☰

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Reading Rilke: Reflections on the Problems of Translation

Please be aware orders placed now may not arrive in time for Christmas, please check delivery times.

Reading Rilke: Reflections on the Problems of Translation

The greatly admired essayist, novelist, and philosopher, author of Cartesian Sonata, Finding a Form, and The Tunnel, reflects on the art of translation and on Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies -- and gives us his own translation of Rilke's masterwork.

After nearly a lifetime of reading Rilke in English, William Gass undertook the task of translating Rilke's writing in order to see if he could, in that way, get closer to the work he so deeply admired. With Gass's own background in philosophy, it seemed natural to begin with the Duino Elegies, the poems in which Rilke's ideas are most fully expressed and which as a group are important not only as one of the supreme poetic achievements of the West but also because of the way in which they came to be written -- in a storm of inspiration.

Gass examines the genesis of the ideas that inform the Elegies and discusses previous translations. He writes, as well, about Rilke the man: his character, his relationships, his life.
Finally, his extraordinary translation of the Duino Elegies offers us the experience of reading Rilke with a new and fuller understanding.
Country USA
Brand Knopf
Manufacturer Knopf
Binding Hardcover
ReleaseDate 1999-09-07
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780375403125

You might also like...

At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails with Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Others

At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails with Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Others

Life Sentences: Literary Judgments and Accounts

Life Sentences: Literary Judgments and Accounts

The Whole Harmonium: The Life of Wallace Stevens

The Whole Harmonium: The Life of Wallace Stevens

Finding a Form: Essays

Finding a Form: Essays

The Tunnel