Rainer Maria Rilke
Rainer Maria Rilke, (1875-1926). Austro-German poet, born in Prague. After an unhappy childhood, he studied in Prague and Munich, where he began to write. He then travelled in Russia and Germany before settling in Paris in 1902. His friendship with the sculptor Rodin at this time was largely responsible for the development of a more objective style in Rilke’s poetry, as seen in his New Poems (1907-08). In 1911-12 his visits to Duino, on the Dalmatian coast, inspired a major series of poems, the Duino Elegies, which he completed in 1922. His reputation rests mainly on these poems and his Sonnets to Orpheus (1923). He spent his final years in. Switzerland.
