In this blog post, I’ll summarize Rainer Maria Rilke’s life and literary journey, as well as the significance of his short story collection ‘Stories of a Beloved God’.
Rilke’s Life and Literature
Rainer Maria Rilke was born on December 4, 1875, in Prague. At the time, Prague was the capital of German Bohemia. His father, Josef Rilke, was a man of modest character who worked for a railroad company after completing his military service, while his mother, Sophia, came from a family of imperial councilors and had a tendency toward luxury and hedonism. Rilke loved his father’s simplicity and hated his mother’s frivolity. Due to these personality differences, his parents divorced in 1884, when Rilke was nine years old.
Rilke was born prematurely and had always been of frail constitution. In accordance with his father’s wishes, he entered the Army Cadet School in Sankt Pölten in 1886 at the age of 11, and in 1890, he advanced to the Military Academy in Merisch-Weißkirchen, but was expelled the following year. This was because the collective and uniform military education did not suit his personality. After leaving the military school, he enrolled in a commercial college in Linz but was expelled due to a romantic scandal; it was at this time that he began writing.
With the help of his uncle, he completed his high school curriculum through private tutoring and enrolled at Charles University in Prague in 1895, where he studied art history, literary history, history, and philosophy. In 1894, he published his first collection of poetry, ‘Life and Song’, which consisted of poems inspired by his romance with Valerie von David-Rönfeldt, the daughter of an Austrian officer. Valerie was older than Rilke and was an artistic and progressive figure; Rilke was captivated by her and dedicated many love poems to her, but later came to regard those poems with embarrassment and did not include them in any of his subsequent collections.
In September 1896, he moved to Munich and enrolled at the University of Munich, where he was first exposed to the atmosphere of a major city and the literary scene. There, he met Scholz and Wassermann and also forged connections with senior poets such as Detlef von Liliencron and Richard Dehmel. That same year, his second poetry collection, ‘Offerings to the Departed’, and the prose collection ‘Beekwarthen’ were published.
In May 1897, in Munich, Rilke met Lou Andreas-Salomé, who would have a profound influence on his life. Lou, who was once famous for her association with Nietzsche, revealed in her memoirs that she and Rilke had a passionate romantic relationship; even after the relationship ended, Lou remained Rilke’s spiritual friend for the rest of his life and served as a source of support for him.
Rilke’s two trips to Russia during his youth (in 1899 and 1900) fostered the distinctive development of his poetic world. On his first trip, he was accompanied by Lou and her husband, and on his second, by Lou Andreas-Salomé; on both occasions, he met Tolstoy. Amid Russia’s nature, customs, and people, he sensed the presence of God and broke free from the era of imitation to forge his own unique path.
Around this time, he published the poetry collection ‘For My Festival’ and the short story collection ‘Stories of My Beloved God’, and completed Part 1 of his devotional poetry collection, ‘The Book of Monastic Life’, based on his Russian experiences. ‘For My Festival’ marks the conclusion of his imitative period, which began with his Prague-themed poems, and reveals the poet’s fundamental emotions as they manifest in nature. Those emotions manifest as even more intense and distinctive leaps in ‘Book of Monastic Life’.
After returning from his trip to Russia, Rilke stayed in the North German artists’ colony of Wolfsbüde, where he met the painter Heinrich Vogel, the female painter Paula Becker, and the sculptor Clara Westhoff. In 1901, he married Clara Westhoff and started a new family in Westerwede, near Wolfswede.
Shortly after his marriage, he wrote the second volume of his city poetry collection, ‘Book of Pilgrimage’, and ‘Book of Images’. In ‘The Book of Pilgrimage’, his experiences in Russia combine with his quiet observations in Westerwede to reveal a pursuit of inner depth, while ‘The Book of Figurative Poetry’ offers a glimpse of the pioneering elements of his later ‘New Poems’.
Clara was a student of Rodin, and Rilke took a keen interest in Rodin’s ‘Composition with Water’. Through direct encounters with Rodin, he sought to understand the mystery of Rodin’s art; after visiting Rodin in Paris in 1902, he became deeply captivated by his work, which greatly influenced his mid-period creative output. He even served as Rodin’s secretary for a time, and Rodin’s teachings instilled in Rilke a working philosophy centered on thoroughly understanding and recreating nature.
His mid-period works—including ‘New Poems’, ‘Supplement to New Poems’, and ‘The Notebooks of Malte’—were shaped under Rodin’s influence. During this period, while in Viareggio, Italy, he completed the third volume of his urban poetry collection, ‘Book of Poverty and Death’.
‘New Poems’ and its supplement are representative collections of Rilke’s middle period, sharing similarities in both style and form. Unlike the sentimental lyricism of his early years, these poems see subjective lyricism recede while objective descriptive techniques take center stage. They feature strong depictions of objective subjects, such as impressions of botanical and zoological gardens and city streets, travel, ancient temples, Greek mythology and the Bible, and reflections on ancient sculptures. Of course, the poet’s intense lyricism remains inherent, and while some works achieve a complex internal structure even as they restrain emotional expression, there are at times instances where the correspondence between subject matter and expression falls short. These mid-career achievements serve as the foundation for the expression found in his late-life masterpiece, ‘The Duino Elegies’.
