The Inner Sky

Selected work from the modernist poet thematically centered on our relation to the physical world and our minds, featuring original texts and translations.

The Inner Sky is a selection of poems and prose by the great poet Rainer Maria Rilke, set with the original text and a translation, and including more than a dozen works that have never before appeared in English. The translations, by the NEA and PEN Award–winning author and translator Damion Searls, are lively, moving, and appealing, and they give a new voice for Rilke in English: mystical but concrete, like Emily Dickinson or Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Searls’s selection of texts clusters around a handful of related images and ideas—birds and trees, giving and receiving, working and waiting, girlhood and gardens—and presents a coherent vision of how we relate to the outer world and inner world of the imagination. Scholars and students of Rilke will benefit from the German and French originals opposite the translations, and two full indices of English and original titles and first lines. An annotated chronology and the translator’s afterword complete this rich new volume, a necessary addition to even the most complete Rilke library, and the perfect introduction for those just getting to know this perennial master.

“No matter their level of familiarity with Rilke, The Inner Sky belongs on the bookshelf of any literature lover, thanks largely to Searls’ deft translation and grouping of Rilke’s work.” —Rachel Mennies, ForeWord Magazine

“A must-read for Rilke fans, The Inner Sky will deepen the English-speaking world’s perception of the man behind the well-wrought verses.” —Stephan Delbos, The Prague Post