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‘An Unofficial Rilke’ is Michael Hamburger’s choice from the many miscellaneous poems which Rilke wrote between 1912, when the’Duino Elegies’ began to take shape in his mind, and his death in 1926. From Rilke’s crisis and post-crisis years Michael Hamburger has translated poems in which Rilke confronted energies or realities that endangered his mastery, or those in which he ventured into territory that was new to him. Some of these poems will seem uncharacteristic to readers whose view of Rilke is based on his more official canon; Rilke’s failure to recognize their worth can only be understood in terms of his loss of faith and his sense of disorientation.

In his penetrating and sympathetic introduction Michael Hamburger describes the nature of Rilke’s personal and artistic crisis, explores the tensions and cross-currents of his later poetry, and argues persuasively for the revaluation of his miscellaneous poems. Michael Hamburger, poet and critic, is the leading translator of German poetry.

René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926), known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was an Austrian poet and novelist. Acclaimed as an idiosyncratic and expressive poet, he is widely recognized as a significant writer in the German language. His work is viewed by critics and scholars as possessing undertones of mysticism, exploring themes of subjective experience and disbelief. His writings include one novel, several collections of poetry, several volumes of correspondence and a few early novellas.

Rilke traveled extensively throughout Europe, finally settling in Switzerland, which provided the inspiration for many of his poems. While Rilke is best known for his contributions to German literature, he also wrote in French. Among English-language readers, his best-known works include two poetry collections: Duino Elegies (Duineser Elegien) and Sonnets to Orpheus (Die Sonette an Orpheus), a semi-autobiographical novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge), and a collection of ten letters published posthumously Letters to a Young Poet (Briefe an einen jungen Dichter). In the later 20th century, his work found new audiences in citations by self-help authors and frequent quotations in television shows, books and motion pictures.