Rainer Maria Rilke *0001



Born in Prague, in the Kingdom of Bohemia, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was mainly active in Germany and died in Switzerland. His full name was “René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke.” It sounds like one of those absurdly long, tongue-twisting names no one could possibly remember. With a name this long, there can’t possibly be another person on Earth with the same one. When his older sister Maria died at an early age, his mother, yearning for her daughter, shoved ‘Maria’ into Rilke’s name even though he was a boy.

He fell head over heels for Lou Salomé, a Russian-born writer and psychoanalyst who was fourteen years older than him, and followed her around like a little duckling. Most likely a case of maternal love deficiency. Even when Lou Salomé entered a marriage that was marriage in name only, he went so far as to visit her home and begged to live with her—a pure-hearted romantic? A stalker? Mentally unstable? It’s said that Salomé was the one who told him to use the name “Rainer Maria Rilke.” She must have found him frustrating and pitiful, in a sad kind of way.

The Rilke I encountered was an incredibly delicate and fragile soul, a magician of lyrical and beautiful language. Using archaic expressions—thus it was, it was thus, oh thee, thou hast—phrases that resembled old biblical verses, he embroidered lyrical sensibility with dignity. Having witnessed the horrors of World War I, he strove even more to sing of the purity and richness of the soul.

There is a rather bbuing-bbuing-like legend that he died from a prick of a rose thorn, but that’s unfounded nonsense. He died at the age of 51 from oral ulcers, stomach pain, and leukemia.



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