by William Sibree (Translator), Rainer Maria Rilke (Author)

Rilke began writing the elegies in 1912 while a guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis (1855-1934) at Duino Castle, near Trieste on the Adriatic Sea. During the next ten years, the elegies languished incomplete for long stretches of time as Rilke suffered frequently from severe depression. Aside from brief episodes of writing in 1913 and 1915, Rilke did not return to the work until a few years after the war ended. With a sudden, renewed inspiration - writing at a frantic pace he described as "a savage creative storm" - he completed the collection in February 1922. After their publication and his death shortly thereafter, the Duino Elegies were quickly recognized by critics and scholars as Rilke's most important work.