PENGUIN CLASSICS

THE NOTEBOOKS OF MALTE LAURIDS BRIGGE

RAINER MARIA RILKE, born in Prague in 1875, was one of the twentieth century's greatest poets. After a precocious start with decorative Art Nouveau verse, he found a hallmark voice of his own in The Book of Images (1902) and The Book of Hours (1905), and in the two volumes of New Poems (1907/8) produced a first undisputed masterpiece. Always closely involved with the visual arts, he wrote illuminatingly on Cézanne, Rodin and the artists of the Worpswede colony, one of whom, the sculptor Clara Westhoff, he married. In 1910 he published his one novel, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Rarely in any one place for long, Rilke travelled constantly throughout Europe, and was fortunate in attracting patronage. Before the First World War he began his greatest work, the Duino Elegies, which he completed, together with the entire cycle of Sonnets to Orpheus, in early 1922. He died in Switzerland in 1926.

MICHAEL HULSE has won numerous awards for his poetry, edited a literature classics series and literary quarterlies, and scripted documentaries for television. Among the many books he has translated are titles by W. G. Sebald and Elfriede Jelinek and, for Penguin, Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther (1989) and Jakob Wassermann's Caspar Hauser (1992).