‘The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge’ holds unique significance as Rilke’s only full-length novel. He devoted six years of painstaking effort to it, beginning in Rome in February 1904 and completing it in Leipzig in January 1910. The novel has no plot; as the title suggests, it takes the form of a collection of the protagonist Malte’s notebooks. The various issues he grappled with—such as love, death, illness and anxiety, loneliness, and the question of God—are delicately portrayed through his rich inner world and sculptural style. Although it deals with death and illness, the work is not decadent; rather, it gazes at the root of phenomena with a clear eye.
Around the time he completed this work, Rilke’s life shifted back into the realm of romance. Through a friend’s introduction, he met Marie von Thurn und Taxis-Hohenlohe, a Marquise of rare nobility and refinement who became a mother figure to him. Rilke’s final years relied heavily on the Marquise’s spiritual and material support.
A four-month journey through North Africa beginning in late 1910 broadened his horizons and provided him with experiences that would later be revived as material for the ‘Duino Elegies’. In January 1912, at the invitation of the Marchioness von Taxis, he visited Duino Castle, where he was struck by entirely new poetic inspiration and completed the First and Second Elegies in one go; from that point on, the creation of the ‘Duino Elegies’ began in earnest.
From early February 1912 to February 1913, he traveled through Spain, where he was deeply moved by the paintings of El Greco and drew inspiration for many of his poems. During this trip, he composed parts of the Sixth and Ninth Elegies, as well as several other poems and prose pieces; he completed the Sixth Elegy in Paris, but its final completion was delayed by the outbreak of World War I in July 1914.
In 1914, while in Paris, he fell in love after receiving a passionate letter from a woman; he called her “Benvenuta,” and she was in fact the pianist Magda von Hattingen. At her suggestion—as she foresaw the dangers of living together—the two eventually parted ways.
The World War took a heavy toll on Rilke, both physically and mentally. In January 1916, he served in the Austrian army but suffered due to his frail health; thanks to the efforts of his friends, he was discharged in June. During the war, he met the female painter Lu Albert Lazar and found solace in her; although he faced difficulties when his property left behind in Paris was designated as enemy property and put up for auction, he was able to recover a portion of it with the help of Stefan Zweig, Romain Rolland, and André Gide.
In June 1919, after leaving Munich for Zurich to give a lecture in Switzerland, he decided not to return to Germany. In November 1920, while staying at Berg Castle in Irhel, he rediscovered the creative spark that had been lost during the war, and in July 1921, he discovered Château de Musot in the Valais region and settled there.
Château de Muzot was an ancient castle built in the 13th century—a place resembling a remote tower, devoid of electricity or running water. In February 1922, while leading a quiet life there with a single housekeeper, the inspiration for the “Duino Elegies” swept over him like a storm; Elegies 7, 8, and 5 were completed all at once, and the other unfinished elegies were also brought to completion. In addition, the 55 “Sonnets to Orpheus” unexpectedly poured forth in one go. These ten sonnets distill Rilke’s fundamental philosophy; themes such as transience, love, death, inner desolation and fate, the praise of heroes, an ode to life, the “open world,” and the mission of human existence are expressed in elegant German, leaving a deep impression on the reader.
After completing the “Duino Elegies” and the “Sonnets to Orpheus,” Rilke, driven by his admiration and affinity for the French poet Paul Valéry, translated Valéry’s works and attempted to write in French. Among the French poems published in French magazines with Valéry’s praise and encouragement were “The Orchard,” “The Rose,” and “The Window.”
His relationship with his late-life love, Baladina Klosowska, brought him comfort but also caused him great suffering due to the conflict between his creative work and his love life. In Switzerland, he made valuable friends such as Werner Reinhardt and Mrs. Polkart Bundeli, and these friendships were a great source of strength, helping to stabilize his life year after year.
From January to August 1925, he revisited the Paris of his memories, reconnecting with old friends such as Gide and Valéry; during this time, he assisted Maurice Betz with the French translation of ‘The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge’. However, in October 1926, while picking roses in the garden of Château de Muzot, a thorn lodged in his left finger became infected and developed into an abscess, eventually leading to symptoms of leukemia.
Exhausted both physically and mentally, he was unable to overcome the illness and passed away at 5:00 a.m. on December 29, 1926, at the Valmont Sanatorium, bringing his 51-year life to an end. In accordance with his will, his remains were interred in the cemetery at La Longue.
Work Commentary
“Stories of My Beloved God” is the result of Rilke’s first trip to Russia and consists of 13 short stories. Each story is linked by the theme of “God,” like threads woven together, and God appears in various forms throughout the work.
This collection of short stories shares certain parallels with Rilke’s collection of prayer poems. The work is founded on a pantheistic philosophy, in which God is understood to be inherently present within all earthly things and ultimately to emerge gradually from within them.
The book was written in one sitting between November 10 and 20, 1899, and its narrative style adopts a plain and simple form reminiscent of a fairy tale. Therefore, rather than attempting a complex interpretation, readers should simply feel God’s omnipresence as they read.
