Rainer Maria Rilke

Sonnets to Orpheus: A New Translation Rainer Maria Rilke Bilingual edition

On the centennial of the first appearance (1923) of RilkesSonnets to Orpheus, award-winning translator Mark Burrows reveals their depth and meaning with a brilliant new introduction and translation.

This new translation captures the lyric beauty of Rilke's poems, honoring their syntactic peculiarities and grammatical complexities as few translators have dared to do. Burrows versions maintain the essential strangeness of language and abruptness of metaphor by which the sonnets attain their distinctive character in German. Burrows' approach replicates what one reviewer describes as the poems dazzling obscurity, refusing to resolve the deliberate difficulties Rilkes formulations present.

The effect invites readers to linger with these sonnets, allowing themselves to be shaped in their encounter with them.