The Book of Hours

Long hailed as a masterwork of modern German literature, The Book of Hours (1905) marks the origin of Rainer Maria Rilke's distinctive voice and vision-where clarity of diction meets unexpected imagery, where first-person poetry discovers its full lyric possibility. In these audacious poems, a devout but intimately candid speaker addresses an ultimately unknowable deity. 'What will you do, God, when I die ' Rilke's speaker asks, passing through love, fear, guilt, anger, bewilderment, loneliness, tenderness and exaltation in his search for meaning.