RAINER MARIA RILKE (1875-1926) ranks among the great poets
of world literature, and was the author of Duino Elegies and
Sonnets to Orpheus.
Ulrich Baer, a scholar of modern German, French, and
American poetry, is the author of Remnants of Song- Trauma and the
Experience of Modernity in Charles Baudelaire and Paul Celan and
Spectral Evidence- The Photography of Trauma. He is the editor of
110 Stories- New York Writes After September 11. Baer is associate
professor of German and comparative literature at New York
University and acting chair of the German department.
Advance praise for The Poet's Guide to Life "Most Western wisdom
writers exalt renunciation rather than desire. Rilke is almost
Asian in his differences from Goethe, Nietzsche, Freud. For him,
eros is not the wisdom of fools and the folly of the wise. Nor does
he, like Plato's Socrates, climb the ladder of love toward the
Good. Ulrich Baer uniquely makes available Rilke's bittersweet
apprehensions of the objective realities-of-desire, and of the
consequent, triumphantly knowing poetics-of-loss."
-Harold Bloom, author of Where Shall Wisdom Be Found? and The
Western Canon "Rilke longed to be a worker, and in one
autobiographical poem he described his face as that of someone who
serves. Like Dante he believed that love is the animating force in
the universe-though Rilke's quest took him, not toward the stars,
but back to the earth, to the unnoticed miracle of things precisely
as they are. Professor Baer's book is the best of its kind I have
ever encountered. It is clearly and elegantly translated and
arranged, an inspired gift to a world in terrible need of Rilke's
grave and joyful vision."
-Franz Wright, author of Walking to Martha's Vineyard, winner of
the Pulitzer Prize for poetry "This thematic selection from the
vast trove of Rilke's letters and papers reveals an unfamiliar side
of the poet that broadens and deepens the range of his thought.
Professor Baer's translations are eloquent, and his splendid
Introduction is sensitive, thorough, and illuminating."
-Burton Pike, professor emeritus of comparative literature at City
University of New York, and award-winning translator "Boy, Rilke is
a kook. Reading The Poet's Guide to Life, I have to say that I love
his point of view."
-Gus Van Sant, director of Good Will Hunting, My Own Private Idaho,
and many other films
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