Rainier Maria Rilke, the most important
German poet of the first years of the twentieth
century, published a 'breakthrough'
book of poems in 1907 called Neue Gedichte, or
New Poems. Although
he would go on to other great accomplishments in potery -- his "Requiem
for a Friend" written after the death of his close companion Paula Modersohn-Becker
(whose portrait of Rilke is reproduced below), his late inspired Sonnets
to Orpheus and Duino Elegies), the poems of the New Poems
represent one of the great achievements of modern poetry. Poems about
objects, and thus about encounters with the world of objects, they push
human consciousness to some of its limits. Powerful yet accessible,
clear yet hovering close to the unsayable, these poems are among the finest
lyrics ever written. To hear a discussion of seven of these poems,
click
on the portrait of Rilke below.
The poems discussed are:
"The Panther"
"Archaic Torso of Apollo"
"Portrait of My Father as a Young Man"
"Self-Portrait, 1906"
"Going Blind"
"The Swan"
"The Last Evening"
To
hear the discussion of Rilke, CLICK on this protrait