Rilke, Modernism and Poetic Tradition

If the rise of modernism is the story of a struggle between the burden
of tradition and a desire to break free of it, then Rilke’s poetic
development is a key example of this tension at work. Taking a
sceptical view of Rilke’s own myth of himself as a solitary genius,
Judith Ryan reveals how deeply his writing is embedded in the
culture of its day. She traces his often desperate attempts to
grapple with problems of fashion, influence and originality as he
shaped his career during the crucial decades in which modernism
was born. Her book is the first systematic study of Rilke’s trajectory
from aestheticism to modernism as seen through the lens of
his engagement with poetic tradition and the visual arts. The
book is full of surprising discoveries about individual poems.
Above all, it shifts the terms of the debate about Rilke’s place in
modern literary history.