Intensely readable, yet he has not simplified the ideas.” -Stephen Spender, The New York Review of Books “Mitchell’s translation of the Duino Elegies–Rilke’s masterpiece–is the best that has been made. Mitchell’s versions more clearly than in any others. Rilke’s voice, with its extraordinary combination of formality, power, speed and lightness, can be heard in Mr. “Stephen Mitchell’s translations bring the qualities that I most cherish in the originals into English with new intimacy and authority. It is as faithful to the original as the translation of poetry can hope to be, faithful not only to its linguistic meaning but to its poetic expressiveness.” -Erich Heller, Poetry

This is, without any doubt, the best English rendering of Rilke. In accomplishing this most impressive ‘imaging’ in English, Stephen Mitchell proves his mastery of the art of translation. “Rilke almost always converts the energies of thought into telling images. “Perhaps the most beautiful group of poetic translations century has produced.” - The Chicago Tribune

“An undisputed masterpiece by one of the greatest modern poets, translated here by a master of translation.” - Village Voice Literary Supplement “Stephen Mitchell’s translations are masterful re-creations of the original, giving both precise renderings of Rilke’s language and sensitive interpretations of his poetic intent.” - Library Journal This is a beautifully designed, elegant and spacious volume, and it is splendidly annotated.” -Michael Hofmann, The New York Times Book Review

Mitchell’s versions actually enhance the original. Mitchell brought to his earlier book he also brings to this one – an eye for a strong line a sympathetic tact that allows him to supply a word from what is only suggested or to swell one of Rilke’s almost subliminal, one-word metaphors into a whole English phrase the ability to reproduce the tone of common speech in Rilke a knack for ingeniously simple versions of certain crucial Rilkean terms and the use of off-rhymes to solve the formal problems of translating these “conjugated” sonnets. Mitchell’s version, the ideal poetics and the perfect translator.” -William Arrowsmith No doubt about it, Rilke has at last found, in Mr. “Stephen Mitchell’s translation of Rilke’s most demandingly difficult and loveliest work instantly makes every other rendering obsolete.

Duino elegies translation