Overview

The life of Rilke>'s work is in its words, and this book attends closely to the life unfolding in Rilke>'s words over the course of his career. What is a poem, and how does it act upon us as we read? What does reading involve? These are questions of the greatest interest to Rilke, who addresses them in several poems and for whom the experience of reading affords an interaction with the worldEDa recalibration of our ways of attending to itEDwhich sets it apart from other kinds of experience. Rilke>'s work is often approached in periodsEDhe is the author of the New Poems, or of Malte, or of the Duino Elegies, or of the Sonnets to OrpheusEDas if its different phases had little to do with one another, but in fact his writing is a concentrated and evolving exploration of the possibilities of poetic language, a working of the life of words into precise and exacting forms in dialogue with the texture of the world. The Life of the Work traces that trajectory in a series of close readings that do not neglect the lesser-known, uncollected verse and the poems in French, as well as Rilke>'s activity as a translator of Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Barrett Browning, Mallarmé, and Valéry, among many others. These encounters were part of Rilke>'s engagement with the world, his way of extending the reach of his language to get it ever closer to the ungraspable movements, the risk and promise, of life itself. One of his best-known poems ends with the words

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9780198885559

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Reviews

Louth provides the most comprehensive, and also the most careful, account available in any language of the breadth of Rilke's writing. ...The book's usefulness and pleasure as an extended commentary on Rilke's work [is] held together above all by Louth's alert, thoughtful and always unshowy voice as a critic. * Ian Cooper, Modern Language Review * With his almost Empsonian purchase on syntax and sensibility, Louth's study will be indispensable for anyone with a serious interest in this most mysterious and masterly of poets. * Ben Hutchenson, Times Literary Supplement * To come to Rilke's poems in Charlie Louth's company is to learn to read. ... a definitive work that should not be missing from any Rilke library. * Jeremy Adler, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung [translated from the original article to English] * Rilke: the Life of the Work is comprehensive, erudite, always clear. * Martyn Crucefix, Agenda * This book has many outstanding merits and virtues ... but its greatest merit is that it exists. Only a miracle of dedication on the part of its author could have produced it. * Michael Minden, Journal of European Studies * The theme of Louth's book is nothing less than Rilke's 'work' itself, more precisely what it means to see his work as having a 'life'...One of the great strengths of Louth's study is the way it opens up thematic patterns within a chronological framework. It shows the life of the work in its overall extension and development, but also shows it gathering preoccupations and dwelling in them-as lives do. * Ian Cooper, Modern Language Review *

With his almost Empsonian purchase on syntax and sensibility, Louth's study will be indispensable for anyone with a serious interest in this most mysterious and masterly of poets. * Ben Hutchenson, Times Literary Supplement * To come to Rilke's poems in Charlie Louth's company is to learn to read. ... a definitive work that should not be missing from any Rilke library. * Jeremy Adler, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung [translated from the original article to English] * Rilke: the Life of the Work is comprehensive, erudite, always clear. * Martyn Crucefix, Agenda * This book has many outstanding merits and virtues ... but its greatest merit is that it exists. Only a miracle of dedication on the part of its author could have produced it. * Michael Minden, Journal of European Studies *

Louth provides the most comprehensive, and also the most careful, account available in any language of the breadth of Rilke's writing. ...The book's usefulness and pleasure as an extended commentary on Rilke's work [is] held together above all by Louth's alert, thoughtful and always unshowy voice as a critic. * Ian Cooper, Modern Language Review * With his almost Empsonian purchase on syntax and sensibility, Louth's study will be indispensable for anyone with a serious interest in this most mysterious and masterly of poets. * Ben Hutchenson, Times Literary Supplement * To come to Rilke's poems in Charlie Louth's company is to learn to read. ... a definitive work that should not be missing from any Rilke library. * Jeremy Adler, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung [translated from the original article to English] * Rilke: the Life of the Work is comprehensive, erudite, always clear. * Martyn Crucefix, Agenda * This book has many outstanding merits and virtues ... but its greatest merit is that it exists. Only a miracle of dedication on the part of its author could have produced it. * Michael Minden, Journal of European Studies *

Author Information

Charlie Louth is Professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of Oxford and Fellow and Tutor in German, The Queen's College, Oxford.

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