The Fountain of Joy
A Line-by-Line Commentary on Rilke’s
Duino Elegies
A. S. Kline © 2009 All Rights Reserved
This work may be freely reproduced, stored,
and transmitted, electronically or otherwise, for any non-commercial purpose.
This commentary, the Duino
Elegies, and other poems of Rilke can be browsed and
downloaded from the Poetry In
Translation website here,
Contents
Introduction.
3
The First Elegy.
7
The
Second Elegy.
22
The
Third Elegy.
29
The
Fourth Elegy.
36
The Fifth Elegy.
45
The Sixth Elegy.
54
The Seventh Elegy.
58
The Eighth Elegy.
65
The Ninth Elegy.
71
The Tenth Elegy.
80
Notes.
86
An Elegy is a song of lamentation, often written in an elegiac metre,
especially a lament for the dead, though the term is often vaguely used of
other poetry. Rilke began his Duino
Elegies at Schloss Duino near
Trieste (on a rocky Adriatic headland, north-west of
the city) where he stayed as a guest in the winter of 1911/12, and completed
them in early February 1922 at the Chateau de Muzot (pronounced Muzotte)
near Sierre in Switzerland (south of Berne, and east of Montreux).
His Sonnets to Orpheus were completed contemporaneously, as a complementary
work, a song of pra