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Rilke’s Book of Hours falls into three parts: The Book of Monkish Life (1899), The Book of Pilgrimage (1901), and The Book of Poverty and Death (1903). Although these poems were the work of Rilke’s youth, they contain the germ of his mature convictions. Written as spontaneously received prayers, they celebrate a God who is not the Creator of the Universe, but seems to be rather humanity itself, and, above all, that most intensely conscious part of humanity, the artist. This exquisite gift edition contains Babette Deutsch’s classic translations, which capture the rich harmony and suggestive imagery of the originals, allowing interpretations both religious and philosophical, and transporting the reader to new heights of inspiration and musicality.

64 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1905

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About the author

Rainer Maria Rilke

1,402 books5,899 followers
A mystic lyricism and precise imagery often marked verse of German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, whose collections profoundly influenced 20th-century German literature and include The Book of Hours (1905) and The Duino Elegies (1923).

People consider him of the greatest 20th century users of the language.

His haunting images tend to focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety — themes that tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist poets.

His two most famous sequences include the Sonnets to Orpheus , and his most famous prose works include the Letters to a Young Poet and the semi-autobiographical The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge .

He also wrote more than four hundred poems in French, dedicated to the canton of Valais in Switzerland, his homeland of choice.

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Displaying 1 - 30 of 714 reviews
Profile Image for Meredith.
3,640 reviews67 followers
December 4, 2013
My favorite poem of Rilke's is found in this book. I first read it in the bathroom of the Video Saloon where it had been written with sharpie in the first stall.

"I am praying again, Awesome One"
(Ich bete wieder, du Elauchter)

You hear me again, as words
from the depths of me
rush toward you in the wind.

I’ve been scattered in pieces,
torn by conflict,
mocked by laughter,
washed down in drink.

In alleyways I sweep myself up
out of garbage and broken glass.
With my half-mouth I stammer you,
who are eternal in your symmetry.
I lift to you my half-hands
in wordless beseeching, that I may find again
the eyes with which I once beheld you.

I am a house gutted by fire
where only the guilty sometimes sleep
before the punishment that devours them
hounds them out in the open.

I am a city by the sea
sinking into a toxic tide.
I am strange to myself, as though someone unknown
had poisoned my mother as she carried me.

It’s here in all the pieces of my shame
that now I find myself again.
I yearn to belong to something, to be contained
in an all-embracing mind that sees me
as a single thing.
I yearn to be held
in the great hands of your heart–
oh let them take me now.
Into them I place these fragments, my life,
and you, God–spend them however you want.


Profile Image for Jennifer Locke.
81 reviews23 followers
October 16, 2014
Read this book several years ago and decided that I had to own it, mainly for this poem:

I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I've been circling for thousands of years
and I still don't know: am I a falcon, a storm,
or a great song?
Profile Image for Caroline.
222 reviews10 followers
December 4, 2013
Whoa. Whoa.

I read a checked-out library copy of this book, but about halfway through I realized that I was going to need to own it. Still working on that. But thanks to Rilke, I finally understand the point of poetry. Don't get me wrong - I've appreciated poetry before, like the imagery it evoked or the cadence it gave or whatever. But THIS. Well, just refer to the first two words of the review.

I found this stuff profound. In almost every poem I found a stanza or thought that would just stop me in my tracks with an "aha!" moment or simply due the sheer beauty of the words. I think this is also the first time I've come upon subject matter that couldn't be adequately expressed except through poetry. Most love poems I've read I find to be rather trite, but these are anything but. The depth of feeling they express is simply incredible.

My first exposure to Rilke's poetry came from a church talk I heard a few years ago. The poem was titled "God Speaks to Each of Us," and after hearing it I thought about it for months afterward. It was this poem that led me to the Book of Hours. It also impressed upon me the difficultly of translating poems. The fact that all of Rilke's poems were originally written German meant there were many variations in English of a single poem in the German. As a result, I had to flip through a number of different editions of the Book of Hours with different translators before finding that the Barrows/Macy translation contained the version of the first Rilke poem I had heard years earlier. Their translation was the best that I found and seems to have been done with an immense amount of thought and care.

Two final thoughts. First, I loved how universally applicable these poems are. They are appropriate readers of any or no faith, a point that Macy and Barrows emphasize in their commentary. Second, I loved Rilke's focus on the idea of ripening. I've never thought of ripening in terms of anything other than fruit, but I think Rilke sees it as one of our reasons for being on earth. I like this idea. I want to ripen.
Profile Image for Steven  Godin.
2,553 reviews2,691 followers
July 20, 2018
Beautiful, spiritual, insightful poetry. I appreciate all aspects of his work, this one in particular though is one to be treasured. It's like binding words into serene works of art. Essential reading for those who seek a deeper understanding of Rilke's journey, as both man and poet.

I picked out the poem below, which I feel sums up Rilke's mind during this book.

What will you do, God, when I die?
When I, your pitcher, broken, lie?
When I, your drink, go stale or dry?
I am your garb, the trade you ply,
you lose your meaning, losing me.

Homeless without me, you will be
robbed of your welcome, warm and sweet.
I am your sandals: your tired feet
will wander bare for want of me.

Your mighty cloak will fall away.
Your glance that on my cheek was laid
and pillowed warm, will seek, dismayed,
the comforts that I offered once —
to lie, as sunset colors fade
in the cold lap of alien stones.

