Rilke was born in Prague as the son of Josef Rilke, a railway official and the former Sophie Entz. A crucial fact in Rilke's life was that his mother called him Sophia and took up the attitude that he was a girl until he was aged five. Rilke's militarily inclined father sent him at ten to the Lower and then Higher Schools of St. Polten and Mahrisch-Weisskirchenn. He suffered at the military academy, and was sent to a business school in Linz. Rilke continued hsi studies at the universities of Prague, Munich, and Berlin.

As poet Rilke made his debut at the age of nineteen with LEBEN UND LIEDER (1894). He met in Munich the Russian intellectual Lou Andreas-Salome and travelled with her in Russia in 1899 and 1900, meeting among others Leo Tolstoy. He spent some time in Italy, Sweden and Danmark, and joined an artists' colony at Worpswede in 1903.

In 1901 Rilke married the young sculptress, Klara Westoff, with whom he had a daughter, Ruth. The marriage lasted only one year. Rilke settled in Paris to write a book about sculptor Auguste Rodin and to work for his secretary (1905-06). Overworked poet left Rodin abruptly in the Spring of 1906. He revised DAS BUCH DER BILDER and published it in an enlarged edition. He also published The Tale of the Love and Death of Cornet Christopher Rilke, which became great popular success.

During his Paris years Rilke developed a new style of lyrical poetry and published NEUE GEDIGHTE in 1907-08 and a notebook named DIE AUFZECHNUNGEN DES MALTE LAURIDS BRIGGE in 1910.

Rilke kept silence for twelwe years before writing Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus. On 1910-1912 Rilke was for some time the guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis-Hohenlohe at Duino, her castle near Trieste. He returned to Paris in 1913 but was forced to return to Germany because of the First World War. Her served in the Austrian army and found then another patron, Werner Reinhart, who owned the Castle Muzot at Valais. After 1919 he lived in Switzerland, where he died on December 29, in 1926, from blood poisoning which developed from a prick of a rose thorn.

Important part of Rilke´s writings are also his letters (to Marina Tsvetaeva, Auguste Rodin, André Gide, H.v.Hofmannstahl, B.Pasternak, Stefan Zweig etc.), which have been published posthumously in different collections.

For further reading: Rainer Maria Rilke by Patricia Brodsky (1988); Rainer Maria Rilke by Siegfried Mandel (1965); Rilke: Man and Poet by N. Purtscher (1972); Rainer Maria Rilke by R.H. Wood (1970); Rainer Maria Rilke by H.F. Peters (1960)

Duineser Elegien (1923) - Rilke visited his friend Princess Marie von Thurnun Taxis in 1910 at Duino, her remote castle on the coast of the Adriatic, and returned again next year. There he fell under a kind of spell, and finally in 1922 completed in a chateau in Muzot, Switzerland, the book which was published under the title Duineser Elegien (Duino Elegies). In the philosophical poems Rilke meditated on time and eternity, life and death, art versus ordinary things. The tone was melancholic. Rilke believed in the coexistence of the material and spiritual realms, but human being were for him only spectators of life, grasping its beauties momentarily only to losen them again and again. The work influenced deeply such poets as W.H. Auden, who had Rilkean angels appear in the collection In Times of War (1939), Sidney Keyes, Stephen Spender, Robert Bly, W.S. Merwin and John Ashbery.

Selected works:

• LEBEN UND LIEDER, 1894 - LIFE AND SONGS
• WEGWARTEN, 1895
• LARENOPFER, 1896
• JETZ UND IN DER STUNDE UNSERES ABSTERBENS, 1896
• TRAUMGEKRÖNT, 1897 - CROWNED BY DREAMS
• IM FRÜHFRORST, 1897
• ADVENT, 1898
• OHNE GEGENWART, 1898
• AM LEBEN HIN, 1898
• MIR ZUR FREIER, 1899
• ZWEI PRAGER GESCHICHTEN, 1899
• GESCHICHTEN VOM LIEBEN GOTT, 1900
• DAS BUCH DER BILDER, 1902
• DIE LETZEN, 1902
• DAS TÄGLICHE LEBEN, 1902
• WORPSWEDE, 1903
• AUGUSTE RODIN, 1903-1913
• GESCHICHTEN VOM LIEBEN GOTT, 1904 - STORIES OF GOD
• DAS STUNDEN-BUCH, 1905 - THE BOOK OF HOURS
• DIE WEISE VON LIEBE UND TOD DES CORNETS CHRISTOPH RILKE, 1906 - THE TALE OF THE LOVE AND THE DEATH OF CORNET CHRISTOPHER RILKE
• NEUE GEDICHTE, 1907 - NEW POEMS
• DIE NEUEN GEDICHTE, 1908
• DIE FRÜHEN GEDICHTE, 1909
• REQUIEM, 1909
• DIE AUFZEICHNUNGEN DES MALTE LAURIDS BRIGGE,1910 - THE NOTEBOOK OF MALTE LAURIDS BRIGGE
• DAS MARIEN LEBEN,1913 - THE LIFE OF THE VIRGIN MARY
• DIE SONETTE AN ORPHEUS,1923 - SONNETS TO ORPHEUS
• VERGERS SUIVI DES QUATRAINS VALAISANS, 1926
• LES FENÊTRES, 1927
• LES ROSES, 1927
• ERZÄHLUNGEN UND SKIZZEN AUS DER FRÜHZEIT. 1928
• EWALD TRAGY, 1929
• VERSE UND PROSA AUS DEM NACHLASS, 1929
• BRIEFE UND TAGEBÜCHER AUS DER FRÜHZEIT, 1931
• ÜBER GOTT, ZWEI BRIEFE, 1933
• SPÄTE GEDICHTE, 1934
• Fifty Selected Poems, 1940
• GEDICHTE 1909-26, 1953
• Selected Works, 1954 (2 vols.)
• Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1969 (2 vols.)
• Nine Plays, 1979
• An Unofficial Rilke, 1981
• Orchards, 1982
• Complete French Poems, 1986