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Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties: Translations and Considerations
Here is a mini-anthology of poetry and prose for both aficionados and those readers discovering Rainer Maria Rilke for the first time. John J. L. Mood has assembled a collection of Rilke's strongest work, presenting commentary along with the selections. Mood links into an essay passages from letters that show Rilke's profound understanding of men and women and his ardent spirituality, rooted in the senses.
Combining passion and sensitivity, the poems on love presented here are often not only sensual but sexual as well. Others pursue perennial themes in his work—death and life, growth and transformation. The book concludes with Rilke's reflections on wisdom and openness to experience, on grasping what is most difficult and turning what is most alien into that which we can most trust.
Combining passion and sensitivity, the poems on love presented here are often not only sensual but sexual as well. Others pursue perennial themes in his work—death and life, growth and transformation. The book concludes with Rilke's reflections on wisdom and openness to experience, on grasping what is most difficult and turning what is most alien into that which we can most trust.
144 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1975
250 people are currently reading
4199 people want to read
About the author
Rainer Maria Rilke
1,770 books6,784 followersA mystic lyricism and precise imagery often marked verse of German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, whose collections profoundly influenced 20th-century German literature and include
The Book of Hours
(1905) and
The Duino Elegies
(1923).
People consider him of the greatest 20th century users of the language.
His haunting images tend to focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety — themes that tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist poets.
His two most famous sequences include the Sonnets to Orpheus , and his most famous prose works include the Letters to a Young Poet and the semi-autobiographical The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge .
He also wrote more than four hundred poems in French, dedicated to the canton of Valais in Switzerland, his homeland of choice.
People consider him of the greatest 20th century users of the language.
His haunting images tend to focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety — themes that tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist poets.
His two most famous sequences include the Sonnets to Orpheus , and his most famous prose works include the Letters to a Young Poet and the semi-autobiographical The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge .
He also wrote more than four hundred poems in French, dedicated to the canton of Valais in Switzerland, his homeland of choice.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 183 reviews
August 1, 2012
i was reading this book on my quick one day flight to new hampshire to confront some haunting diffuculties of my own.
this was a tremendously anxious moment for me. i was immediately comforted by rilkes gentle manner in which he approached human relationships.i was definitely searching for some answers myself. i want to share a passage that really opened up my eyes and heart and an endless row of doorways to walk through.
" All companionship can consist only in the strengthening of two neighboring solitudes. whereas everything that one is wont to call giving oneself by nature harmful to companionship: for when one person abandons himself, he is no longer anything, and when two people both give themselves up in order to come close to each other, there is no longer any ground beneath them and their being together is a cintinual falling."
"You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves…."
this was a tremendously anxious moment for me. i was immediately comforted by rilkes gentle manner in which he approached human relationships.i was definitely searching for some answers myself. i want to share a passage that really opened up my eyes and heart and an endless row of doorways to walk through.
" All companionship can consist only in the strengthening of two neighboring solitudes. whereas everything that one is wont to call giving oneself by nature harmful to companionship: for when one person abandons himself, he is no longer anything, and when two people both give themselves up in order to come close to each other, there is no longer any ground beneath them and their being together is a cintinual falling."
"You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves…."
August 3, 2007
The 1 star review is not a reflection on Rilke, but the editor and his "considerations," Mr. John Mood. If you're thinking of reading Rilke, please try Letters to a Young Poet instead.
Mr. Mood is quite clear from the get go that this collection is the way he sees Rilke and his hope is to remedy the state of affairs in which Rilke is praised for the spirituality of his works, instead of the sex. I was skeptical - it's not like our culture is so spirituality based to begin with.
But the real kicker for me is when he takes Rilke's famous passage about living the questions and being unable to live the answers and Mr. Mood launches into an essay about how this is solely about sex. Really? There are no other questions to ponder?
At that point, I decided I could learn more and gain more from Rilke's work without Mr. Mood's help - and also wished I could exchange this for a different collection of Rilke's work.
Mr. Mood is quite clear from the get go that this collection is the way he sees Rilke and his hope is to remedy the state of affairs in which Rilke is praised for the spirituality of his works, instead of the sex. I was skeptical - it's not like our culture is so spirituality based to begin with.
But the real kicker for me is when he takes Rilke's famous passage about living the questions and being unable to live the answers and Mr. Mood launches into an essay about how this is solely about sex. Really? There are no other questions to ponder?
At that point, I decided I could learn more and gain more from Rilke's work without Mr. Mood's help - and also wished I could exchange this for a different collection of Rilke's work.