What will you do, God? I am afraid.
Profile Image for Zinta.
Author 4 books267 followers
January 5, 2009
The task of a translator, I think, has always been unappreciated. It is a demanding one, a task that can never be done to the perfection it begs. Language is a living, breathing thing, and it holds within it an entire culture, and in that culture, an entire people, and within these people, an entire world. It is not possible to withdraw one such world and make it fit into the shape of another.

Yet if we are to even try to understand one another, the many of us on this earth and our ways, then translating the great works of any culture is a much needed task that some very brave soul must undertake. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy are such brave souls, and the two friends are bonded by their deep love for the work of German poet (but born in Prague), Rainer Maria Rilke. While I know a very little of German, I cannot by any measure judge their success in translation. I have read Rilke in two languages, German being neither of them, and only from that experience can I say, cautiously, that I believe them to be as successful as any translators may hope to be. And it may be enough that a translator love a work so deeply and with such devotion that this in itself carries through the spirit of what is intended.

How can one not fall in love with Rilke? The poet transcends time, expressing what humankind has tried to express, surely, since self-awareness first blushed at its own face. In this particular collection, Rilke’s poetry is a kind of love letter to God. As love letters do, his poems speak of longing, of devotion, of the desire to serve and please, of the fears of separation, of the joy of reunion. He wishes to present himself to God as he is, with open heart, in praise, one lonely being, perhaps, to another lonely being, both craving to love and be loved.

You, God, who live next door—

If at times, through the long night, I trouble you
with my urgent knocking—
this is why: I hear you breathe so seldom.
I know you’re all alone in that room.
If you should be thirsty, there’s no one
to get you a glass of water.
I wait listening, always. Just give me a sigh!
I’m right here.

As it happens, the wall between us
is very thin. Why couldn’t a cry
from one of us
break it down? It would crumble
easily,

it would barely make a sound.

For Rilke, God is most intimate, most personal. He speaks to Him as if they stand side by side, and indeed they do. The need for company is mutual. Rilke’s work is arguably a perfect blend of male and female sensibilities, with both the masculine in its demand and the feminine in its open heart. As Rilke was in his first years raised, oddly enough, as a daughter—his mother had longed for one, and in something weirdly like denial, dressed her long-locked boy as a girl in dresses and called him Rene—so in later years, his father sent him to military school, to toughen him up and teach him a very male discipline. Rilke would find his own good mix. He fit neither of their plans, nor the conventional of a working society.

Poetry was his love for as long as memory, and in whatever context his life, it was the one steady rock. He could and would not do any other work, forever seeking sponsors and mentors so that he may devote himself fully to his art. When he fell in love for the first time, the woman he loved urged him to use the more masculine version of his name, Rainer. And so ever after, he did. But all of this seems like sideline matters, mere tangents, including the love itself, as he had numerous relationships, holding none steady, including a marriage that produced a child. Nothing else came first. Nothing. Only the word in verse.

When Rilke worked alongside sculptor, Auguste Rodin, he watched the sculptor’s intensity and passion for his art, and was inspired. They were a match, if not in medium, then in devotion. This was how to live one’s life as an artist. With a singular vision, an undistracted dedication. If Rodin created in stone, Rilke created in language, and so he sculpted verse, and in verse, his ongoing and lifelong prayer:

Only in our doing can we grasp you.
Only with our hands can we illumine you.
The mind is but a visitor:
it thinks us out of our world.

Each mind fabricates itself.
We sense its limits, for we have made them.
And just when we would flee them, you come
and make of yourself an offering.

I don’t want to think a place for you.
Speak to me from everywhere.
Your Gospel can be comprehended
without looking for its source.

When I go toward you
it is with my whole life.

No doubt, God was listening and listens still. If most of us pray in stutters and whispers, Rilke prayed in lyrical poetry, from the heart to God’s ear. Through his, the rest of us feel that much closer to the divine, as well.
Profile Image for Michelle.
67 reviews61 followers
October 17, 2022
"What will you do God, when I am gone?"

Such is the question that sums up what Rilke addresses throughout this collection. Appropriately subtitled love poems to God, Rilke's Book of Hours is essentially a collection of poems devoting himself to God. Yet it is much more than simply that.
The book is divided into three parts: The Book of a Monastic Life, The Book of Pilgrimage, and The Book of Poverty and Death.

The Book of a Monastic Life
"I live my life in widening circles
That reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I've been circling for thousands of years
and I still don't know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?
"

The first part begins with the very first perception of God, the first realization. As the devoted poems go on, the idea of God is narrowed. God as a religious figure is often associated with light, brightness, iridescence that combats the dark. Rilke detests this religious portrayal of God as a figure far beyond human reach, an inaccessible symbol of morality. Rather, Rilke depicts God as a dark figure that arises from the darkness within the human, a God that is born from the human.
"But when I lean over the chasm of myself-
it seems
my God is dark
and like a web: a hundred roots
silently drinking
"

In Rilke's world, darkness is not something we must shy away from, but something we should fully embrace.
"You, darkness, of whom I am born
I love you more than the flame that limits the world to the circle it illumines and excludes all the rest.
But the dark embraces everything: shapes and shadows, creatures and me, people, nations-just as they are.
It lets me imagine
a great presence stirring beside me.

