Duino Elegies: A New Translation (Bilingual Edition)

The Duino Elegies stand as the capstone of Rilke’s poetic work.

He began work on them at Schloss Duino, an Italian seaside village, during the winter of 1912, completing them a decade later in 1922. These poems articulate Rilke’s hope, voiced in the Tenth Elegy, “that I, one day, standing at the end of this harsh vision, / might sing out with joy and praise to the assenting angels.” They stand as his “final testament” as a writer, an epic work which traces “the long experience of love” that...