July 8, 2017
“It is a question in marriage, to my feeling, not of creating a quick community of spirit by tearing down and destroying all boundaries, but rather a good marriage is that in which each appoints to the other guardian of his solitude, and shows him this confidence, the greatest in his power to bestow. A ‘togetherness’ between two people is an impossibility, and where it seems, nevertheless, to exist, it is a narrowing, a reciprocal agreement which robs either one party or both of his fullest freedom and development. But, once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them, which makes it possible for each to see the other whole and against a wide sky! Therefore this too must be the standard for rejection or choice: whether one is willing to stand guard over the solitude of a person and whether one is inclined to set this same person at the gate of one’s own solitude, of which he learns only through that which steps, festively clothed, out of the great darkness.”
March 24, 2024
Meravellós ❤️
July 27, 2012
"I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other..." p. 27
This book is packed with wisdom.
This book is packed with wisdom.
September 12, 2024
“Two individuals who are quiet to the same degree have no need to talk about the melody of their hours. Like a burning altar, it hovers between them, and they feed the sacred flame respectfully with an occasional word. If I were to lift these two individuals out of their unintentional existence and place them on an imaginary stage, it would clearly be my intent to show two lovers, and to explain why they feel so blessed. On the stage, however, the altar is invisible and nobody knows how to interpret the strange gestures made by these individuals in the ritual sacrifice.”
Rilke on the secret language of lovers ….
Lots to think about and hold onto from this little collection. Simone’s recommendation ❤️
Rilke on the secret language of lovers ….
Lots to think about and hold onto from this little collection. Simone’s recommendation ❤️
July 22, 2015
For, if it lies in the nature of indifference and of the crowd to recognise no solitude, then love and friendship are there for the purpose of continually providing the opportunity for solitude. And only those are the true sharings which rhythmically interrupt periods of deep isolation.
There is scarcely anything more difficult than to love one another. That it is work, day labor, day labor, God knows there is no other word for it. And look, added to this is the fact that young people are not prepared for such difficult loving, for convention has tried to make this most complicated and ultimate relationship into something easy and frivolous, has given it the appearance of everyone's being able to do it. It is not so. Love is something difficult and it is more difficult than other things because in other conflicts nature herself enjoins men to collect themselves, to take themselves firmly in hand with all their strength, while in the heightening of love the impulse is to give oneself wholly away.
In the struggle somehow to get out of their untenable and unbearable state of confusion, they commit the greatest fault that can happen to human relationships: they become impatient. They hurry to a conclusion, to come, as they believe, to a final decision, they try once and for all to establish their relationship, whose surprising changes have frightened them, in order to remain the same now and forever.
To take love seriously and to bear and to learn it like a task, this it is that young people need. Like so much else, people have also misunderstood the place of love in life, they have made it into play and pleasure because they thought that play and pleasure were more blissful than work, but there is nothing happier than work, and love, just because it is the extreme happiness, can be nothing else but work - so whoever loves must try to act as if he had a great work; he must be much alone and go into himself and collect himself and hold fast to himself; he must work; he must become something!
For believe me, the more one is, the richer is all that one experiences. And whoever wants to have a deep love in his life must collect and save for it and gather honey.
There is scarcely anything more difficult than to love one another. That it is work, day labor, day labor, God knows there is no other word for it. And look, added to this is the fact that young people are not prepared for such difficult loving, for convention has tried to make this most complicated and ultimate relationship into something easy and frivolous, has given it the appearance of everyone's being able to do it. It is not so. Love is something difficult and it is more difficult than other things because in other conflicts nature herself enjoins men to collect themselves, to take themselves firmly in hand with all their strength, while in the heightening of love the impulse is to give oneself wholly away.
In the struggle somehow to get out of their untenable and unbearable state of confusion, they commit the greatest fault that can happen to human relationships: they become impatient. They hurry to a conclusion, to come, as they believe, to a final decision, they try once and for all to establish their relationship, whose surprising changes have frightened them, in order to remain the same now and forever.
To take love seriously and to bear and to learn it like a task, this it is that young people need. Like so much else, people have also misunderstood the place of love in life, they have made it into play and pleasure because they thought that play and pleasure were more blissful than work, but there is nothing happier than work, and love, just because it is the extreme happiness, can be nothing else but work - so whoever loves must try to act as if he had a great work; he must be much alone and go into himself and collect himself and hold fast to himself; he must work; he must become something!
For believe me, the more one is, the richer is all that one experiences. And whoever wants to have a deep love in his life must collect and save for it and gather honey.
