The Complete French Poems

A brand new paperback copy of all Rilke's poems written in French with English translations. After a lot of searching, I found the right bargain.

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Rilke's French Poems suffice if you are a Rilke admirer and are craving more Rilke knowing that nothing he wrote will match The Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus. Like his other poems, they are a definite step down, partially mundane, yet with flashes of mystical insight that spur me to read on.Very good introduction that speaks to some of the translation issues. The original French is fortunately on the left side of the page and makes for a nice contrast. I don't read French, but I know enough about Indo-European langauges to roughly sound it out, and there are beautiful rhymes galore. In fact, it appears that nearly all of the French rhymes, whereas hardly any English does. Yet knowing that they rhyme in French adds a little more sparkle to the English.French was Rilke's second language, and as he was not as proficient as in German, something is sacrificed. I recall in the introduction, which makes sense, that writing poems in French were comparable to Rilke starting over and therefore echo his early German poems.The Rose Poems stand out, breathtaking on account of their consistent return to the word and image of the rose, as do some other short poems conveying meditations on a certain thing, such as a window. The dedications and fragments at the end, which wonderfully complete the addition, do not add much noteworthy.I wish that I read French, and would recommend these poems to anyone who does, or is learning. For those not acquanited with Rilke's other works, there are better places to start. For those familiar with his earlier works, this is comparable and the definitive French collection to have.Support local bookstores if you can.

I first read this book when I was eighteen years old, a starving Bohemian (more or less), and at a crossroads in my life.Years later, I still turn to it, and it sits on my bookshelf, in front of me as I write this review.If you thought you knew roses before - you may find out, after reading Rilke's French poetry - that you haven't known roses at all. One poem in particular that has followed me through the years has the words: "By sheer dint of prayer, I knew bread."By sheer dint of this book of verse, you may know roses.

Exquisite translations by A. Poulin. A lovely bilingual edition with Poulin's enlightening introduction.

In the last two years of his life, following the Duino Elegies and the Orpheus sonnets, Rilke wrote well over 300 poems in French. They are 'occasional' verse, sometimes no more than exercises, with arbitrary rhymes and scansion. Even so they are full of imagination and a kind of happiness of observation. I find them delightful, and the translator A Poulin Jr, generally captures the spirit of them accurately and felicitously. It is quite a bargain, worth it for the Valaison Quatrains alone - and those merely take pages 104-137 of 383 pages. Full French text with translations on facing pages, useful intro, good paper well printed. Go for it!P.S. The Valaison sequence is also available as a small hardback from Starborn Books, facing page translations by Peter Oram, not on the whole as good as Poulin, but an attractive alternative.