Books by Rainer Rilke

A collection of sonnets written four years before Rilke's death explores death through the Greek myth of Orpheus, imagining death as one of many transformative experiences in the human condition. Reprint.

Perhaps no cycle of poems in any European language has made so profound and lasting an impact on an English-speaking readership as Rilke's Duino Elegies. This translation was chosen by Phillip Pullman as one of his 40 favourite books.

In fifty-five sonnets, Rilke plays an astonishing set of philosophical and sensual variations on the Orpheus myth. 'Praising, that's it!' he declares; nature, art, love, time, childhood, technology, poverty, justice - all are encompassed in poems that spark with insight and invention, amongst the joyful and light-footed that Rilke ever wrote.