Reviews

Stephen Mitchell’s translation of Rilke’s most demandingly difficult and loveliest work 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.
— William Arrowsmith

The gifts Mr. Mitchell brought to his earlier book he also brings to this one — an eye for a strong line; a sympathetic tact that allows him to supply a word from what is only suggested or to swell one of Rilke’s almost subliminal, one-word metaphors into a whole English phrase; the ability to reproduce the tone of common speech in Rilke; a knack for ingeniously simple versions of certain crucial Rilkean terms; and the use of off-rhymes to solve the formal problems of translating these “conjugated” sonnets. At times, Mr. Mitchell’s versions actually enhance the original... This is a beautifully designed, elegant and spacious volume, and it is splendidly annotated.
— Michael Hofmann, The New York Times Book Review

Stephen Mitchell’s translations are masterful re-creations of the original, giving both precise renderings of Rilke’s language and sensitive interpretations of his poetic intent.
—Library Journal
 
An undisputed masterpiece by one of the greatest modern poets, translated here by a master of translation.
—Village Voice Literary Supplement