Duino Elegies
Bilingual Edition
Rainer Maria Rilke
A New Translation by Mark S. Burrows
Paperback
ISBN 9781966608479
$22.95 US
eBook available
September 22, 2026
The Duino Elegies stand as the capstone of Rilke’s poetic work.
He began work on them at Schloss Duino, an Italian seaside village, during the winter of 1912, completing them a decade later in 1922. These poems articulate Rilke’s hope, voiced in the Tenth Elegy, “that I, one day, standing at the end of this harsh vision, / might sing out with joy and praise to the assenting angels.” They stand as his “final testament” as a writer, an epic work which traces “the long experience of love” that shapes our lives. Across the span of these poems we find ourselves in a visionary landscape where love and death, suffering and rejoicing, anguish and celebration together constitute “the Whole.” Rilke invites us to practice what he once called “heart-work,” a way of living by which we learn to see how “being-here is magnificent.”
Amid the chorus of translators who have approached this cycle, Mark S. Burrows’ version stands out in capturing the peculiar power of his images while also honoring the luminous strangeness of his voice. This elegant, original translation by this distinguished Rilke scholar includes an introduction, an afterword that explores the themes central to the poet’s mystical vision, and explanatory notes to the text. It also includes a selection of Rilke’s letters and journal entries in which he addresses the poems’ complexities, elucidates otherwise cryptic allusions found in the elegies, and comments on the personal circumstances of its composition.
This edition celebrates the centenary of the poet’s death in 1926.
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) is widely considered the most significant German-language lyric poet of the 20th century.
After decades of university teaching in Germany and the U.S., the focus of Mark S. Burrows’ work explores the intersection of spirituality and the arts, mysticism and poetics. He travels the world lecturing and offering retreats and workshops. A winner of the Wytter Bynner Prize in Poetry and numerous nominations for a Pushcart, his own poems have been published in books and journals in the U.S., Europe, Australia, and India. As a translator of German into English, his long interest in Rilke includes translations of Prayers of a Young Poet (2013) and Sonnets to Orpheus (2024). Burrows has also coauthored four books of Meister Eckhart poems with Jon M. Sweeney since 2017, the most recent of which is Meister Eckhart’s Book of Darkness and Light (2023).
“At last, the quality of translation into English that these sublime Elegies from Rilke have long deserved. Mark S. Burrows is undoubtedly our finest Rilke translator into English. It is more than his bilingual skills - which so many ‘translators’ lack. It is his deep and authentic understanding of ‘innerness’ that only a true poet himself can illuminate for all readers.” —Stephanie Dowrick, PhD, author of In the Company of Rilke, and co-author of You Are the Future: Living the Questions with Rainer Maria Rilke
Blurbs for the translator’s previous books:
“Rilke’s voice from the last tumultuous young century reaches tenderly into ours. But his lush German is a language of its own. Mark Burrows has a rare gift to coax it faithfully into English.” —Krista Tippett, creator and host of the Peabody Award-winning “On Being”
“Rilke’s most radiant songs deserve the finest bilingual translation, plus the mind of a translator-poet. Mark S. Burrows provides both with exhilarating skill—and unlimited grace.” —Stephanie Dowrick, author of In the Company of Rilke
“This is the translation of Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus I have been waiting for. Finally, the poetry sings in English through the many finely-tuned phrases and nuanced lines of another poet. I find myself at the threshold of the invisible, and alive, in these versions, to the mystery.” —Edward Clarke, poet, author of The Vagabond Spirit of Poetry, and Professor of English Literature, Oxford University
