How is this? Does /lit/ like Rainer Maria Rilke?

I read his Dunno Elegies and therefore some of the most profound and beautiful poems I ever read

>>7612215
Rilke is trash. Overrated.

>>7612215
Pretty good, only for artists to read, specially poets

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>>7612215
It's good. Just make sure you get the M.D. Herter Norton translation.

>>7612703
This. If you want to write poetry most of the letters contain some solid advice.

>>7612215
It's a pretty inspiring thing to read; the advice he offers is useful at face value, but the premise that hangs over every letter – a true genius carving out time to meticulously piece together responses and advice to someone who is more or less a well-meaning stranger – gives it a magnetic charm.

>>7612215

I hear his poetry is fantastic in the German. In translation I'm not a fan. Whereas say, Paul Celan seems good in translation but many say in German it's not very good.

>>7612703

Most of it is common sense sort of stuff though. "no living person should judge your poetry, that's on you." Of course. Shakespeare should be your judge. But anyone with a brain knows it already.

Rilke SHOULD have also said "read more than my fucking letters, read a lot of actual poetry." Most aspiring poets read Rilke's letters and maybe some Whitman (a shallow reading) and some garbage like Langston Hughes and then write poems about how they're sad that it isn't snowing and school isn't cancelled in an existential manner.

Blicero does.

>>7612780
if i remember correctly (i gave this book to my ex gf and never got it back) Rilke tells Kappus to get his books and also recommends some novels to him

>Most of it is common sense sort of stuff though
i don't know man, he says some pretty depressing shit, talks about loneliness being almost necessary, he talks about love and friendship and sex and life, always linked to the fact of being a poet, some things are pretty hard to agree with, he kinda hated people

>>7612780
>I hear his poetry is fantastic in the German. In translation I'm not a fan.
Depends on a translation, but Rilke is almost impossible to translate (especially in Elegies and Sonnets).

>Paul Celan seems good in translation but many say in German it's not very good.
Not true. He's just fucking hard, cryptic; lot's of neologisms etc. One of the most important poets in German for 20th century.

>>7612902
>Not true. He's just fucking hard, cryptic; lot's of neologisms etc. One of the most important poets in German for 20th century.

Yeah it comes across that way in English translation and I fucking love it. I've heard it's bad in German but then again I can't read German (yet) so I can't tell.

> (especially in Elegies and Sonnets).

Yeah, someone I knew read him in German and told me he's actually a virtuoso of form, and that it's really hard to carry that across between languages.

At this point I'm considering learning German for Celan and Rilke. Learned French for the Symbolists already.

>>7612780
>Whereas say, Paul Celan seems good in translation but many say in German it's not very good

yeah not sure where you got that but his work in german is like god himself whispering zen koans into your ear

>>7612926
>he's actually a virtuoso of form
Well, yeah, it can be said that way, he uses the form, but he doen't keep it if it would be ruining the thoughts, or anything else (can be seen especially in sonnets, where he doesn't 'care' that much about the length of verses and it's actually perfect).
In elegies the problem about translating is that, as someone wrote or said, every word there is a knot in the pattern and has it's meaning in the whole idea (Musil, and surely others too, wrote about the 'carpet weave/fabric' of Rilke's poems). So basically translator is limitting the possibilities of interpretation for the readers of translation (I came across the situation when translator wanted to perfectly preserve the form of elegies and it made them hermetic and incomprehensible).

And, ahh, I would love to be able read in German to read Rilke and Hölderlin and many others, but dunno if I want to invest effort and time into learning third foreign language.

>>7612935

yeah perhaps it's time for me to learn german then

>>7612223
Get the fucking out.

>>7612215

I do not like him very much. His poetry is not very original in its metaphors, it doesn’t have precise and well-defined imagery. He use imagery, but some cliché images and a lot of random comparisons. And he contorts the thoughts and messages of his poems and gives the impression that they have deep and wise meaning behind them, when in fact they only state simple things in a truncated way.

He is overrated.

>>7613031
You were doing so well, then you had to fuck it up with "he's overrated".