There is here a most subtle interplay between nature and artifice, formality and informality. We are perpetually surprised’

-J. B. Leishman

Hailed as the greatest modern lyrical poet of Germany, Rainer Maria Rilke’s genius lies in his passion for perfection, artistic integrity and ‘willingness to remain a perpetual beginner’. In this selection by J. B. Leishman the reader is offered a stunning perspective of Rilke’s evolution as a poet. The verse ranges from the objective, naturalistic descriptions of his earliest works to the increasingly effusive outpourings of half-religious ecstasy and anguish that characterize his later poems and culminate in the overwhelmingly personal vision of the famous Duino Elegies and The Sonnets to Orpheus, in which his most intense experiences of living and being find their noblest expression.

J. B. Leishman’s eloquent rendition from the German re-introduces Rilke to a new generation of English readers.

The cover shows Portrait of Rainer Maria Rilke by Leonid Pasternak in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford