Let me tell you something. I will provide you with two online reading addresses of Rilke's works. Please look for them:/Yi Shi /lilke.htm # 22.
The following is a brief introduction to Rilke's life and his creative resume:
Among the German poets in the 20th century, there seems to be no one like the author of this episode: his childhood was lonely and desolate, he was homeless all his life, and he died painfully and alone at the end of his life. However, as far as his artistic attainments are concerned, he is immortal and radiates higher and higher brilliance that penetrates time and space. As far as the artistic depth of some famous works is concerned, as far as the impact on the soul is concerned, it can really be called scared crying. The poet's full name is René Karl William John Joseph Maria Rilke; His own signature has always been: Lena Maria Rilke.
A lonely and painful life
1875, Rilke was born in a German-speaking minority family in Prague, Austria-Hungary. He has no brothers or sisters. His parents divorced when he was nine years old and lived with his mother. Mother is a kind of neurotic citizen woman. She raised her son as a girl, let him have long hair, wear colorful clothes, keep a doll as a companion, and call him by feminine names such as "Sophia" and "Maria". This extremely abnormal childhood made him associate with many women as an adult, which was inevitably similar to the pursuit of maternal love, which he did not fully enjoy. My father, an officer and a railway clerk, has been unhappy, so he pinned his hope of self-compensation on his son. At the age of eleven, his son was sent to a free military school. He studied for five years from junior to senior. During this period, he suffered mental and physical torture, which he will never forget.
189 1 year, he transferred from military school to commercial school for health reasons, and dropped out of school the following year because of inadaptability. 1895, with the support of a rich uncle, he entered Prague University to study philosophy, and moved to Munich the following year to continue his nominal studies. In fact, he formally devoted himself to literary writing, and had published some poems in Prague before.
1897, a promising poet visited Venice for the first time and met Lou Andreas-Salome, an older and knowledgeable woman. She had an immeasurable influence on his creative career and maintained a lifelong friendship with him. He visited Russia twice with her (1899, 1900) and began to write his first masterpiece, Regular Prayer. After returning from a trip to Russia, during his stay in Bremermoor, he was attracted by a group of artists in nearby Volpe, including female painter Paula Becker and female sculptor Clara westhoff. 190 1 year, he married Clara and gave birth to a girl named Lute. Their family of three lives in a farmhouse, and it is difficult to survive because of financial constraints. The next year, they had to entrust their children to their grandmother, and the husband and wife separated and engaged in art, so they might meet again.
From then on, Rilke began to wander around, 1902 went to Paris, 1903 went to Rome, 1904 went to Sweden. However, until the world war broke out in 19 14, Paris was his "base" (although he often traveled abroad), which left an indelible mark on his creative career, whether from the poverty, suffering and indifference he experienced there or as a European art center.
It is worth mentioning that he got extremely valuable lessons from Rodin, the master of art, which not only helped to open up his creative realm, but also helped to solve the contradiction between art and life that he had long worried about. 1905, in order to repay his host's hospitality, he volunteered to sacrifice a lot of time to undertake his secretarial task, but unfortunately, he was dismissed the next year because of a letter mishandled. However, on the title page of the second episode of "New Poetry" published in 1908, it still respectfully reads "Dedicated to my great friend auguste rodin"; In addition, he also wrote two monographs on Rodin, expounding Rodin's principle spirit: the artist's work is the only satisfactory form of religious activities. 1909, he lived in Italy many times and visited Egypt, Spain and other cultural resorts. From 19 1 1 year to 19 12 year, as a guest of Marquise Marie von Thun and a taxi, she lived in her villa, Fort Douineau on the Adriatic Sea, and began to write the famous elegy and poem "Mary's Life"
19 14 War broke out. In the initial wave of "patriotism", the poet wrote an unexpected "five songs" praising the war, and soon became depressed and numb, waiting for the return of peace and civilization; 19 15 was drafted into the Austrian army, and was transferred to the Military Archives Bureau for lack of physical strength, and then demobilized. 1922, he found an ideal writing environment in Muzoguburg, Wallis, Switzerland, so he finished all the final drafts of Elegy of Duinau and Sonnet for orpheus by himself, reaching the peak of his poetry creation and completing his artistic mission of supplementary writing. 1926, the lonely poet died of leukemia, which could not be alleviated by anesthetic, and there was no relative beside him.
