René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke was born in Prague changing his first name to Rainer influenced by the psychoanalyst Lou Andreas-Salome. He travelled to Italy and Russia meeting Tolstoy and Pasternak.
 
He married the artist Clara Westhoff in 1901 but then spent several years in Paris learning artistic observation from Rodin about whom he wrote a short biography.

In 1916, he served briefly at the military academy in Vienna the trauma of which adversely affected his creative ability. After the war, he moved to Switzerland where he found renewed artistic confidence but suffered from poor health.

He died from leukaemia in 1926.

Poetry in Translation