Rilke Rayner

Rainer Maria Rilke was an Austrian poet-philosopher; he spent almost his entire life traveling through Russia and European countries. From a philosophical point of view, Rilke’s significance lies in the fact that in his poetic works he was the first to express all those ideas that were later advanced by Heidegger and Jaspers. Rilke is an existentialist poet. His main themes are: God in the making, the imminent eternity, the future, “the ripe fruit of that tree on which we are only leaves”; death, “growing and ripening together with us,” belonging to the sphere of individual life and giving that life its dignity; the tasks of the human being, which consist in creating an “invisible earth” — imparting to the things with which we deal in everyday life their inherent meaning through loving treatment of them and thus raising them into the sphere of the valuable, the spiritual; only what is still forming, unfinished, possesses life; everything completed “sinks into eternity”; the nobler something is, the weaker it is, the more strongly it is threatened with destruction through technology.

Rainer Maria Rilke was born on December 4, 1875, in Prague, into the family of railway official Josef Rilke and Sophie Rilke (née Entz). He was the first son in the family; later a brother was born. At birth he was given the name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke.

1882—1887 Studies at elementary school in Prague.

1884 Parents divorce; the son remains living with his father. Rilke’s first childhood poems.

1886—1891 Studies at the cadet school and higher real military school.

1891—1892 From September to May, studies at a commercial school (the Commercial Academy in Linz).

1892—1895 Completes secondary education, takes the final examinations in Prague. Writes his first stories, including Pierre Dumont (1894). The first poetry collection, Life and Songs, is published (1894).

1896 Studies at Prague University, first in the faculty of philosophy, then in law. The poetry collection Offerings to the Lares is published.

1897 — first trip to Italy (Arco,