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Biography of Rainer Maria RilkeName: Rainer Maria RilkeBirth Date: December 4, 1875 Death Date: December 29, 1926 Place of Birth: Prague, Bohemia Nationality: German Gender: Male Occupations: poet Rainer Maria Rilke Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) is considered the greatest lyric poet of modern Germany. His work is marked by a mystical sense of God and death.Born in Prague on Dec. 4, 1875, Rainer Maria Rilke grew up in a middle-class milieu he called "petit bourgeois," of which he later felt ashamed. In spite of his sensitive, almost feminine nature, he was expected to become an army officer and was forced to spend 5 years (1886-1891) in the military academies of St. Pölten and Mährisch-Weisskirchen. After graduation from high school, he enrolled for a year as a student of literature at the German University of Prague (1895-1896) before moving away from his family. He continued his studies at the University of Munich for the next few years.Early WorksAt 19 Rilke began his literary career by publishing at his own expense a collection of indifferent love poems, Leben und Lieder (1894; Life and Songs), written …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…Masks and the Man (1960). Useful background material is in Cecil M. Bowra, Heritage of Symbolism (1943), and particularly in the short work on German literature by Ronald Gray, The German Tradition in Literature, 1871-1945 (1965), which includes an incisive interpretation of some of the key works of Rilke.Freedman, Ralph, Life of a poet: a biography of Rainer Maria Rilke, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1995. Hendry, J. F., The sacred threshold: a life of Rainer Maria Rilke, Manchester: Carcanet New Press, 1983.Kleinbard, David, The beginning of terror: a psychological study of Rainer Maria Rilke's life and work, New York: New York University Press, 1993.Leppmann, Wolfgang, Rilke: a life, New York: Fromm International Pub. Corp., 1984.Nalewski, Horst, Rainer Maria Rilke, Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut, 1976.Prater, Donald A., A ringing glass: the life of Rainer Maria Rilke, Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press, 1993. Tavis, Anna A., Rilke's Russia: a cultural encounter, Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1994. |