ISBN: 9781742371801
Allen & Unwin 2009
In this timely work, Stephanie Dowrick offers a profound and highly accessible study of one of literature’s most exciting and inspirational voices. Her study of the visionary poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, includes more than 90 of Rilke’s most sublime poems, many translated here for the first time by poet and scholar Mark S. Burrows. She also offers a fascinating analysis of Rilke’s extraordinary life and work from an explicitly spiritual/literary point of view. The book also includes stimulating, provocative discussion of the experiences of readers.
“Stephanie Dowrick’s gift is a capacity for sharing with readers her lifetime’s pleasure in poetry and the company of one of the greatest of poets.” David Malouf, poet & novelist
“This book is lovely: serious, informed, honest, warm, delightful to read. Stephanie Dowrick has accomplished something wonderful, bringing us into the companyof the most human of men and into the presence of his astonishingly beautiful poetry. ” John Armstrong, philosopher & writer
“Stephanie Dowrick’s undertaking in In The Company of Rilke is daunting and impressive in its scope. Rilke articulates a profoundly beautiful depth and subtlety of spiritual longing and experience that many can relate to, a context Dowrick uses succinctly to hold us in, as she deftly journeys into the soul and haunting expression of this reluctant 20th century mystic.” Judith Pemell, author of The Soul Illuminated
“Stephanie Dowrick’s writing and career are characterised by motifs of renewal and re-imagining..Dowrick’s work is eclectically informed and pioneering…Dowrick is an ideal reader – open, creative, patient and sometimes sceptical. She vividly creates a sense of readerly receptivity to the mysteries of a poem”
Felicity Plunkett, Sydney Morning Herald