大象传媒

Rilke's complex, haunting, religious, mystical poems the Duino Elegies are an enchanting exploration of love, death and solitude. Rilke's landmark poetry cycle was written in a period of spiritual crisis between 1912 and 1922. Rilke began writing it while at castle Duino near Trieste. On the rocks looking out to sea and contemplating his existence, from out of the wind Rilke heard a voice: 'who would give ear, among the angelic host, were I to cry aloud?'

The ten elegies are about the human condition. The first and second evoke an ethereal life and concern the nature of human transience. The third and fourth are like fragments of an intimate autobiography, sensual and tormented. Rilke asks if love can bring comfort and whether humans are controlled by a higher force. The fifth inspired by Picasso's Les Saltimbanques, merges the image of the resting acrobats with the memory of a troupe of street performers Rilke observed in Paris. Rilke contemplates the human existence suspended between life and death. The sixth the is a meditation on dying young; the seventh and eight contrast man and nature; the ninth an affirmation of living in the present moment and the magnificence of earthly life; the tenth a haunting visit to the 'Land of the Plaints' where people have loved and lost.

In 1931, Virginia and Leonard Woolf's Hogarth Press published a small run of the first complete English translation by the writers Vita Sackville-West and Edward Sackville-West. This marked the English debut of Rilke's masterpiece. Published again after 90 years by Pushkin Press in 2021 it is both a fascinating historical document and a magnificent blank verse rendering of Rilke鈥檚 poetry cycle.

Written by Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Vita Sackville-West and Edward Sackville-West

Reader......Alfred Enoch
German reader.....Nenda Neururer

With original music composed by Erland Cooper
Woodwind.....Guy Passey
Violin.....Freya Goldmark
Cello.....Klara Schumann

Producer and director - Nadia Molinari
Technical Producer and Sound Designer - Sharon Hughes
Introduction and German language poetry consultant - Lesley Chamberlain
Production Co-ordinator - Vicky Moseley
Additional Technical Production - Ali Craig

A 大象传媒 STUDIOS AUDIO PRODUCTION FOR RADIO 3