I believe in the night.
"

"You run like a herd of luminous deer
and I am dark, I am forest.
"


Rilke escapes the traditional sense of God as a deity far detached from the mundanities of human life. Instead, he crafts a God that both creates and is created by humans; a God that arises from the dark crevices of the human body.
"I am the world he stumbled out of."

Humans are imperfect, endlessly so. Disputes are hardly avoidable; we are constantly looking for ways to attack each other. Yet amongst those dark and veiled, ignorant nights, humans toy with beauty and assign meaning to our imperfections. In Rilke's eyes, not only are we perfect in our imperfections; much like the way the dark highlights the light, our imperfections make an art of life.

In turn, Rilke's God exposes us to infinite, seamless beauty, to profound wisdom outside of human ignorance: the power of nature. God allows us to view ourselves beyond the boundaries of human illusion as expressed by Proust(When I saw an exterior object, my awareness that I was seeing it would remain between me and it, edging it with a thin spiritual border that prevented me from ever directly touching its substance; it would dissipate somehow before I could make contact with it, just as an incandescent body brought near a damp object never touches its wetness because it is always preceded by a zone of evaporation.-p86, The Way by Swann's). Thus an interdependent relationship is formed where both sides may learn from the other. In this, Rilke's idea of God may even be likened to a romantic relationship, as two equals both limitlessly grow from and relentlessly give to the other.

The Book of Pilgrimage
""You are not surprised at the force of the storm - you have seen it growing....

Now you must go out into your heart as onto a vast plain. Now the immense loneliness begins....

Through the empty branches the sky remains. It is what you have.
"


In the beginning lines of 'The Book of Pilgrimage,' God is one who guides us in times of turbulence. Rilke calls out to God to protect humans from the storm, from the endless nights that torment humanity's weakest, most vulnerable components. Yet simultaneously, he is never entirely dependent on God. As was shown in 'The Book of a Monastic Life,' once again, Rilke sees God as what is born from humans. Yet this time, the birth of Rilke's first child is reflected in Rilke's renewed perception of God; God is portrayed as our son, as humanity's infinite heir.
"So God, you are the one who comes after.
It is sons who inherit, while fathers die. Sons stand and bloom.

You are the heir.
"

Through God, we understand the wonders of the world around us; beauty gives way to artistic endeavors and human artifacts from which God's limbs may grow, in turn. In this way, we are continually overflowing into a greater power, receiving from the power of nature, and thus giving to our heir, which rises in its completion yet is humble and soft.

The Book of Poverty and Death
Similarly, death also is reassigned its meaning. Unlike our frequented view of death as something to shy away from, in Rilke's eyes, it is a fruit we must harvest with love and gratitude at the end of our lives, not something we hurry towards in a frenzy.
"For we are only the rind and the leaf.
The great death, that each of us carries inside, is the fruit.

Everything enfolds it.
"

Due to his illness, Rilke himself lived a short life. And as is written in the introduction, he was known to have certain "suicidal tendencies". Yet by treating death as a companion, a long-term ally with which to accompany his life, Rilke's years have outlasted time: he was able use his own beautiful articulation of language to extend his stay on this planet for eternity.

In here are also discussions of poverty, a heavy topic we conceive as, yet once again, there lies God's reflection. Where there is suffering, there is darkness; where there is darkness, there is God.
"You are the poor one, you the destitute.
You are the stone that has no resting place. You are the diseased one
whom we fear to touch.
"

Rilke himself suffered from poverty, constantly relying on benefactors for support. Yet he did not transform material depletion into empathic depletion. Instead, he turned the suffering into something he could find meaning within, something that would, in the end, channel him towards that singular continuum of eternal beauty.


Whilst reading the introduction, what I found most interesting about Rilke was that in times of great suffering and turbulence, whereas humanity(myself included)'s tendency is to complain and bemoan their terrible turning of life, not only did Rilke accept what was given and stealthily pushed on, but he expanded his personal suffering to pay attention to humanity at large. For this alone I see Rilke as a great man; his spirit is as profound as the exquisite poems he narrates.


Bottom line: Rilke is better read than told. The transformative power of his poems escapes my utilization of language.
In a world where we need to be constantly validated by other people to be given a sense of meaning, where people rely on self-help books to give meaning to their own lives, Rilke gives us what is most needed; the power to self-compliment. We are all beings that God needs, therefore we are seen as precious. It is the most sublime truth yet the hardest to remember.
One need not reject their own idea of God to converse with Rilke's. That is also, in my understanding, not Rilke's intention, as his idea of God was one of endless embracement and boundless love for all of humanity. Yet as a person who has, through the poet's words, often been restored to life, I may confirm that if you trust in his unique form of God, Rilke will lead you by the hand to recognize the beautiful imperfections of humanity. Wherever you are in life, recognizing this will doubtless revitalize you. Rilke's words will encourage you to stay close to human nature whilst remembering our presence and duty as responsible beings within the world. For any person feeling lost and tired of life, I would gladly recommend reading this.
A book I would carry through life. 5 stars.

__________
Other favorites I've neglected to include above :

"I would describe myself

like a landscape I've studied at length, in detail;

like a word I'm coming to understand;

like my mother's face;

like a pitcher I pour from at mealtime; like a ship that carried me when the waters raged."
"

"Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. Don't let yourself lose me."

