Rilke Alphabet

The significance of Rainer Maria Rilke's work rests with the poet's insistence that everything needed for a better life on earth is already given to us, in the here and now. In 26 incisive and engaging essays, Ulrich Baer's The Rilke Alphabet examines both the lesser-known and the overlooked and controversial aspects of Rilke's poetry and life. The book focuses on 26 unexpected but crucial words in Rilke's writings that reveal Rilke's poetic method, his obsessions and concerns, and his deepest thoughts on life, art, politics, sexuality, and death. The book shows that Rilke's work, read here in its entirety, provides a guide to modern life by deepening our experience and awareness of existence. Whether it is a love letter to frogs, a problematic brief flirtation with Mussolini, a deep reflection on Buddha in several poems, or an unambiguous assertion that freedom is not an abstraction but must be lived to be known, Rilke's writings pull us deeply into life. Baer's decades-long engagement with Rilke, as a scholar, and a translator and editor of Rilke's letters, serves to reveal unique aspects of Rilke's work in its entirety. The Rilke Alphabet will surprise and delight Rilke fans, intrigue newcomers to his work, and deepen every reader's sense of the power of poetry to penetrate the mysteries and confusion of our world.