Opinion of Rainer Maria Rilke

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I know basically nothing at all about him aside from the band that shares his name, but if they like him he must be a FF. And he's a good poet if his poetry resembles their Guy Picciotto-esque lyrics.

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[SUSAN CRUSHBONE]

so much facepalm

[politicus]

One of the greatest poets ever. There is really no way you can consider Rilke an HP.

[Ban my account ffs!]

One of the greatest poets ever. There is really no way you can consider Rilke an HP.

Very true.  He wrote some beautiful poems... and unlike most people who find German to be harsh and cold.... it is a beautiful language for poetry because there is leeway to change sentence structure around so the poem flows nicely without giving up the meaning.

It's also why German hip-hop is so much better than French... (my opinion, of course)

[Ban my account ffs!]

I like this one:

Du entfernst dich von mir, du Stunde.
Wunden schlägt mir dein Flügelschlag.
Allein: was soll ich mit meinem Munde?
mit meiner Nacht? mit meinem Tag?

Ich habe keine Geliebte, kein Haus,
keine Stelle auf der ich lebe
Alle Dinge, an die ich mich gebe,
werden reich und geben mich aus.

Basically translated:

You distance yourself from me, o time
I am wounded by every beat of your wings
Alone:  What shall I do with my moons?
with my nights?  With my days?

I have no beloved, no house
no real place to call home
Everything I give myself to
becomes rich as I am spent.

German muttersprachers should provide corrections... obviously translated poetry is an art, not a science.

[Kitteh]

I had to write a short paper on him for a class recently. I enjoyed his poems.

[Insula Dei]

Never change, BRTD, never ever change.


As for Rilke: sometimes a bit heavy, sometimes actually funny (which is always positive in a poet). Very Great, of course.

O und die Nacht, die Nacht, wenn der Wind Voller Weltraum
uns am Angesicht zehrt.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

For the record I don't know if the band was even fans of him. They just picked the name because it sounded unisex and they were 2/3 male and 1/3 female. So it's not like Jack Kerouac that I know is a FF because I don't think Jawbreaker would've namedropped him in their lyrics if he wasn't. But I'll give Rilke the benefit of the doubt anyway.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

For the record I don't know if the band was even fans of him. They just picked the name because it sounded unisex and they were 2/3 male and 1/3 female. So it's not like Jack Kerouac that I know is a FF because I don't think Jawbreaker would've namedropped him in their lyrics if he wasn't. But I'll give Rilke the benefit of the doubt anyway.

As has been pointed out to you repeatedly, Jack Kerouac was a conservative Catholic, but I think you'd like him on other levels.

[anvi]

I translated about twenty of Rilke's poems back in the mid-nineties, largely to test my translation skills, but his German verse is really breathtaking.  I thought Robert Hass put it well when he said that Rilke's language is so seductive that it's often difficult to read him thoughtfully or analytically.  A monumentally great poet, to be sure.  Sometimes he could be a bit morbid, but with the Duino Elegies, he mostly broke free from that.   

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

I know basically nothing at all about him aside from the band that shares his name

Which only shows how pathetically uneducated you are.