_____________
Letters to a Young Poet review here.
Profile Image for maryamongstories.
111 reviews520 followers
January 4, 2022
While reading this, I had a similar sensation as to when I hear Chopin's Nocturnes: this feeling of wanting to go on a personal, semi-secret path that's only unraveled when dreaming; a path which explores both my biggest fears, and deepest desires.

Rilke's writing is so human, and yet so transcending. What a lovely way to start this reading year ✨
Profile Image for Zanna.
676 reviews1,006 followers
January 10, 2019
First read 2006

There is very little pre-modern poetry that I am able to read myself, (though I can often appreciate it being recited) and I am not sure whether it's Rilke's genius or Babette Deutsch's musical, mainly free verse translation that makes these poems so beautiful, so perfectly clear and direct, like a mountain spring rolling over your toes, like a smooth cool pebble dropped into your hand.

As an atheist I have to interrogate myself and work hard for a meaningful interpretation when I read Rilke, but his god is so interesting that sometimes I'm content to smile and leave him to it. Even the unbeliever can find some stimulating conversation to have with these poems, if not comfort and sweetness.
What will you do God, when I die?
When I, your pitcher, broken, lie?
When I, your drink, go stale or dry?
I am your garb, the trade you ply,
you lose your meaning, losing me.

Homeless without me, you will be
robbed of your welcome, warm and sweet.
I am your sandals: your tired feet
will wander bare for want of me.

Your mighty cloak will fall away.
Your glance that on my cheek was laid
and pillowed warm, will seek, dismayed,
the comfort that I offered once -
to lie, as sunset colours fade
in the cold lap of alien stones.

What will you do, God? I am afraid.

In her introductions Deutsch writes (beautifully) about Rilke's god as created by art "The wine not yet ripened", but here the poet addresses god in intimate love as, it seems to me, both parent and child.
All will grow great and powerful again:
the seas be wrinkled and the land be plain,
the trees gigantic and the walls be low;
and in the valleys, strong and multiform,
a race of herdsfolk and of farmers grow.

No churches to encircle God as though
he were a fugitive, and then bewail him
as if he were a captured wounded creature -
all houses will prove friendly, there will be
a sense of boundless sacrifice prevailing
in dealings between men, in you, in me.

No waiting the beyond, no peering toward it,
but longing to degrade not even death;
we shall learn earthliness, and serve its ends,
to feel its hands about us like a friend's.

Without agreeing with him, I have sympathy for Nietzsche's sneer at Christian morality. Love your neighbour and give away your wealth is simply not enough to live by, which is why the 'great' Catholic theologians like Aquinas had to shore it up with Aristotle and other philosophers of the greco-roman tradition. Rilke takes a different approach, placing responsibility on the individual to create a world of gentleness and respect for nature through love. Hmm. Well it works as poetry, it works as an appeal, it feels nice.
They will say "mine" as one will sometimes call
the prince his friend in speech with villagers,
the prince being very great - and far away.
They call strange walls "mine," knowing not at all
who is the master of the house indeed.
They still say "mine", and claim possession, though
each thing, as they approach, withdraws and closes;
a silly charlatan perhaps thus poses
as owner of the lightning and the sun.
And so they say: my life, my wife, my child,
my dog, well knowing all that they have styled
their own: life, wife, child, dog, remain
shapes foreign and unknown,
that blindly groping they must stumble on.
This truth, be sure, only the great discern,
who long for eyes. The others will not learn
that in the beggary of their wandering
they cannot claim a bond with any thing,
but, driven from possessions they have prized,
not by their own belongings recognized,
they can OWN wives no more than they own flowers,
whose life is alien and apart from ours.

This apartness of other beings, especially animals, is picked up by DH Lawrence, for example in his poem Fish. When I read Lawrence's poem in this anthology I thought I had read in Rilke a wonderful poem about animals' experience of the world in this little collection, but I was confused; the poem was in The Thunder Mutters. It's much richer and chewier than the sweet little poems here, so I know there's a lot more Rilke for me. That's good, because his words make the world lovelier. They weigh in the balance against despair.
Profile Image for booklady.
2,424 reviews64 followers
September 18, 2020
As I was reviewing this selection, I was looking for one poem which seemed representative of the group. While I can’t say that I found it, the one below could be said to most closely match my own view of Life. There are no doubt others which are more sublime, profound or beautiful, or that speak to you as this one speaks to me. Also, I might pick another poem next year or five years from now. But for now, this one, while perhaps not the best, best says what I believe.
God speaks to each of us as He makes us,
Then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You sent out beyond your recall,
Go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like Flame
And make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.
One of my most frequent prayers is, “God, please don’t EVER LET GO OF ME! Guardian Angel hold tight to my hand. Trip me if you must, but never let me be lost! I am His!

There are three sections in this collection of poetry: the book of a monastic life, the book of pilgrimage and the book of poverty and death. There is also a preface by both translators, introduction, notes on the translation and a commentary at the end.

Even though I am marking this book as ‘read’ for Goodreads purposes, for my own uses, I will constantly keep returning to it. It is a lovely book!

Most highly recommended for meditation, prayer, inspiration, pondering, and idling away time with the One-Who-is-All-in-All.





August 21, 2020: Most GRs reviewers of Rilke give you their favorite snippets or poems. I suppose with poetry that is the best way for the reader to determine if they like the work and agree with the reviewer, but is it a review? As I have been reading each selection, I keep looking for one poem or four line selection which encapsulates the whole of Rilke for me and I have yet to find it. Each piece is unique and a place and time where Rainer Maria was then. Often the immediacy of his writing brings me right there, though the words are over 100 years old and in translation, which I suppose is the success of both talents.

