Pictures of God: Rilke's Religious Poetry, Including 'The Life of the Virgin Mary'

by Rainer Maria Rilke, Annemarie S. Kidder (Translator)

This is the first comprehensive collection of poems of Rainer Maria Rilke's work on religious and biblical themes. The collection also contains the complete poetic cycle of "The Life of the Virgin Mary," and constitutes the first English translation from German in over fifty years. This is a book for lovers of Rilke, as well as those interested and engaged in the intersection of religion and the arts, beauty and the transcendent. (A bilingual edition.)

Genres: Poetry

158 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

A 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.

Reviews

[ruzmarì · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a way, the title is misleading, as all of Rilke's work presents pictures of God. But this collection regroups and reframes the specifically religious work, highlighting Rilke's deepening faith as it showcases his development as a poet and an artist. Nothing about this work is preachy or dogmatic; Rilke writes of God, Moses, the Virgin Mary as long-lost friends, or distant relatives perhaps, who deserve respect and veneration, while still fielding some of the toughest questions of the 20th century. Rilke does not spare them these hard questions, but nor does he dismiss their importance and their relevance in modern human life. Rather, he opens a window and lets the questions rise - like incens, like prayers above the altar.

[Isabell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful! For an example of one of the Mariaen poems, go here: http://campus.udayton.edu/mary/resour...

[Lexi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anticipating the Passion
(The Life of the Virgin Mary, 1912)

“If you had really wanted to be strong, you would not have come from a woman's womb.
For messiahs are quarried from mountains where the sturdy and strong comes from stone.”

absolutely mesmerizing poems. a bit hard to understand at times, but breathtaking nonetheless.