The Sonnets to Orpheus
Simon & Schuster, 1985

Rilke’s The Sonnets to Orpheus represents one of the most amazing outpourings of concentrated poetic achievement in world literature. Written in conjunction with the great Duino Elegies, the cycle of sonnets was completed in less than a month. “These strange Sonnets,” wrote Rilke in 1923, “were no intended or expected work; they appeared, often many in one day (the first part of the book was written in about three days), completely unexpectedly… I could do nothing but surrender, purely and obediently, to the dictation of this inner impulse.”

The result was both a masterpiece of German literature and a landmark of modern poetry. As Mr. Mitchell writes in his introduction, “these poems were born perfect; hardly a single word needed to be changed. The whole experience seems to have taken place at an archaic level of consciousness, where the poet is literally the god’s or Muse’s sc ribe… Who can respond to it without a shudder of awe?”

Now Stephen Mitchell has rendered the entire cycle of 55 Sonnets into magnificent English poetry. Mr. Mitchell has emerged as the preeminent translator of Rilke for our time. His work is distinguished, sensitive, authoritative— and as close to the original German poetry as we are ever likely to get. “Stephen Mitchell’s translation of Rilke’s most demandingly difficult and loveliest work,” said William Arrowsmith, “instantly makes every other rendering obsolete. No doubt about it, Rilke has at last found, in Mr. Mitchell’s version, the ideal poetics and the perfect translator.”

The present edition includes the original German text of each Sonnet facing its English translation; an introduction placing the poems in the context of Rilke’s life and exploring the imagery of the cycle; extensive notes to the poems; and translations of nine auxiliary sonnets and other fragments, which have never before appeared in English translation with the main text.