Is there one thing in this book which has captured my heart here? Many things for sure, but not something I can isolate out from all the others ... yet. Or perhaps it his way with words, how he is able to turn my mundane thoughts and perceptions into the most poetic and lovely language; he has me enthralled and still reading... I wonder that I have let it sit on my shelf so long. It deserves to be next to my prayer book. I went to the author's quotes and added so many I finally just had to quit... Then I combed my shelves for the other books by Rilke, to begin as soon as I finish this. So far, I have only located, Rilke: Poems, but I know I also have, Letters to a Young Poet somewhere.



2008: Ibrahim's post of this book reminded me that I have this and read it some years back. Excellent! Would really enjoy a reread! Rilke is a favorite--each poem is a meditation unto itself.
Profile Image for lucy✨.
303 reviews697 followers
January 29, 2022
“I want to unfold.
Let no place in me hold itself closed”

Rilke, I don’t know what I’d do without you
Profile Image for Neil R. Coulter.
1,129 reviews136 followers
June 21, 2017
I found this copy of the Book of Hours on a giveaway shelf several months ago, and I believe it's the best free book that has ever come to me. I would even say it's destiny that let me find this collection of amazing poems and reflections on God.

I'm not much interested in poetry. I often find it either gimmicky (bound by certain rules that make it seem artificial to me) or impenetrable (re: almost any poem that appears in the New Yorker). But Rilke's poems knocked me off my chair again and again (and I've read through this volume numerous times since first finding it).

I've rarely found any writing, poetry or prose, that so perfectly captures the feelings I have as I contemplate God and my relationship to him. As someone involved in the arts, I love that Rilke has an artist's perspective. Throughout the first of the three books in the collection, he considers the challenge of portraying God artistically but honestly.
We must not portray you in king's robes,
you drifting mist that brought forth the morning.

Once again from the old paintboxes
we take the same gold for scepter and crown
that has disguised you through the ages.

Piously we produce our images of you
till they stand around you like a thousand walls.
And when our hearts would simply open,
our fervent hands hide you. (I:4, p. 50)
This is the challenge for any artist committed to following Christ: portraying God without being distracted by the portrayal itself.

Near the end of Book 1, Rilke returns to that theme.
I want to utter you. I want to portray you
not with lapis or gold, but with colors made of apple bark.
There is no image I could invent
that your presence would not eclipse.

I want, then, simply
to say the names of things. (I:60, p. 89)
I also like how in Rilke's landscape, darkness is where God dwells and meets us. "But in the deep darkness is God" (I:50, p. 83). Bright daylight, "where light thins into nothing" (I:50, p. 83), can be a distraction, but throughout these poems darkness is where the truth is revealed and peace is possible.

Having spent some time earlier this year with Shusako Endo's Silence, and Makoto Fujimura's meditation on Endo, Silence and Beauty, I appreciated the recurring theme of God's silence in Rilke's poems.
Sometimes I pray: Please don't talk.
Let all your doing be by gesture only.
Go on writing in faces and stone
what your silence means. (I:44, p. 80)

He who will overcome you
is working in silence. (I:49, p. 82)

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night. (I:59, p. 88)
I am very fond of each of the three books in this volume. Book 1 contains many of my favorite poems of the collection, and Books 2 and 3 are astounding when read straight through, as one unbroken meditation. I don't think every follower of Jesus would love Rilke as much as I do, but for a certain type of Christian (me), Rilke is a godsend.

Other reviews of this edition point out the liberties that the translators, Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy, have taken in setting Rilke into English. I understand that, and I don't claim to "know Rilke" through having read this translation. I probably know Barrows and Macy as well as I do Rilke. But that's okay with me. The way they translated, while perhaps altering Rilke's original meaning, spoke to me in exactly the way I needed. Whatever it is that I've read here, it has lifted me up, and I will return to it again and again.
Profile Image for Eadweard.
602 reviews537 followers
June 4, 2016
I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it
----





I love the dark hours of my being.
My mind deepens into them.

There I can find, as in old letters,
the days of my life, already lived,

and held like a legend,
and understood.
----





I'm slipping, I'm slipping away
like sand

slipping through fingers. All
my cells

are open, and all
so thirsty. I ache and swell

in a hundred places, but mostly
in the middle of my heart

I want to die. Leave me alone.
I feel I am almost there-

where the great terror
can dismember me
----





My blood is alive with many voices
telling me I am made of longing.
----





Often when I imagine you
your wholeness cascades into many shapes
You run like a herd of luminous deer
and I am dark, a forest.
----





Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
----





No one lives his life

Disguised since childhood,
haphazardly assembled
from voices and fears and little pleasures

we come of age as masks.
Our true face never speaks.

Somewhere there must be storehouses
where all these lives are laid away
like suits of armor or old carriages
or clothes hanging limply on the walls

Maybe all paths lead there,
to the depository of unlived things.
----





For we are only the rind and the leaf.

The great death, that each of us carries inside,
is the fruit.

