The Lay of the Love and Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke, though written in the course of one night in 1899, was first published in 1906. It was republished in 1912, and became a huge hit, selling out within weeks. It eventually sold well over a million copies. So while not his greatest work, it is his most popular. This prose poem follows eighteen year-old Christoph Rilke on his trip from Germany to Hungary, to fight against the Turks in 1663.
| LoC Classification |
PT2635.I65 .W42 1948 |
| LoC Control Number |
49027893 |
| Nationality |
German |
| Pub Place |
London |
| Dust Jacket |
dj |
| No. of Pages |
81 |
| Height x Width |
7.9
inch |
|
|
|
|
Rainier Maria RILKE born, Prague, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary, 4 Dec 1875: Austro-German poet who became internationally famous with such works as Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus. ~~ At the outbreak of war in 1914, Rilke was in Munich, where he decided to remain, spending most of the war there. Early in the war he wrote a series of patriotic poems which he later renounced. In December 1915 he was called up for military service with the Austrian army at Vienna, but by June 1916 he had returned to civilian life. The social climate of these years proved inimical to his way of life and to his poetry and, by the time the war ended, he had come to feel almost completely paralyzed. He would have only one relatively productive phase: the fall of 1915, when, in addition to a series of new poems, he wrote the Fourth Duino Elegy. Rilke's Wartime Letters, 1914-1921 were published in 1940.
