Product Description

Now substantially revised by Edward Snow, whom Denise Levertov once called "far and away Rilke's best translator," this bilingual edition of The Book of Images contains a number of the great poet's previously untranslated pieces. Also included are several of Rilke's best-loved lyrics, such as "Autumn," "Childhood," "Lament," "Evening," and "Entrance."

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #76586 in Books
• Published on: 1994-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 280 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780865474772
• BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
• Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

From Library Journal
Not quite literal and not quite poetry, these translations arrive on the heels of Snow's version of Rilke's New Poems: The Other Part (1908; LJ 9/1/87). Snow's assertion that Rilke's output needs to be read in the sequences assembled in his lifetime justifies this project, the first complete edition in English, but it begs to be superseded. M.D. Herder Norton, who did not venture the complete Book of Images , remains the most welcoming of Rilke's career translators, while Robert Bly's adaptations are more magical. Snow is most successful in matching the tension in Rilke's poetic line and his calculatedly awkward vocabulary. One finishes this book with the appropriate breathless, disoriented sensation of having read a lot of Rilke. Though "images" were still important at this stage in his development (1902-06), this is already the poet who hears "words which mean nothing certain/ and yet go, go inside the ear, keep going/ into the brain and secretly on the nerve-branches/ through every limb try out leap after leap."-- Rob Schmieder, Boston
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"Edward Snow, who so insightfully translated two volumes of Rilke's New Poems, has now turned to The Book of Images, one of the poet's most startling and diverse masterworks. Snow has rendered with great skill and accuracy a work both familiar and unknown, more complicated and more immediate than many have suspected, at once grave, mysterious, and beautiful." -- Edward Hirsch

"How much setting straight Edward Snow's new translation of The Book of Images accomplishes! With these sorrowing and luminous poems to lead up to Snow's two volumes of the New Poems, it is possible to gain, for the first time in English, a consistent perspective of Rilke's difficult canon, here restored and disclosed to stunning effect." -- Richard Howard

"Snow, who so insightfully translated the two volumes of Rilke's New Poems, has now turned to The Book of Images, one of the poet's most startling and diverse masterworks. Snow has rendered with great skill and accuracy a work both familiar and unknown, more complicated and more immediate than many have suspected, at once grave, mysterious, and beautiful."--Edward Hirsch

"How much setting straight Snow's new translation of The Book of Images accomplishes! With these sorrowing and luminous poems to lead up to Snow's two volumes of the New Poems, it is possible to gain, for the first time in English, a consistent perspective of Rilke's difficult canon, here restored and disclosed to stunning effect."--Richard Howard
-- Review

About Fountains
The Angels
Annunciation
Apprehension
The Ashanti
Autumn
Autumn Day
The Blind Woman
The Bride
Charles The Twelfth Of Sweden Rides In The Ukraine
Childhood
Closing Piece
The Confirmed
End Of Autumn
Entrance
Evening
Evening In Skane
Fragments From Lost Days
From A Childhood
From A Stormy Night: 1
From A Stormy Night: 2
From A Stormy Night: 3
From A Stormy Night: 4
From A Stormy Night: 5
From A Stormy Night: 6
From A Stormy Night: 7
From A Stormy Night: 8
From A Stormy Night: Title Leaf
From An April
Girl's Melancholy
Girls
The Guardian Angel
He Boy
Human Beings At Night
In The Certosa
Initial
Initial
Lament
The Last Judgment
The Last Of His Line
The Last Supper
Madness
The Man Reading
The Man Watching
Martyrs
Memory
Music
The Neighbor
On The Edge Of Night
Pont Du Carrousel
Prayer
Presentiment
Progress
Requiem
The Saint
The Silence
The Singer Sings Before A Child Of Princes
Solemn Hour
The Solitary
Solitude
The Son
The Song Of The Statue
Storm
Strophes
Those Of The House Of Colonna
The Three Holy Kings
To Say Before Going To Sleep
The Tsars: 1
The Tsars: 2
The Tsars: 3
The Tsars: 4
The Tsars: 5
The Tsars: 6
Two Poems To Hans Thomas On His Sixtieth Birthday
The Voices: The Song Of The Beggar
The Voices: The Song Of The Blind Man
The Voices: The Song Of The Drunkard
The Voices: The Song Of The Dwarf
The Voices: The Song Of The Idiot
The Voices: The Song Of The Leper
The Voices: The Song Of The Orphan Girl
The Voices: The Song Of The Suicide
The Voices: The Song Of The Widow
The Voices: Title Leaf
Woman In Love
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

Review

Customer Reviews

A superb translation of 'Das Buch der Bilder'!
Rilke is that poet that you, if you are tormented by memories of high-school poetry lessons past (dactylic metre sound vaguely familiar?), ought try. His imagery is accessible, his meaning clear...and he manages simultaneously a beautiful degree of both spiritual and metaphorical richness.

Snow's translations of Rilke's poetry are superb; he consistently preserves the metric structure and is also conscious of the need to employ every word and consider every nuance of meaning, rather than simply settling for glossing it (a surprisingly common problem in poetry translation). In the challenging world of finding faithful poetry translation, Snow's work is outstanding...and the original material to my sense of literary aesthetics unsurpassed...little of Rilke's beauty is sacrificed in the execution of this translation. Rilke's simultaneous spareness, sensitivity, and richness endure here; rather than imposing himself upon the reader, Snow succeeds admirably at the translator's task, and brings Rilke to the English-speaking audience.

A marvelous translation of Rilke
Edward Snow has captured the essential grace of Rilke's poetry without sacrificing faithfulness to the original text. In this book of wonderful and exquisite poems, the lyric genius of Rilke comes through; Snow's own poetic sensibility is also clear. Some of my favorite Rilke poems (such as "Autumn" or "Memory") are rendered here in a way that perfectly suits their quiet, holy sense of both solitude and communion. Read it.

Poetry you don't have to be afraid of!
Rilke's Book of Images is a wonderful way to enter the world of poetry if you are hesitant because of bad memories of tough English courses in high school or college. Beautiful, powerful and accessible, you will love to sit down and get lost in the language and intensity of this work.