's alliterations note for note. This is not a flaw in the translations by any means; complex, artful, infuriating German sentence structure being what it is, I cannot imagine successfully duplicating the rhymes and still making a book as beautiful as the one Mitchell has made.
The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke: Bilingual Edition (English and German Edition) Ahead of All Parting: The Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke (Modern Library) (English & German Edition) (English and German Edition) The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke The Collected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke Life of a Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke Rainer Maria Rilke and Lou Andreas-Salomé: The Correspondence El Evangelio de Maria: La Tradicion Secreta de Maria Magdalena, la Companera de Jesus (Spanish Edition) Rumi Poetry: 101 Quotes Of Wisdom On Life, Love And Happiness (Sufi Poetry, Rumi Poetry, Inspirational Quotes, Sufism) Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties: Translations and Considerations In the Company of Rilke: Why a 20th-Century Visionary Poet Speaks So Eloquently to 21st-Century Readers (Tarcher Master Mind Editions) The Rilke Alphabet Lyric Orientations: Hölderlin, Rilke, and the Poetics of Community (Signale: Modern German Letters, Cultures, and Thought) Reading Rilke: Reflections on the Problems of Translation Rilke: New Poems Akiane: Her Life, Her Art, Her Poetry: Her Life, Her Art, Her Poetry Poetry in Michigan / Michigan in Poetry (Huron River Mist) Take the Mic: The Art of Performance Poetry, Slam, and the Spoken Word (A Poetry Speaks Experience) On Mount Vision: Forms of the Sacred in Contemporary American Poetry (Contemp North American Poetry) The More Easily Kept Illusions: The Poetry of Al Purdy (Laurier Poetry)
