Rainer Maria Rilke’s fifty-five Sonnets to Orpheus were written over a few days in an astonishing burst of inspiration. Described by Rilke himself as “a spontaneous inner dictation, ” the sequence is among the most famous works of modernist literature, and Christiane Marks’s fresh new translations succeed in evoking Rilke’s music—often sacrificed in translation—opening a new window on these poems, for old and new Rilke lovers alike.

The result of nearly two decades of memorization, research, and fine-tuning, Marks’s translations, only the second by a woman and the first by a native German speaker, recapture Rilke’s astonishingly contemporary, often colloquial style.

© 2019 Open Letter (Ebook): 9781948830126

Translators: Christiane Marks

Release date

Ebook: December 10, 2019