July 30, 2025
In 2008, at the Ramakrishna Mission Library, I stumbled upon Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties—though “stumbled” feels wrong. The book didn’t appear so much as arrive, like a soft knock from the soul’s quieter corners. I borrowed it, read it slowly, almost reverently, in pauses between everyday noise. That same year, I bought a copy from Seagull Bookstore—perhaps knowing instinctively that this wasn’t a book to be returned. It was one to be kept, lived with.
Rilke’s words came like lantern-light in a season of slow inner turning. His meditations on love as labor, solitude as sanctuary, and suffering as slow alchemy struck something raw yet radiant. I was not in love then, not in any conventional sense—but I was learning how to dwell within myself. How to “live the questions,” as he urged.
Mood’s translations didn’t flatten the mystery; they carried it gently, letting the Germanic intensity shimmer through the English like music heard through a closed door.
Reading Rilke that year felt like walking deeper into the forest of my own silence. He gave language to things I hadn’t dared name: the ache of becoming, the sacred strangeness of solitude, the necessity of difficulty.
To this day, that Seagull edition sits on my shelf like an old friend—one who once saw me before I could see myself.
Rilke’s words came like lantern-light in a season of slow inner turning. His meditations on love as labor, solitude as sanctuary, and suffering as slow alchemy struck something raw yet radiant. I was not in love then, not in any conventional sense—but I was learning how to dwell within myself. How to “live the questions,” as he urged.
Mood’s translations didn’t flatten the mystery; they carried it gently, letting the Germanic intensity shimmer through the English like music heard through a closed door.
Reading Rilke that year felt like walking deeper into the forest of my own silence. He gave language to things I hadn’t dared name: the ache of becoming, the sacred strangeness of solitude, the necessity of difficulty.
To this day, that Seagull edition sits on my shelf like an old friend—one who once saw me before I could see myself.
June 23, 2009
Rilke siempre sera uno de mis autores favoritos porque sabe como explicar, en palabras muy simples, las emocions y piensamientos de los humanos. En este libro Rilke tiene muchos teorías y piensamientos que razonan con la idea del amor y la muerte. La parte que mas me toco en el libro fue su teoria sobre la juventud y el amor...y su teoria que uno tiene que vivir su propio soledad. Que uno no debe buscar a otro humano que llene sue soledad, sino debe buscar a otro humano para que compartan sus soledades.
September 30, 2013
The man understand relationships, what can I say? Homeboy won't stifle you, he trusts you, and he loves your beautiful soul. Plus, anyone who does me the favor of translating their own works gets 5 stars in my book. Sometimes, late at night, I weep when I consider what I've lost in translation reading the interpretations of others.
My absolute favorite quote regarding what I hope my lifelong commitment is like comes from this book.
My absolute favorite quote regarding what I hope my lifelong commitment is like comes from this book.
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March 16, 2023Con lo que más me quedo está en la penúltima página:
"Vivir es, precisamente, transformarse, y las relaciones humanas, que son un compendio de la vida, son lo más cambiante de todo, suben y bajan de un minuto a otro, y los amantes son aquellos en cuya relación y en cuyo contacto ningún instante es igual que el otro".
"Vivir es, precisamente, transformarse, y las relaciones humanas, que son un compendio de la vida, son lo más cambiante de todo, suben y bajan de un minuto a otro, y los amantes son aquellos en cuya relación y en cuyo contacto ningún instante es igual que el otro".
June 29, 2015
Is it still I who burns unrecognizably?
June 15, 2024
Autoril on ikka meeletult ilus nimi
September 9, 2020
I recently heard the Cuban American poet Richard Blanco describe the difficulty of reading poetry in translation. Languages do not sound alike. They differ in lilt and cadence. Poetry borders on song, so you miss a lot, but I did the best I could. I love the words (translated) of Rainer Maria Rilke, especially the prose, which I find to be filled with wisdom and easier to understand. The phrases and words in Rilke's poetry are beautiful, but he was such a deep thinker that he almost had his own code which, for me at least, would require more reading, more study, to grasp. I couldn't make heads or tails of some of them. That is where Mr. John J. L. Mood comes in, I guess, with his "considerations". I found his lengthy comments somewhat helpful, but I couldn't be sure since I wasn't reading in Geman. I tend to agree with several other reviewers that the commentary is overdone, opinionated, and that it impedes the progress of the book. If I hadn't read LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET first, I don't think I would have stuck with this book. Now here is a note. The chapter entitled "Rilke's Poems on Love" contains just two subsections. The first is "The Seven Phallic Poems". The second is " Other Love Poems". I find this hilarious.