Everything enfolds it.
Profile Image for Nahed.E.
610 reviews1,771 followers
May 16, 2018
أنا فاصل سكون بين نغمتين
لا تتوافقان إلا علي مضض
لأن نغمة الموت تريد أن تكون هي الأقوي
لكنهما تتصالحان في النهاية
في الفاصل المظلم ذاك
ويظل الغناء عذباً

،،،

ريلكه .. هذا الشاعر غريب الأطوار الذي يقولون عنه أن وردة صغيرة قتلته
حقاً .. فلقد كان في حديقته وقطف وردة ثم سرعان ما اكتشف أنه اُصيب بتسمم ما.. وتوفي بعد ذلك بمدة صغيرة
والغريب في الأمر أن الوردة عنصر أساسي في قصائدة فكثيراً ما تراه يتحدث عنها في صورة فلسفية جميلة
...
ريلكه ..شاعر هادئ في حواره
فلا تشعر بالصخب والضجيج .. حتي صراخه هادئ ..
ستجد لمحات كثيرة من الحيرة والحزن
ستجد أيضا الرومانسية الهادئة
ستجد لمسات صوفية جميلة
حتي تساؤلاته الفلسفية العميقة يعرضها لك في صورة مُبسطة
فتجد تساؤلات عميقة للغاية ومسائل فلسفية صعبة ولكنها في ثوب بسيط لا يُصعب عليك الأمر فتقرأ وكأنك تسمع
وتفهم وأنت تستمتع
وليس عليك أن تجيب أو تنتظر منه إجابة ..
فالسؤال يكفيك

رائع ريلكه
Profile Image for grace.
92 reviews646 followers
October 22, 2022
the kind of poetry that makes you want to rip up and throw away all of your own
Profile Image for Tyler  Bell.
209 reviews34 followers
September 8, 2022
4.25/5 Stars


Rilke's writing is so next level!


I won't write too much here since I think it's best to just experience this book on its own.

But essentially this book is a collection of poems of Rilke's relationship with God. He goes through all the steps in what it's like loving God, questioning him, learning about ourselves and our places in this world. One big theme throughout the work is that "God needs us just as much as we need God".

Really enjoyed Rilke's wordplay. He has such a beautiful writing style that just flows into every line. His imagery was immaculate and the substance of his poems make you sit down and think!

Obviously, there were a few here that I didn't love entirely, but that's to be expected. I would love to get my hands on more of Rilke's works!!
Profile Image for Robert Case.
Author 5 books52 followers
September 25, 2018
This book was savored, digested a few poems at a time last summer, while on a 6-week bicycling tour of the western US. One of the trip's many purposes was to unplug from the pace of city living, to better reassess my own path and priorities. The bicycle and this book were both vehicles for that practice. Writing over one hundred years ago, Rilke's poems describe and promote a reciprocal relationship with the Divine. They are full of possibilities and challenges, making the book an ideal companion for an interested reader in the midst of a long journey.

Profile Image for Sarah ~.
824 reviews868 followers
April 10, 2013
لطالما كانت المشكلة الكبرى في قراءة الشعر العالمي هي الترجمة ..
فكيف توصل إلى القراء كل ما كتبه الشاعر بلغته ،
بكل ما فيها من تعبيرات وتشبيهات ومشاعر ..
وهي أساسيات و جماليات تضيع غالبا يالترجمة ..وأعرف ذلك عن تجارب سابقة .

ولكن هنا ، أشعار ريلكه جميلة جدا ومترجمة بشكل رائع
وهذا يجعلني أتساءل إذا كانت بهذه الروعة وهي مترجمة
فكيف هي بلغتها الأصلية .
لن تكون المرة الأخيرة التي أقرأ فيها لهذا الشاعر .
قريبا جداً سأقرأ الجزء الثاني .
Profile Image for morgan.
144 reviews77 followers
December 8, 2021
this book has just helped me survive the tragic first hour of the england cricket game 😥
Profile Image for Atri .
213 reviews152 followers
January 4, 2024
I feel it now: there's a power in me
to grasp and give shape to my world.

I know that nothing has ever been real
without my beholding it.
All becoming has needed me.
My looking ripens things
and they come toward me, to meet and be met.

***

Then the knowing comes: I can open
to another life that's wide and timeless.

***

Then in one vast thousandfold thought
I could think you up to where thinking ends.

I could possess you,
even for the brevity of a smile,
to offer you
to all that lives,
in gladness.

***

We see the brightness of a new page
where everything yet can happen.

***

...over and over again you said be.

***

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.
I want to free what waits within me...

I will sing you as no one ever has,
streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.

***

I want to mirror your immensity.

I want to unfold
Let no place in me hold itself closed,
for where I am closed, I am false.
I want to stay clear in your sight.

***

I would describe myself
like a landscape I've studied
at length, in detail;
like a word I'm coming to understand;
like a pitcher I pour forth from at mealtime;
like my mother's face;
like a ship that carried me
when the waters raged.

***

Yet sometimes in dreams
I take in your whole expanse,
from its deepest beginnings
up to the rooftop's glittering ridge.

***

Because once someone dared
to want you,
I know that we, too, may want you.

***

In the softness of evening
it's you she receives.

You are the partner of her loneliness,
the unspeaking center of her monologues,
With each disclosure you encompass more
and she stretches beyond what limits her,
to hold you.

***

All creation holds it breath, listening within me,
because, to hear you, I keep silent.

***

Don't you sense me, ready to break
into being at your touch?

I am the dream you are dreaming.
When you want to awaken, I am that awakening
I grow strong in the beauty you behold.
And with the silence of stars I enfold
your cities made by time.

