TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE

I HAVE thought it best to group all the explanations which any
letters of Rilke necessarily involve, at the end of the book and
out of the way; indeed, no harm will be done if the ordinary
reader ignores them altogether, and enjoys the letters simply for
what they are. But the student will probably care to pursue
further some of the astonishing wealth of ideas which the poet
here raises.

The translation is designedly very literal, and the nature of
German prose is such that an English rendering which aims—as
this does—at close correspondence rather than happy paraphrase,
can hardly avoid displaying at times a certain stiffness in the.
joints ; but I have thought it right to reproduce Rilke’s oddities
of expression and punctuation, which are no less curious in the
original than they must seem here ; and never to succumb to the
temptation to write pretty-sounding English just because it is a
poet that speaks. Rilke is a master of the unlikely, but poetically
true, word ; and a cunning employer of alliteration, personifica-
tion, and hypallage.

The frontispiece portrait of Rilke is here reproduced by kind
permission of Frau M. Weininger, who took the snapshot at
Muzot, Switzerland, in 1925. The photographs of the poet
hitherto published in England have represented him in moods
varying from dogged seriousness to the profoundest dejection,
and I take pleasure in producing this evidence that Rilke knew
how to smile.

I wish to express my gratitude for the generous and scholarly
help afforded me by Dr Julian Hirsch, who has taught me much
German.

R. S.