Duino Elegies

The Duino Elegies are one of the twentieth century’s great works of art. In the space of ten elegies, presented here in a bilingual edition, an impassioned monologue struggles to find an individual answer to what it means to be human in a world torn by modern consciousness. In his introduction, David Oswald writes, Rilke’s poetry shows an unusual sensitivity to inner experience and to the symbolic processes of the psyche, two things that are important to me in my work as a Jungian analyst. His carefully crafted language conveys the movements of this otherwise unsayable realm and addresses the issues of finding the proper relationship to it. My goal has been to create a translation that preserves this sensitivity and precision