***

I find yo there in all these things
I care for like a brother.

Such is the amazing play of the powers:
they give themselves so willingly,
swelling in the roots, thinning as the trunks rise,
and in the high leaves, resurrection.

***

you, the song we sang in every silence...

***

My blood is alive with many voices
telling me I am made of longing.

What mystery breaks over me now?
In its shadow I come into life.
For the first time I am alone with you -

you, my power to feel.

***

For all things
sing you: at times
we just hear them more clearly.

***

Only in our doing can we grasp you.
Only with our hands can we illumine you.
The mind is but a visitor:
it thinks us out of our world.

Each mind fabricates itself.

I don't want to think a place for you.
Speak to me from everywhere.

When I go toward you
it is with my whole life.

***

You sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.

***

I want, then, simply
to say the names of things.

***

Just give me a little more time!
I want to love the things
as no one has thought to love them,
until they're worthy of you and real.

There will be a book that includes these pages,
and the one who take it in his hands
will long sit staring at it,
until he feels you holding him
and writing through him.

***

Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.
Be earth now, and evensong.
Be the ground lying under that sky.
Be modest now, like a thing
ripened until it is real,
so that he who began it all
can feel you when he reaches for you.

***

I yearn to belong to something, to be contained
in an all-embracing mind that sees me
as a single thing.
I yearn to be held
in the great hands of your heart -
oh let them take me now.

Into them I place these fragments, my life,
and you, God - spend them however you want.

***

That's when I want you -
you knower of my emptiness,
you unspeaking partner to my sorrow -
that's when I need you, God...

I seek you, because they are passing
right by my door. Whom should I turn to
if not the one whose darkness
is darker than night, the only one
who keeps vigil with no candle,
and is not afraid -
the deep one, whose being I trust,
for it breaks through the earth into trees,
and rises,
when I bow my head,
faint as a fragrance
from the soil.

***

And you inherit the green
of vanished gardens
and the motionless blue of fallen skies,
dew of a thousand dawns, countless summers
the suns sang, and springtimes to break your heart
like a young woman's letters.

You inherit the autumns, folded like festive clothing
in the memories of poets; and all the winters,
like abandoned fields, bequeath your quietness,

Sound will be yours, of string and brass and reed,
and sometimes the songs will seem
to come from inside you.

For your sake poets sequester themselves,
gather images to churn the minds,
journey forth, ripening with metaphor,
and all their lives they are so alone...
And painters paint their pictures only
that the world, so transient as you made it,
can be given back to you,
to last forever.

Those who create are like you.
They long for the eternal.

And lovers also gather your inheritance.
They are the poets of one brief hour.

***

All life is being lived.

Who is living it, then?
Is it the things themselves,
or something waiting inside them,
like an unplayed melody in a flute?

Is it the winds blowing over the waters?
Is it the branches that signal to each other?

Is it flowers
interweaving their fragrances,
or streets, as they wind through time?

Is it the animals, warmly moving,
or the birds, that suddenly rise up?

Who lives it, then? God, are you the one
who is living life?

***

You are the future,
the red sky before sunrise
over the fields of time.

You are the deep innerness of all things,
the last word that can never be spoken.
To each of us you reveal yourself differently:
to the ship as coastline, to the shore as a ship.

***

All will come again into its strength...

***

My words will be sweet to hear.
My people will drink them in like wine
and not get drunk.

So my voice becomes both a breath and a shout.
One prepares the way, the other
surrounds my loneliness with angels.

***

Like breezes through leaves
was their whispering to each other.

***

I thank you, deep power
that works me ever more lightly
in ways I can't make out.
The day's labor grows simple now,
and like a holy face
held in my dark hands.


Profile Image for ZOË.
228 reviews193 followers
February 27, 2023
4.5 Such a stunning collection, truly something everyone should have in their library!!

“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror
Just keep going, no feeling is final”

Life changing to say the least. Get yourself a copy.
Profile Image for prashant.
154 reviews252 followers
September 10, 2021
i’m agnostic but this shit was beautiful
“let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. just keep going. no feeling is final”
Profile Image for Stephen Roach.
10 reviews34 followers
October 12, 2014
This is one of those works that bears a seed of eternity within it. I keep coming back to these poems again and again and each time I am moved beyond myself. my perspective on what it means to relate to God and the world we live in widens over and again.
Profile Image for Mesoscope.
554 reviews261 followers
October 3, 2015
Note: Goodreads appears to group reviews for different translations of the same work. My review is for "The Book of hours: Prayers to a Lowly God," translated by Annemarie S. Kidder, Northwestern University Press.


My experience of Rilke is that most translations fall somewhere between "not very good" and "extremely awful." I have to say, even with low expectations, this book is disappointing. It's poorly translated and contains glaring typographical errors.

Kidder follows the rhyme scheme often but not always. Consider this baffling choice: "Du Dunkelheit, aus der ich stamme / ich liebe dich mehr als die Flamme" is rendered as "You darkness whence I came, / I love you more than the light."

What the huh? I'm no Shakespeare, but "Flamme" means "flame," not "light." And notice how it rhymes with "came" there? And, uh ... how there's a rhyme right there in the original ....

I'm left just wondering what the hell happened.

When she renders "...und ich weiß nicht wem / löst es die Seele los..." as "...without even knowing whose soul will be fed by it..." I ask, in all seriousness, does she even know German?

