NEUE GEDICHTE / NEW POEMS RAINER MARIA RILKE was born in Prague in 1875. Following an unhappy period spent at military academies he studied a variety of subjects at the universities of Prague, Munich and Berlin. It was in Munich that he met Lou Andreas-Salomé, with whom he travelled to Russia in 1899 and 1900. In 1901 he married Clara Westhoff, briefly a student of Auguste Rodin. Rilke himself became Rodin’s secretary, installed at the Villa des Brillants at Meudon near Paris, and he published two monographs on the sculptor, in 1903 and 1907. A number of major works belong to Rilke’s years in Paris, including Parts I and II of the New Poems and the experimental novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, 1910. For much of his life Rilke led a nomadic existence, travelling widely and often supported by the hospitality of friends and patrons. Towards the end of his life he settled at the Château de Muzot in the Swiss Valais, where in 1923, in a whirlwind of creativity, he completed the Duino Elegies as well as the Sonnets to Orpheus. The Elegies were first inspired by a visit to Castle Duino on the Adriatic, while the Sonnets are dedicated to the memory of a young dancer, the daughter of friends. Rilke died at Valmont in the last days of 1926. STEPHEN COHN is a sculptor, painter and printmaker. His translations of Rilke for Carcanet include the Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus with Letters to a Young Poet.