This is a celebrated biography of Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), prehaps the greatest lyric poet of this century. Rilke was born in Prague, but his nomadic existence led him through Germany, Russia, Spain, Italy, and France, until his death in Switzerland from leukaemia. Uniquely, he dedicated himself exclusively to his art while remaining receptive to the most varied influences of European culture. He visited Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana, acted for a time as secretary to Rodin, and was a friend o Romain Rolland, Leonid Pasternak, and Walter Rathenau. He was the protege of Princess Marie van Thurn und Taxis, and the lover of Lou Andreas-Salome and Baladine Klossowska. Yet he was single-minded in his search for the solitude he needed for his work, so much so that he seemed to many of his contemporaries to be a poet remote from the world. His poetic achievement - the New Poems, the Duino Elegies the Sonnets to Orpheus - and in prose the Cornet and the astonishing Malte Laurids Brigge, were works that made a lasting mark on European literature. Drawing on recent documentary evidence, A Ringing Glass is a compelling account of this most complex of lives, showing what manner of man lay behind the achievement of the work, and the part that work in turn played in Rilke's life.
