Spanning the void, and that great gray blind lake Blood welled upĪmong the roots, on its way to the world of men,Īnd in the dark it looked as hard as stone.Īnd forests made of mist. Mitchell has brought off with seeming effortlessness. Few translators of any poet have arrived at the delicate balance of fidelity and originality that Mr. Mitchell is impeccable in his adherence to Rilke’s text, to his formal music, and to the complexity of his thought at the same time, his work has authority and power as poetry in its own right. In Stephen Mitchell’s versions, many readers feel that they have discovered an English rendering that captures the lyric intensity, fluency, and reach of Rilke’s poetry more accurately and convincingly than has ever been done before. His poems of ecstatic identification with the world exert a seemingly endless fascination for contemporary readers. Rilke is unquestionably the most significant and compelling poet of romantic transformation, of spiritual quest, that the twentieth century has known. The influence and popularity of Rilke’s poetry in America have never been greater than they are today, more than fifty years after his death. Winner of the 1984 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets
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