Duino Elegies / Sonnets to Orpheus
The twin summits of German-language modernist poetry. The Elegies grapple with angels, mortality, and "the Open" (existence beyond human consciousness); the Sonnets transform Orpheus into the figure for poetry itself. Written in a two-week creative surge after a decade of silence, the Sonnets emerged simultaneously with the Elegies' completion. Together they constitute the greatest single contribution to European lyric poetry in the 20th century.
Rilke's angels mean whatever the reader needs them to, which is how he became a quotation mine for people who never finish an elegy. In English everything depends on the translator, and the versions disagree wildly. Abstraction is the method, but whole stretches dissolve into capitalized nouns: the Open, the Beloved, Being. Sublimity, frequently, without footing.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
