“The Long Experience of Love”: Exploring Rilke’s Duino Elegies

“The Long Experience of Love”: Exploring Rilke’s Duino Elegies Race Information

In 1922, Rainer Maria Rilke was poised to complete a cycle of elegies that he saw as the crown of his poetic outpouring. The first had come to him unexpectedly, in January, 1912, during a long stay at the Castle Duino on the Adriatic Sea. After a long interruption, he completed them a decade later in February of 1922. They were, he later suggested, “the kind of speech there where silence reigns,” and where poetic language invites us to embrace what he described as “those gentle, mysterious, trembling transformations” that might give shape to “a serener future” than the anguish of the war years had allowed. Here, too, he writes of “the long experience of love,” insisting that we must be more than mere “spectators” to this life but open ourselves to the singularity of its gift—or what he called the “here-and-now-ness” of the world. The course focuses primarily on these ten elegies, drawing on a new translation by the instructor (in draft form; to be published later in 2026). Open to all—beginners and seasoned readers of Rilke alike.