René Maria Rilke (1875 – 1926), better known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was a Bohemian-Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most significant poets to have ever written in the German language. His passionate, haunting images vividly capture the everyday combined with a yearning to commune with the ineffable. In an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety, such themes position him as a transitional figure, between the traditional and the modernist poets. He wrote both verse and highly lyrical prose. Among English-language readers, his best-known work is the Duino Elegies; his two most famous prose works are the Letters to a Young Poet and the semi-autobiographical Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge.

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