ABOUT THIS BOOK

In this highly praised and extraordinary biography, Ralph Freedman traces Rilke's luminous career by weaving together detailed accounts of pivotal and formative episodes from the poet's restless life with a close, intimate reading of the verse and prose that refract them. This lively and engrossing biography offers much of interest to Rilke's growing body of followers.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Ralph Freedman, professor emeritus of comparative literature at Princeton University is also the author of Hermann Hesse: Pilgrim of Crisis.

REVIEWS

"Lively and detailed." —Michael Hofmann, New York Times Book Review

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"What Freedman's book does, and more thoroughly than any of the other biographies, is to retell Rilke's story meticulously and with a welcome attention to the circumambient social and political circumstances." —New Republic

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"An extraordinary accomplishment—a scrupulous, attentive, and beautifully written account of the life and work of one of this century's greatest, yet most elusive poets." —Mark Strand

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Book One: The Young Poet

Part I. The Birth of a Poet
1. Beginnings
2. Early Engagements
3. The Young Writer

Part II. The Poet's Awakening
4. New Vistas in Munich
5. The Lover's Disciple
6. Transformations

Part III. Breakthrough
7. Departure: Two Women in White
8. Passing Through Eden
9. City of Grief: Anguish Among the Statues

Part IV. Search and Renewal
10. The Muse Regained
11. Closing the Cycle
12. Return and Expulsion

Book Two: The Master

Part V. Radical Revisions
13. Toward a New Style
14. Death and the Prodigal
15. Malte's Way to the Angel
16. Angel and Lovers: The Early Elegies

Part VI. Inner Landscapes
17. The Poet's Conversion
18. Dreams of Connection
19. The Prison of Europe
20. From Exile to Chaos

Part VIII. The Magic of Orpheus
21. Privileged Refuge
22. The Vagaries of Love and the Language of Poetry
23. Orpheus Reborn: The Later Elegies
24. To Be Another: The Window to France
25. The Last Word

Sources and Notes
Acknowledgments
Index

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