“Rilke’s letter are long and full of rich language. . . . The letters reveal much about European intellectual life in the early 20th century. Highly recommended.”
—Library Journal
“An invaluable collection. . . . The letters reveal in both tender and insightful prose Rilke’s creative and mental insecurities, along with his enormous poetic talent and innovative thinking.”
—Booklist
“This collection of some two hundred letters, written over nearly three decades, enriches our picture of Rilke and Salomé with curious details: Rilke makes arrangements for Salomé’s beloved dog, in advance of a visit; Salomé, practicing in mid-life as a psychoanalyst, claims success treating patients with Rilke’s poems: ‘They heard your tone as that of Life.’”
—The New Yorker
“How fascinating it is to eavesdrop, as it were, on the conversations between a creative genius and his muse.”
—History Wire
“Mr. Snow continues his triumphant forced march through the overgrown territories of Rilke, ecstatic letters this time, actually revved a notch higher by the great Frau Lou. No prisoners are taken, the notes are ruthless, and for the first time truth prevails over truthiness, all is made clear.”
—Richard Howard
“For lovers of Rilke, whether as dedicated readers or professional critics or biographers, the name Lou Andreas-Salomé casts a magic spell. Available for many decades in Ernst Pfeiffer’s famous editions of 1952 and 1975, this monumental collection has finally appeared in a brilliant English translation by two important translators and scholars, Edward Snow and Michael Winkler. It is their second valuable work presenting Rilke in English, following their fine translation of Rilke’s Diaries of a Young Poet. The gracious language, along with its clarity and rich documentation, will go far towards making this painstaking work a must in every library dealing with Rilke and modern poetry.”
—Ralph Freedman, Princeton University
“This superb translation gives us both the long arc and the intense, edgy radiance of one of the most relentlessly searching correspondences in the history of poetry. At times almost a psychic collaboration, Rilke’s and Salome’s letters carry us and their authors into ever deeper realms of inwardness and astonishment, of terrifying isolation and ecstatic recoveries. Any reader of Rilke will want to keep this book as a radiant companion—itself a work of companionship—close beside (perhaps inside) the enduring freshness of the poems, seen here in the quick of genesis and of amazed reception.”
—Peter Sacks