May 28, 2019
Lotsa cool things in this brief selection, including (spoilers for the game of thrones finale): Totally
November 20, 2020
Conflicted about this book because I am so moved by Rilke’s vulnerable prose that cuts straight to the soul. Was very annoyed by the notes and considerations for J.L. Mood and sighed in frustration every time he intervened and disrupted the beauty of reading Rilke. I also wish there was more prose since I’m not the biggest fan of poetry but that’s just me!
July 10, 2017
My favorite out of the books I read for Rilke, aside from the overly sexualized poems here and there. This book held so many lingering thoughts and lessons. I really recommend it. The translation as far as I'm concerned was really good and conveyed meaningful deep meanings.
June 13, 2017
Rilke's writings are lovely and profound but I found the added analysis broke up the poetry and bogged down the reading of this book.
February 12, 2019
Rilke clearly exists on an entirely new and elevated plane of existence and thought. His prose is moving, probes life and love deeply and melodically, and is light and straightforward.
February 18, 2022
3.5/5
love rilke but this collection kinda flopped
love rilke but this collection kinda flopped
February 20, 2023
Love and death, letters and poems, ponderings of inexplicable nothingness, of roses. There is much here to visit and revisit and I feel lucky to do just that. Besides Rilke’s blossoming works, which are gathered far and wide by this volume’s translator and organizer(?), J.L. Mood, the only small annoyances arose in portions not written by Rilke. Rather this Mr. Mood, who certainly has an utmost reverence for the poet’s works and knows many a verse, tends to leave you with a “this is my works, my collection of considerations of Rilke’s mind.” Much of it is supplemental and could do with a good skimming to allow for more time with Rilke’s actual words. Aside from this podium speaker’s essay portions, this is a great poetry collection of, well as you might’ve guessed, Love and other difficulties.
January 2, 2023
This is a book of both verse poetry and paragraph poetry. Rilke is sensual and honest in their work. Capturing love and the human condition with precision.
I enjoyed the philosophies on love more than the sexual poems. I felt more connected to the philosophy of it.
Very good translation and very clear.
I enjoyed the philosophies on love more than the sexual poems. I felt more connected to the philosophy of it.
Very good translation and very clear.
January 29, 2024
The column in my genital-woodsite! The soaring of a womb-dazzling rocket! This poetry is very phallic and very German.
July 12, 2023
The most heavily inked up book i probably have, every line is beautifully crafted and sparks so much.
Favorite quotes: “Even what is dead cannot be held on to absolutely (for it disintegrates and changes in its nature); how much less may something living and alive be treated definitively once and for all.”
“When [young people] love, they must not forget that they are beginners, bunglers of life, apprentices in love-they must learn love, and that requires (as for all learning) quiet, patience, and concentration!”
“…you, beloved, spread some kind of wildest childhood over my heart.”
“The pleasure we take in our power to create us so indescribably beautiful and rich inly because it is full of inherited memories of the procreation and birthing of millions of beings. A single creative thought brings back to life a thousand forgotten nights of love…”
“Go easy on those who are afraid of the loneliness in which you have confidence, due to their advancing age.”
“Instead, believe in a love that is being safeguarded for you like an inheritance. Have faith that this love will be with you as a force and a blessing while you go very, very far!”
“But isn’t every young man always in the position of a “sorcerer’s apprentice” whose enraptured heart unleashes powerful storms he cannot master, and from which he rescues himself (perhaps has to rescue himself) to maintain that other, logical, productive and apparently sober measure of his life, which contradicts love and only occasionally allows our senses to have an experience as a kind of balancing act for the exaggerated tensions pulling in other directions.”
Favorite quotes: “Even what is dead cannot be held on to absolutely (for it disintegrates and changes in its nature); how much less may something living and alive be treated definitively once and for all.”
“When [young people] love, they must not forget that they are beginners, bunglers of life, apprentices in love-they must learn love, and that requires (as for all learning) quiet, patience, and concentration!”
“…you, beloved, spread some kind of wildest childhood over my heart.”
“The pleasure we take in our power to create us so indescribably beautiful and rich inly because it is full of inherited memories of the procreation and birthing of millions of beings. A single creative thought brings back to life a thousand forgotten nights of love…”
“Go easy on those who are afraid of the loneliness in which you have confidence, due to their advancing age.”
“Instead, believe in a love that is being safeguarded for you like an inheritance. Have faith that this love will be with you as a force and a blessing while you go very, very far!”
