Wartime Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke

The letters Rilke wrote during the war and postwar years are of particular interest not only for whatever they may contain of the wisdom of the poet, the artist, and the humanitarian, but for their analysis of the intellectual and spiritual currents of the time.

These letters give the account of Rilke's own state of mind and of his final approach to the threshold of his great works. They show the rapid change he underwent after his reaction to the first excitement of the war; how his dismay ...