The Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University

Citation of Books Detail

Click here to return to the main list

Author QuotedRainer Maria Rilke
Title QuotedDuino Elegies / translated into English by James Blair Leishman and Stephen Spender
Date (Year/Month/Day)1966/03/16
ImprintNew York : W.W.Norton & Company. 1963
Quotation"¦Liked everything you said about Rilke. The things you did not like about him were the things I thought you probably would not like: the perfume and the older women. But the older women had enough sense to give him castles to write in and I rather like the Princess, not to mention the one he went to Russia with. You are very right about his ideas on death: they are deep and solid intuitions. I think of him as validly religious, and his reaction against a sick Catholicism is perfectly understandable. The translations stink, though the [J. B.] Leishman [-Stephen] Spender job on the [Duino] Elegies is fair. It is at least passable, most of the time. I find myself preferring the Neue Gedichte and not preferring the Orpheus sonnets [Sonnets to Orpheus]. I do like the Elegies very much. Also the Letters to a Young Poet; very good indeed. I am lecturing on them to the monks. "Young Workman's Letter" is fine too "¦
Quotation SourceThe Courage for Truth: Letters of Thomas Merton to Writers.; Selected and edited by Christine M. Bochen. / New York : Farrar Straus Giroux. 1993, p. 260
Letter toClayton Eshleman
Notes 
Link to Merton's Copy  

(If there is a link above showing up as a number, click it to open another window with a full text version.)