Poems from the book of hours = Das Stundenbuch / by Rainer Maria Rilke ; translated by Babette Deutsch.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rilke, Rainer Maria, 1875-1926.

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Series:

New Directions paperbook ; 408.

New Directions paperbook

Standardized Title:

Stundenbuch. Selections. English & German

Language:

English

German

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copies 1, 2, & 3)

Physical Description:

51 pages ; 21 cm.

Other Title:

Book of hours.

Place of Publication:

New York : New Directions Pub. Corp., 1975.

Summary:

First published in 1941 by New Directions as part of the Poets of the Year Series, Babette Deutsch's now classic translations from Rainer Maria Rilke's The Book of Hours ("Das Stundenbuch") are available at last in a paperbound edition. The original German text, as in the earlier book, appears en face. "Rilke's Book of Hours," Miss Deutsch writes in her preface, "falls into three parts: The Book of Monkish Life (1899), The Book of Pilgrimage (1901), and The Book of Poverty and Death (1903). Although these poems were the work of Rilke's youth, they contain the germ of his mature convictions. The God they celebrate is not the Creator of the Universe, but seems rather the creation of humanity, and, above all, of that most intensely conscious part of humanity: the artists. Rewarding alike for the richness of their harmonies and the suggestiveness of their imagery, these lyrics allow of interpretations acceptable both to the religious and to the philosophical mind. While the sense was never sacrificed to the exigencies of the pattern, the translator's effort was to carry over into the English verse as much as the language allowed of the original music."

Contents:

Now the hour bows down, it touches me, throbs 11

You, neighbor God, if sometimes in the night 13

If only there were stillness, full, complete 15

I read it in your word, and learn it from 17

I am, you anxious one. Do you not hear me 19

No, my life is not this precipitous hour 21

If I had grown up in a land where days 23

In all these things I cherish as a brother 27

We are all workmen: prentice, journeyman 29

What will you do, God, when I die? 31

The first word that you ever spoke was: light 33

The light shouts in your tree-top, and the face 35

Put out my eyes, and I can see you still 37

Although, as from a prison walled with hate 39

You are the future, the great sunrise red 41

The sovereigns of the world are old 43

All will grow great and powerful again 45

Already ripening barberries grow red 47

Do not be troubled, God, though they say "mine" 49.

Notes:

German and English on opposite pages.

ISBN:

0811205959

9780811205955

OCLC:

1958692