“But isn’t every young man always in the position of a “sorcerer’s apprentice” whose enraptured heart unleashes powerful storms he cannot master, and from which he rescues himself (perhaps has to rescue himself) to maintain that other, logical, productive and apparently sober measure of his life, which contradicts love and only occasionally allows our senses to have an experience as a kind of balancing act for the exaggerated tensions pulling in other directions.”
October 19, 2021
2.5 There were a lot of questionable “considerations” from the translator, John Mood, that downgraded this book for me.
He states, “I became increasingly aware that Rilke had not only anticipated Simone De Beauvoir by fifty years but had also gone far, far beyond her, and all the other women’s liberation advocates.” What?! The audacity…
He also makes the claim that the majority of Rilke’s poems were about sex and sensuality, which to me seems like an egregious exaggeration and mis- characterization.
Some lines I did enjoy:
“I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other”
“For when a person abandons himself, he is no longer anything, and when two people both give themselves up in order to come close to each other, there is no longer any ground beneath them and their being together is a continual falling”
He states, “I became increasingly aware that Rilke had not only anticipated Simone De Beauvoir by fifty years but had also gone far, far beyond her, and all the other women’s liberation advocates.” What?! The audacity…
He also makes the claim that the majority of Rilke’s poems were about sex and sensuality, which to me seems like an egregious exaggeration and mis- characterization.
Some lines I did enjoy:
“I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other”
“For when a person abandons himself, he is no longer anything, and when two people both give themselves up in order to come close to each other, there is no longer any ground beneath them and their being together is a continual falling”
May 14, 2017
Recalling "Letters to a Young Poet," I become interested in reading more Rilke. This, however, is tinged with a fan-like quality, that both respects Rilke's love poems transcribed throughout, but also catapults them to a pedestal that makes them inaccessible. Rilke is painted as a middle-aged sexually explorative writer with wisdom extending beyond his own lifetime. I enjoyed some of Mood' interpretations/assertions though, here are a few:
- True love is when each person protects the solitude of the other
- Love is work, and it's foolish to think otherwise
- Self transformation is synonymous with life, the most transient/changeable of all being relationships
- The most human/humane love is one not characterized by gender norms
- True love is when each person protects the solitude of the other
- Love is work, and it's foolish to think otherwise
- Self transformation is synonymous with life, the most transient/changeable of all being relationships
- The most human/humane love is one not characterized by gender norms
May 13, 2017
This was way more "considerations" than I was hoping for and not enough "translations." I also found the selection of poems a bit odd - at various points, Mood pulled single liners and generally seemed to pull snippets of poems that discussed love out of the context of a fuller work so meaning was lost. As a result, it was difficult for me to get into the poetry that was there, and my poetic flow kept being disrupted by boring reflections by the editor. I found his commentary distracted from rather than enhanced Rilke's work.
January 3, 2024
sin duda el libro con la edición más bonita que tengo: pequeño, forrado en tela roja con letras doradas y una funda de papel suave y letras negras <3
Como se aprieta un paño sofocando el aliento,
no, como uno lo aprieta en una herida
por la que, bruscamente, quiere salir entera
la vida, te mantuve junto a mi:
vi cómo te invadía mi rojo. ¿Quién declara
lo que nos ocurrió? Recuperamos todo
lo que el tiempo negara. Maduré extrañamente
en cada impulso de juventud no vivida
y tú pusiste, amada, no sé qué
infancia indómita en mi corazón.
Como se aprieta un paño sofocando el aliento,
no, como uno lo aprieta en una herida
por la que, bruscamente, quiere salir entera
la vida, te mantuve junto a mi:
vi cómo te invadía mi rojo. ¿Quién declara
lo que nos ocurrió? Recuperamos todo
lo que el tiempo negara. Maduré extrañamente
en cada impulso de juventud no vivida
y tú pusiste, amada, no sé qué
infancia indómita en mi corazón.
March 20, 2008
I'm not a German speaker, so my concept of how this translation compares to the original is non-existant. However, I think that the beauty of the poetry in English is captivating and the essays retain what must be a logical, lyrical beauty in the German. Rilke's work is sublime and thoughtful and reminds us that losing oneself in love is never as wonderful as finding oneself.
January 5, 2020
I love and adore Rilke's insight particularly around love and marriage. However, I found the analysis of the poetry or the introduction by John Mood a little bit off as I felt that it was quite irrelevant to add a lengthy passage preceding almost every new chapter.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 183 reviews