Rainer Maria Rilke

Biography

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) is considered one of the great poets of the twentieth century. His two most famous verse sequences are the Sonnets to Orpheus and the Duino Elegies; his two most famous prose works are Letters to a Young Poet and the semi-autobiographical The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge.

See Work

POETRY / Autumn 1982

Christ’s Descent Into Hell

By Rainer Maria Rilke ,  Translation by Franz Wright

When it was too much, he went out
of the body’s unspeakable suffering. Rose. Stepped away.