Rainer Maria Rilke offers a compelling portrait of Parisian life, art, and culture at the beginning of the 20th century
In 1902, the young poet Rainer Maria Rilke travelled to Paris to write a monograph on the sculptor Auguste Rodin. He returned many times over the course of his life, by turns inspired and appalled by the city’s high culture and low society, and his writings give a fascinating insight into Parisian art and culture in the last century.
This book brings together Rilke’s sublime poetic meditations on existence Notes on the Melody of Things and the first English translation of Rilke’s experiences in Paris as observed by his French translator Maurice Betz.
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) is considered the most important poet in the German language of the modern age. A master of both poetry and prose, he is best known for Duino Elegies, Sonnets to Orpheus and his existential exploration of Paris in The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge.
Maurice Betz (1898-1946) was a writer and prolific translator of Nietzsche, Stefan Zweig and Thomas Mann. He worked closely with Rilke on the French translations of his works.
Über den Autor
Will Stone, born 1966, is a poet, essayist and literary translator. His first poetry collection Glaciation (Salt, 2007), won the international Glen Dimplex Award for poetry in 2008. Shearsman Books has re-published his subsequent critically appraised collections. Will’s poetry translations include To the Silenced – Selected Poems of Georg Trakl (Arc, 2005) Emile Verhaeren Poems (Arc, 2013), Georges Rodenbach Poems (Arc, 2017) and Friedrich Hölderlin’s Life Poetry and Madness by Wilhelm Waiblinger (2018). Pushkin Press published his translation of Montaigne by Stefan Zweig in 2015, Messages from a Lost World – Europe on the Brink by Stefan Zweig in 2016 and The Art of the City – Rome, Florence, Venice by Georg Simmel in September 2018. Encounters and Destinies – A Farewell to Europe by Stefan Zweig and Surrender to Night – Collected Poems of Georg Trakl will be published in 2019. Will has contributed poems, translations, essays and reviews to a range of publications including The London Magazine, The Times Literary Supplement, The Spectator, Apollo Magazine, the RA Magazine, The White Review, Poetry Review and Agenda.