Two late masterpieces \u2013 the Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus \u2013 crown Rilke\u2019s remarkable literary career. The two cycles \u2013 completed in one and the same flood of inspiration in February of 1922 \u2013 are deeply kindred works which nonetheless display dramatic contrasts in from and tenor. This talk aims to articulate somethig of the gist of Rilke\u2019s poetic vision by staging a hermeneutic encounter with salient passages of the Elegies and Sonnets. Correlateively, we\u2019ll endeavor to place Rilke within the broader context of western esotericism, particularly the Hermetic tradition. We\u2019ll draw upon some of that tradition\u2019s founding tenets (the famous diictum \u201cas above so below\u201d; the idea of the individual as microcosm; the centrality of imagination) as well as Jung\u2019s own ideas of the Self and its transcendent function to help construe Rilke\u2019s vision of the mission of the human being, what in his Elegies the poet calls \u201cthe task of transformation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two late masterpieces \u2013 the Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus \u2013 crown Rilke\u2019s remarkable literary career. The two cycles \u2013 completed in one and the same flood of inspiration in February of 1922 \u2013 are deeply kindred works which nonetheless display dramatic contrasts in from and tenor. This talk aims to articulate somethig of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"template":"","level_of_course":[982,981],"class_list":["post-31677","courses","type-courses","status-publish","hentry","level_of_course-intermediate","level_of_course-introductory"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n