Joana Macy renders Rilke's "Ich liebe meines Wesens Dunkelstunde" as "I love the dark hours of my being." Kidder opts for "I love the hours when I'm blue, depressed." Wonderful lyrical sense she possesses. Such music.

I actually purchased this book for the German, not the translations, but the situation is not much better there. In the first line of a well-known and often-quoted poem from this collection, on the very first page, the book has "Ich lebe mein Leben ich wachsenden Ringen," instead of "Ich lebe mein Leben in wachsenden Ringen." This error is roughly on the order of "To boy or not to be."

A few pages later we get "Nachbarschft." Have you no copy editors, Northwestern University Press?

This book is an embarrassment.
Profile Image for rahul.
105 reviews268 followers
January 9, 2017
How surely gravity’s law,
strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of even the strongest thing
and pulls it toward the heart of the world.

Each thing-
each stone, blossom, child –
is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance,
push out beyond what we belong to
for some empty freedom.

If we surrendered
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.

Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.

So, like children, we begin again
to learn from the things,
because they are in God’s heart;
they have never left him.

This is what the things teach us:
to fall,
patiently trusting our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.

-Rainer Maria Rilke
Profile Image for Mir.
4,892 reviews5,194 followers
December 10, 2008

Du, Nachbar Gott, wenn ich dich manchesmal

You, God, who live next door–

If at times, through the long night, I trouble you
with my urgent knocking–
this is why: I hear you breathe so seldom.
I know you’re all alone in that room.
If you should be thirsty, there’s no one
to get you a glass of water.
I wait listening, always. Just give me a sign!
I’m right here.

As it happens, the wall between us
is very thin. Why couldn’t a cry
from one of us
break it down? It would crumble
easily,

it would barely make a sound.



This is perhaps not the best translation, but it is accessible and the edition affordable
Profile Image for ايمان.
237 reviews2,053 followers
May 21, 2013
مبدع ريلكه توليفة رائعة من الرومانسية و الانطباعية أحيانا أجد شيء من السريالية..اقرأ دون أحكام مسبقة فقط دع ريلكه يقودك لما يريده.
Profile Image for Jennifer Hughes.
856 reviews35 followers
January 25, 2018
I put this on my Christmas wish list, and then promptly ordered it for myself Christmas afternoon when I did not find it under the tree! :D Over the last month, I have been savoring this incredible book.

In "Book of Hours: Love Poems to God," Rilke explores our relationship to the divine in exquisite, must-read poetry. As I read, many of the poems resonated with me on a cellular level. Some feel sacred as scripture. This book is such a treasure.

The translators have been thorough and really transparent editors, with each poem's original (in German) appearing on the left with the translation on the right. A detailed explanation in the preface, a summary of Rilke's life story and what was happening as he wrote these poems, and end notes with comments on the individual poems makes this an excellent resource. I only wish I could read the originals in German to really enhance my understanding and appreciation.

In many poems, Rilke persists in seeking God even when he can't feel Him near:
I.2
I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower
I've been circling for thousands of years
and I still don't know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?

I.25
I love you, gentlest of Ways,
who ripened us as we wrestled with you.

You, the great homesickness we could never shake off,
you the forest that always surrounded us,

you, the song we sang in every silence,
you dark net threading through us.

You began yourself so greatly
on that day when you began us--
and we have so ripened in your sunlight,
spreading far and firmly planted--
that now in all people, angels, madonnas,
you can decide: the work is done.

Let your hand rest on the rim of Heaven now
and mutely bear the darkness we bring over you.


As Rilke seeks the divine, he encounters fear and despair. This poem is a painful snapshot of a raw, visceral moment (which I first heard in connection with the feelings someone had going through cancer treatment, and it seemed so appropriate in that context):
I.23
I'm slipping. I'm slipping away
like sand

slipping through fingers. All
my cells

are open, and all
so thirsty. I ache and swell

in a hundred places, but mostly
in the middle of my heart.

I want to die. Leave me alone.
I feel I am almost there--

where the great terror
can dismember me.


And then a poem that seems to be from the perspective of God, gently responding:
I.19
I am, you anxious one.

Don't you sense me, ready to break
into being at your touch?
My murmurings surround you like shadowy wings.
Can't you see me standing before you
cloaked in stillness?
Hasn't my longing ripened in you from the beginning
as fruit ripens on a branch?

I am the dream you are dreaming.
When you want to awaken, I am that wanting.
I grow strong in the beauty you behold.
And with the silence of stars I enfold
your cities made by time.


To Rilke, God is in the dark and the light, in nature and the earth; simultaneously, perhaps, a real being as well as someone who is only real because mankind creates Him. The paradoxes are fascinating. I keep ruminating on them and some of Rilke's startling and refreshing images.

My review can't do this beautiful work justice. I highly recommend a study of Rilke's Book of Hours both to those who seek to "ripen" (as Rilke would say) their walk with God as well as those ambivalent about spirituality but who just love a beautiful poem. You'll be amply rewarded for your time spent reading.
Profile Image for Badia.
27 reviews2 followers
Read
June 25, 2023
Very spiritual. Rilke has created a unique language in which to address our God.
In this poetry collection he thought how to find God in us and how to find yourself in God.
I was a bit intimated before trying Rilke's poetry and I was surprised to find it so accessible.
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