New Poems - The German Text, with a Translation, Introduction and Notes by J.B. Leishman

Rilke, Rainer Maria (translated with an introduction and notes by J.B. Leishman)

ISBN 10: 0701201924 / ISBN 13: 9780701201920

Published by The Hogarth Press, London, 1979

About this Item

1979. Second impression of the first edition of 1964. xiv, 306pp. Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) was an Austrian poet and novelist. Acclaimed as an idiosyncratic and expressive poet, he is widely recognized as a significant writer in the German language. The two parts of 'New Poems' were published in 1907 and 1908, and are the central productions of Rilke's poetic career. Most of them were written in Paris, and they represent an attempt to achieve something of that objectivity and elegance Rilke had come to admire in French art, architecture, and poetry, especially in the work of Rodin, of Cezanne, and of Baudelaire. The translation in this volume is complete, with the English facing the German text. Both the content and style of the poems are examined in the introduction, and, where desirable, short explanatory notes appear below the poems to which they refer. The book is bound in the original black boards with gold titling on the spine. The book is in excellent condition and the contents are tight and clean with no inscription. The unclipped dustwrapper has shelf wear with some soiling and spine ends are bumped with creasing at the top of the spine. There are tears of about 1/4" on the top rear spine corner and top front corner and the bottom front corner has a tear of about 3/4".

Seller Inventory # gPoetRilke04

Bibliographic Details

• Title: New Poems - The German Text, with a Translation, Introduction and Notes by J.B. Leishman
• Publisher: The Hogarth Press, London
• Publication Date: 1979
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0701201924
• ISBN 13: 9780701201920
• Binding: Hardback
• Edition: Reprint
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
• Seller catalogs:
  • Poetry

About this title

Synopsis

The formative work of the legendary poet who sought to write "not feelings but things I had felt"When Rainer Maria Rilke arrived in Paris for the first time in September 1902, commissioned by a German publisher to write a monograph on Rodin, he was twenty-seven and already the author of nine books of poems. His early work had been accomplished, but belonged tonally to the impressionistic, feeling-centered world of a late-nineteenth-century aesthetic.Paris was to change everything. Rilke's interest in Rodin deepened and his enthusiasm for the sculptor's "art of living surfaces" set the course for his own pursuit of an objective ideal. What was "new" about Rilke's New Poems , published in two independent volumes in 1907 and 1908, is a compression of statement and a movement away from "expression" and toward "making realities." Poems such as "The Panther" and "Archaic Torso of Apollo" are among the most successful and famous results of Rilke's impulse.This selection from both books unites the companion volumes in a torrent of brilliant work intoxicated with the materiality of the world. Edward Snow has now improved upon the translations for which he received the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award and with which he began his twenty-year project of translating Rilke.

About the Author

Edward Snow has received the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award and the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation for his many renderings of Rilke. The author of A Study of Vermeer and Inside Breughel, he teaches at Rice University.