Die Sonette an Orpheus.

Leipzig: Insel-Verlag,, 1923. In this uncontainable night, / be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses... First edition, deluxe issue, number 129 of 300 copies on handmade paper by W. Drugulin, deluxe copy in the full calf binding by H. Sperling. Copies are known in both green and blue calf. Die Sonette an Orpheus (The Sonnets to Orpheus) is considered, along with the Duino Elegies, as Rilke's masterpiece. They were composed in what the author described as a "savage creative storm" during February 1922. The collection was dedicated, as a "grab-mal" ("grave-marker"), to Wera Ouckama Knoop (1900-1919), whose death from leukemia inspired the sonnets. The 19-year-old dancer and musician was the daughter of Rilke's friend Gerhard Ouckama-Knoop and a close friend of Rilke's own daughter Ruth. David Young notes, in introducing his 1987 English translation of the Sonnets, that Rilke "does not center his poem on love for a particular person, but writes instead a kind of extended love-poem to the world, celebrating such diverse love-objects as mirrors, dogs, fruit, ancient sarcophagi, roses, a strip of cloth, unicorns, breathing and childhood." Octavo (214 x 139 mm). Bound for the publishers by H. Sperling in green calf, spine lettered in gilt with raised bands, boards ruled in gilt, front cover with gilt wreath emblem in centre, turn-ins gilt, gilt and green painted endpapers, top edge gilt, others untrimmed. Engraved bookplate of Wilhelm Kesten to front pastedown. Slight sunning to spine, sound, clean within: a near-fine copy. Ralph Freedman, Life of a Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke, 1998, p. 479.