Music: breathing of statues. Perhaps: silence of paintings. You language where all language ends. You time standing vertically on the motion of mortal hearts.
Feelings for whom? O you the transformation of feelings into what?–: into audible landscape. You stranger: music. You heart-space grown out of us. The deepest space in us, which, rising above us, forces its way out,– holy departure: when the innermost point in us stands outside, as the most practiced distance, as the other side of the air: pure, boundless, no longer habitable.
Lost in the darkness Pain’s scarred music piping seeps Nightmares dancing burn
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 -1926) was a German / Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist. He is “widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets”.[1] He wrote both verse and highly lyrical prose.
Several critics have described Rilke’s work as “mystical”.
Rilke’s writings include one novel, several collections of poetry and several volumes of correspondence in which he invokes images that focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude and anxiety.
These themes position him as a transitional figure between traditional and modernist writers.
Rilke travelled extensively throughout Europe (including Russia, Spain, Germany, France and Italy) and, in his later years, settled in Switzerland – settings that were key to the genesis and inspiration for many of his poems.
While Rilke is most known for his contributions to German literature, over 400 poems were originally written in French and dedicated to the canton of Valais in Switzerland.
Among English-language readers, his best-known works include the poetry collections Duino Elegies (Duineser Elegien) and Sonnets to Orpheus (Die Sonette an Orpheus), the semi-autobiographical novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge), and a collection of ten letters that was published after his death under the title Letters to a Young Poet (Briefe an einen jungen Dichter).
In the later 20th century, his work found new audiences through use by New Age theologians and self-help authors[ and frequent quotations by television programmes, books and motion pictures.
In the United States, Rilke remains among the more popular, best-selling poets.
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