From vague sadness to accurate modeling
After Rilke became famous, he regretted doing little, but what he wrote in Prague was not completely worthless. At that time, although he had not found his own artistic path, most of his works were imitative and sad, but he also lacked sensitivity and pursuit of beauty. Some shining masterpieces are enough to predict the poet's future, such as Sacrificing the House God (1896), Coronation in My Dream (1897) and Celebrating for Me (1896). Imagery Collection is the first collection of poems often mentioned in General History of Literature. 1902 was first published, and 1906 was updated and reprinted. These poems try to fix the whole poem from the structure with "images", which represents the transition from vague sadness to accurate modeling. As a real poet, the first book of poetry should be Regular Prayer, written in 1898 to 1903 and published in 1905. Of course, these untitled poems are not the so-called "prayers" in Christianity, but try to express their admiration for new soul and their conversion to their "art religion" through the "reality" and "existence" that the author feels and realizes. The peak of the author's short poetry creation is undoubtedly the new collection of poems, which is divided into two episodes:
The first episode (1907) includes the famous works Leopard, Carousel, Cathedral, orpheus Eurydice Hermes and some poems (Olive Garden, Pieta) expressing non-religious poems with Christian themes. The second episode, Sequel (1908), includes classical themes (Apollo and Leda), Old Testament themes (Adam and Eve), Venetian themes and animal themes (Parrot Garden and Flamingo).
Most of these poems focus on visual arts (painting, sculpture, cathedral architecture), which not only reflects the inner beauty that the author admires, but also is a means for him to express himself externally with tangible things (that is, "poetry"). The concept of "object poetry" that the author is engaged in is far more profound than what the previous generation of poets merrick and Meyer tried, which embodies a great leap in his creative thinking. Since he came to Paris, he has known Rodin, read Baudelaire's poems and appreciated Cezanne's paintings ... He feels more and more necessary to get rid of his excessive subjectivity. In the past, he thought that poets could only describe "poetic" themes "poetically" by waiting for the spontaneous overflow of poetry: this concept now disgusted him; He must now practice Rodin's teaching "ilfauttourjourstravailler" ("must keep working"), and he must sit in front of the model like a sculptor or painter, concentrate on his work and not think about any inspiration-it is said that the famous "Leopard" was written in Paris Botanical Garden in this way. However, in the new poetry anthology, it can sometimes be seen that the author only seems to express his personal evaluation of an established artistic work, and even often leaves poetry and gets lost in historical interest.
Originally, the poet could have written the third new collection of poems according to that creative method, but he was never satisfied, let alone lingered at any stage of his achievements. After playing with externality and objectivity for a long time, he is strongly aware of the unsolved problem of individual survival, that is, what we are as limited creatures in this world, for what, and what we can hope to achieve. Therefore, he confirmed that the next step must be to write a poem completely different from his previous works, which is clear and unambiguous, concrete but not abstract, and answers these important deep-seated questions in depth and without rambling, that is, his two masterpieces in his later years, Elegy of Duino (1923) and Zhi.
Orpheus's sonnets (1923), both of which are fully translated in this book with detailed annotations. During his stay in Paris, Rilke also wrote a novel "Notes on Matt Laurits Briggs" (published in 19 10), featuring a Danish poet, describing his miserable material life and poor spiritual life in Paris. The book is full of poverty, disease, ugliness, cruelty and horror, such as the blind, pregnant women and abandoned children. This novel, like the author's self-report and the silhouette of Norwegian witness poet Obst Feld, is basically a process of resolving the author's inner crisis under the guidance of Kierkegaard's existential philosophy. He also has a narrative prose poem, namely "Song of Love and Death of the Flag-bearer Christopher Rilke" (published in 1903), which tells the story of an Austrian cavalry flag-bearer (according to the cloud, the author's distant ancestor) who died in Hungary during the Turkish War in 1663. This book has caused a long-term sensation among some German readers.
In addition, several dazzling elegies must be mentioned, especially for a girlfriend (in memory of the female painter Paula Becker) and Duke Wolff (in memory of an unknown young poet who committed suicide), because mourning the dead may be the author's most touching life experience.
Rilke's historical evaluation is not only different from person to person, but also inconsistent for many years because his creative connotation and expression are profound and complicated or obscure. Take western Marxist critics as an example, their evaluation of Rilke for decades can be said to be inconclusive. From 1926 to the early 1930s, poets were generally regarded as "non-people", "anti-people" and "even the poems he wrote in folk songs were not people's". By the mid-1930s, with the rise of the fascist forces in Europe and the implementation of the international United front policy, Marxist criticism of Rilke gradually became scarce. Instead, they found humanitarian factors in his creation and began to affirm poetry.
People sympathize with the people, especially the poor; It is believed that his poems are "the objectification of man's essential power", that is, he enthusiastically pursues the coordination between man and himself, with the same kind and with the same thing; Clearly pointed out that "romantic anti-capitalism is the ideological basis of Rilke's humanitarianism", and so on. Social life is changing with each passing day, and it is difficult for people's understanding to remain unchanged. It is not surprising that people have different views on each other. I believe that with the progress of the times, Rilke and his works will get a more complete and profound understanding in art and science from a newer perspective.