Pure Contradiction: Selected Poems

Rainer Maria Rilke was born into the German-speaking elite of Prague in 1875, and died in Switzerland in 1926. He was witness to the radical new art emerging in Paris before the First World War and was involved in reviewing exhibitions and writing articles about the new artists, as well as developing his own increasingly individual and virtuoso verse. He was secretary to the sculptor Rodin for two years, met Picasso and Tolstoy and many other giants of the artistic and intellectual community of the time. He lived a semi-nomadic life, always putting his art before his personal relationships and always aware of his own calling as a poet. Today his reputation is as high as it was during his lifetime; his Duino Elegies, Sonnets to Orpheus and his two volumes of New Poems which sounded a new note in European poetry at the time remain landmark works. Together with his volumes of letters and his extraordinary impressionistic novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, Rilke's poetry constitutes one of the great literary achievements of any century.

• Introduction / 9, The Ribbon / 23, I Love my Nature's Darkest Hours / 23 , Entrance / 25 , Early Apollo / 25 , The Fountain / 27 A Tree Rises! - O Pure Transcendence! / 27, The Gazelle / 29 , Spanish Dancer / 31 , Birth of Venus / 31 , Exposed on the Mountains of the Heart / 37, 'We must die because we know them' / 37 , You, Whom I Knew Like a Flower / 39 , Washing the Corpse / 41 , Requiem for a Friend (extract) / 43, Death / 51 , Lament / 53, And It Was a Girl, Almost / 53, Orpheus. Euridice. Hermes / 55, The Tower / 61 Encounter in the Chestnut Avenue / 63, O This is the Animal That Cannot Be / 65 , You, Never-arriving One / 67 , Love Song / 69 The Abduction / 69 , Leda / 71 , Parting / 73 , The Convalescent / 73 , Christ's Descent into Hell / 75, Duino Elegies: The First Elegy / 77 , On the Verge of Night / 83 , To Music / 83, Gong / 85 A God Can Do It. But You Tell Me How / 87, The Solitary / 89 , You See, I Want a Lot / 89 , Portrait / 91 , Duino Elegies: The Fourth Elegy / 93 , The Asylum Garden / 97 , Look at the Flowers / 99, O Lacrimosa / 101, Be Ahead of All Parting / 103, The Red Scarf / 105 , Notes / 106, Biographical Notes / 112