Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Rilke, the Buddha, and Orpheus: New Translations of Selected Poems

Rilke, the Buddha, and Orpheus: New Translations of Selected Poems

Lennox, Christopher
Rilke, Rainer Maria

Paperback

Literary Fiction

ISBN13: 9798297296275
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Nov 15 2025
Pages: 128
Weight: 0.40
Height: 0.27 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

In a pond next to the cottage where Rilke stayed on Rodin's property in Meudon was a stone Buddha statue from Borobudur that the sculptor had bought from the Paris Exposition Universelle (World's Fair) in 1900. Rilke could sit and contemplate the statue of the Buddha sitting and meditating. He is the center of the world, he told Rodin. Three of Rilke's New Poems are contemplations of Buddha statues. Rilke's fascination with the Buddha evolved along with his practice of seeing, which resembled the Buddhist meditation of calm abiding while focused on an object. Yet seeing alone was not enough: he had to turn inward as well, toward heart-work, to find empathy and compassion in the face of impermanence. Rilke turned to the Greek myth of Orpheus as the uniter of life and death in the unending ground that includes both. Even now, through his poems, Rilke still urges us to rise again singing, in harmony with, and in praise of, that unending yet immanent ground, the vibration of being/not being. This personal selection of Rilke's poetry, not meant as an academic study, explores Rilke's affinities with the Buddha and the mythic Greek hero, Orpheus.

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