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''The Book of Hours'' ((ドイツ語:Das Stunden-Buch)) is a collection of poetry by the Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926). The collection was written between 1899 and 1903 in three parts, and first published in Leipzig by Insel Verlag in April 1905. With its dreamy, melodic expression and neo-Romantic mood, it stands, along with 'The Lay of the Love and Death of Christoph Cornet', as the most important of his early works. The work, dedicated to Lou Andreas-Salome, is his first through-composed cycle, which established his reputation as a religious poet, culminating in the poet's Duino Elegies. In arresting language, using a turn-of-the-century Art Nouveau aesthetic, Rilke displayed a wide range of his poetic apparatus. The suggestive musicality of his verses developed into the hallmark of his later lyric poetry, to mixed criticism. It consists of three sections with common themes relating to St. Francis and the Christian search for God. The sections are: * ''The Book of Monastic Life'' (''Das Buch vom mönchischen Leben'') * ''The Book of Pilgrimage'' (''Das Buch von der Pilgerschaft'') * ''The Book of Poverty and Death'' (''Das Buch von der Armut und vom Tode'') One of Rilke's translators, Edward Snow, expressed the opinion that the work "is one of the strongest inaugural works in all of modern poetry. It arrives as if out of nowhere and seems to want to wipe the slate clean." ==Composition== The first book, ''The Book of Monastic Life'', initially titled The Prayers (Die Gebete) was written between 20 September and 14 October 1899 in Berlin-Schmargendorf, where Rilke had also composed 'The Lay of the Love and Death of Christoph Cornet'. The middle part of the cycle was written (after his marriage to Clara Westhoff) from 18 to 25 September 1901 in Westerwede, the same year Rilke got married and became the father of a daughter. The last book was written while the poet was no longer in Germany, composed from 13 to 20 April 1903 in Viareggio, Italy. Two years later, now in Worpswede, he revised the text, which was then published in December 1905 - his first collaboration with Insel-Verlag. This introductory book would go on being published in his lifetime, in four editions with approximately 60,000 copies. Rilke's journeys to Russia in the summer of 1899 and 1900 form the biographical background to the work. He undertook these with the dedicatee Lou Andreas-Salome, and began work on the cycle after their conclusion. The vastness of Russia, the fervent devotion of its peasantry to their Orthodox religion, and its culture little touched by Western civilization - all formed a backdrop which, deepened by personal encounters with Leonid Pasternak and the renowned Leo Tolstoy, developed over time into a spiritual home.〔Rilke, Rainer Maria, in: Killy Literaturlexikon, Band 9, p. 468-469〕 As he wrote retrospectively twenty years later, the country had revealed to him "the brotherhood and the darkness of God". In this dark remoteness would Rilke continue to "build" on this ancient and eternal God: According to Wolfgang Braungart the sentimental journeys brought Rilke closer to the supposed social success of primordial pre-moderns. He found a "human fraternal compatibility" in a rural-centred world. In this way was the religion of the country conveyed to him, expressed via the prototypical Russian icon or iconostasis. Rilke shared the cultural practice of idealising Russia with intellectuals such as Thomas Mann and Oswald Spengler. These conservatives were influenced by the fading myth created by Friedrich Nietzsche, the literary testimony of which was to be found in Dostoevsky. Rilke himself claimed poetic inspiration for the origin of the verses, something which was to characterise his work later. Waking in the morning, or in the evening, he had received words like prayers, in which he orientated himself only to transcribe an inner dictation afterwards. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Book of Hours」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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