Rainer Maria Rilke was born René Karl Wilhelm Johann Joseph Maria Rilke in Prague, as the son of Josef Rilke, a railway official and the former Sophie Entz, the daughter of a bank official with the title of Imperial Counsellor. A crucial fact in Rilke's life was that his mother called him Sophia and forced him to wear girl's clothes until he was aged five - thus compensating for the earlier loss of a baby daughter. However, his father gave him toy soldiers and dumbbells for exercise. Later Rilke blamed his mother for his dark childhood, but she also encouraged him to read and write poetry. Rilke also learned early many of Schiller's ballads by heart.
After Rilke's parents separated, his father sent him to military school at age 9 where he was miserable. He remained at St. Polten and Mahrisch-Weisskirchenn until 1891 and then entered business school in Linz. He also worked in his uncle's law firm. Rilke continued his studies at the universities of Prague, Munich and Berlin.
At the age of 19, Rilke made his debut in poetry with "Leben und Lieder." He met Lou Salome, a Russian revolutionary and a student of Nietzche, in Munich. The older woman deeply influenced Rilke. He wrote of her: "... I felt at first so confused I could scarcely separate my impressions, and thought I was drowning in the breaking waves of some foreign splendor." However, Salome refused Rilke's marriage proposals.
In 1899, Rilke traveled in Russian and was deeply impressed by what he learned of Russian mysticism. It was during this period that he began writing "The Book of Hours: The Book of Monastic Life," which appeared in 1905. Rilke joined an artists' colony at
Worpswede in 1903.
In 1901 Rilke married Klara Westhoff, one of Auguste Rodin's pupils. They had a daughter, Ruth. She was born seven months after the marriage, which lasted only one year. They were never legally divorced. Rilke once stated of marriage: "A good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude, and shows him this confidence, the greatest in his powers to bestow." Rilke's affairs with women followed a pattern: after falling in love, he wrote letters filled with passion but when he started to think that the women had come too near to him, he withdrew from the relationship. "Never forget that solitude is my lot," Rilke once explained in a letter. "I implore those who love me to love my solitude."
"The Book of Hours" expressed Rilke's deep spiritual yearning. Between 1905 and 1906, Rilke settled in Paris to write a book about the artist Rodin. It was during this time that he came up with the idea of the "thing-poem" based on Rodin's painting.
This was an attempt to describe with utmost clarity physical objects, the "silence of their concentrated reality." He became famous with such works as "Duineser Elegien" and "Die Sonette." During his Paris years Rilke developed a new style of lyrical poetry. "Der Panther," in which the psychological distinction between the observer and observation melts together.
In the Spring of 1906 the overworked poet left Rodin abruptly. He wrote "The Tale of the Love and Death of Cornet Christopher Rilke," which was successful and popular. Rilke also wrote a notebook called "Die Aufzechnungen Des Malte Laurids Brigge" in 1910, which became his most-popular prose work. After that, feeling empty, Rilke kept silent for 12 years before writing "Duino Elegies" and "Sonnets to Orpheus," which concerned terror and bliss and the unity of death and life.
In 1913, Rilke returned to Paris but was forced to go back to German because of WWI. He served in the Austrian army and found a patron in Werner Reinhart. After 1919 Rilke lived in Switzerland. Rilke's companion during those last years was the artist Baladine (Elisabeth Dorothea Spiro).
Rilke died Dec. 29, 1926.
He had suffered from leukemia and spent much time at the Val-Mont sanatorium, but he died of an infection.
