The book is the story of a tragic love affair. Rilke who has devoted his whole life to being a poet has hit a creative block. Despondent, he is on the verge of leaving Switzerland when he meets Elisabeth Klossowska in 1920. She becomes his lover and muse and finds a tower for him to complete his great poems, the Duino Elegies. He dies six years later at the age of 50 from leukaemia. "Farrol Kahn's superb novel...lends the subject a truly Proustian perspective..It stirs and sustains the reader's involvement throughout...The ...
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The book is the story of a tragic love affair. Rilke who has devoted his whole life to being a poet has hit a creative block. Despondent, he is on the verge of leaving Switzerland when he meets Elisabeth Klossowska in 1920. She becomes his lover and muse and finds a tower for him to complete his great poems, the Duino Elegies. He dies six years later at the age of 50 from leukaemia. "Farrol Kahn's superb novel...lends the subject a truly Proustian perspective..It stirs and sustains the reader's involvement throughout...The animation of Rilke...is carried out brilliantly." Ralph Freedman. Author of definitive biography - Life of a Poet:Rainer Maria Rilke. "I've read the excerpt and I must say: absolutely brilliant!" Oskar Freysinger, Swiss writer
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New. Contains: Unspecified. Includes unspecified. In Stock. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Brand New, Perfect Condition, allow 4-14 business days for standard shipping. To Alaska, Hawaii, U.S. protectorate, P.O. box, and APO/FPO addresses allow 4-28 business days for Standard shipping. No expedited shipping. All orders placed with expedited shipping will be cancelled. Over 3, 000, 000 happy customers.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
PLEASE NOTE, WE DO NOT SHIP TO DENMARK. New Audiobook. Shipped from UK in 4 to 14 days. Established seller since 2000. Please note we cannot offer an expedited shipping service from the UK.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Fine. Contains: Unspecified. Includes unspecified. In Stock. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Brand New, Perfect Condition, allow 4-14 business days for standard shipping. To Alaska, Hawaii, U.S. protectorate, P.O. box, and APO/FPO addresses allow 4-28 business days for Standard shipping. No expedited shipping. All orders placed with expedited shipping will be cancelled. Over 3, 000, 000 happy customers.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
New. Contains: Unspecified. Includes unspecified. In Stock. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Brand New, Perfect Condition, allow 4-14 business days for standard shipping. To Alaska, Hawaii, U.S. protectorate, P.O. box, and APO/FPO addresses allow 4-28 business days for Standard shipping. No expedited shipping. All orders placed with expedited shipping will be cancelled. Over 3, 000, 000 happy customers.
Every ten years, if ever, I manage to get my hands on a book that touches and seduces me as much as Farrol Kahn's Rilke Novel. That borders on a miracle. At the latest after Ralph Freedman's highly respected biography, which appeared in German at the beginning of 2000, I believed that everything had been said, written and researched about Rilke. Every piece of correspondence had been decoded and interpreted several times, Europe-wide. After the Rilke estate was handed over to the German Literature Archive in Marbach in 2022, the literary world again became aware of what a fascination Rilke was and still is.
So what does Farrol Kahn offer us with his extensive (800-page) novel? His concentration is on the last years of Rilke's life, which he, in his early fifties, concluded far too early in Switzerland. The book is a "faction" as Kahn himself called it; in other words, a so-called biographical fiction that gives us insight into his tireless struggle to be a poet, which he certainly could not have ended so creatively and cared for in his "tower" without his muse and last lover Elisabeth Klossowska, who painted under the artist's name Baladine. The novel has nothing instructive, treatise-like or university-like about the last period of Rilke's life. Rather, it shows the poet's elegiac capacity for love and devotion; his lifelong striving to find his soul mate and to draw strength for his poetry from this, as if from a never-ending source, in order Ã?¢ââ??¬Ã?¾sich an das Leben zu verschenken,Ã?¢ââ??¬Ã?" in an ever-recurring cycle. An unattainable ideal? Here it seemed close enough to grasp, to love and to live. Farrol Kahn's coherent and subtle dialogues, the restrained and yet impressive descriptions lead us light-footedly through this substantial novel as if on a floating blue ribbon, which touches us deeply and leaves us incredibly interested; to experience and visit all the places in order to come close to understanding what it means to be a poet who loves and wants to be loved. For me, this is a outstanding great work and a must for every Rilke lover and those who would like to become one. The only drawback is that the novel has not yet been published in German translation.
