Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties: Translations and Considerations

Book excerpt: This book was compiled by a Rilke lover for Rilke lovers. John Mood has chosen selections from Rilke and combined them with his own writings and commentary. Included are Rilke's letters on love; poems on love and other difficulties, translated by Mood; shorter selections from Rilke's work; and an essay by Mood. The letters on love present Rilke's exploration of the deepest levels of what love is. His working toward love at these depths was poetic, profound, and thoroughly radical. His language is sensual; his deep spirituality is rooted in the senses. The letters are of crucial importance for those who have passed from puritanism to promiscuity without ever having experienced genuine love. The love poems were written during the period of Rilke's most mature work. They are sensual and explicitly sexual-but they are also tough-minded. The poems reflect great passion and gentle care; his unique joining of the masculine and the feminine is profoundly portrayed. There is also a selection from Rilke's later poems, which many feel are his most significant works. All but a few have appeared in translation only once before. The poems deal with the fundamental difficulty of living-dying, though with greater subtlety, density, and depth than before. The book concludes with a passage from Rilke on the difficulty of writing poetry and of living life; a letter containing an affirmation of life; and Mood's essay on dying, based on Rilke's self-composed epitaph.--Adapted from book jacket.