Wikipedia:Today's featured article/August 2, 2013

The Duino Elegies are a collection of ten poems written by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926), a Bohemian-Austrian poet. The elegies are intensely religious, mystical poems that employ a rich symbolism of angels and salvation weighing beauty and existential suffering while addressing issues such as the limits of the human condition, loneliness, love and death. Rilke began writing the elegies in 1912 while a guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis (1855–1934) at Duino Castle near Trieste, and they were dedicated to her upon publication. Aside from brief episodes of writing in 1913 and 1915, Rilke did not return to the work until a few years after the end of World War I. With a sudden, renewed inspiration—writing in a frantic pace he described as a "boundless storm, a hurricane of the spirit"—he completed the collection in February 1922 while staying at Château de Muzot in Veyras, Switzerland. The delay in completing the work was because he suffered frequently from severe depression caused by the events of the war. The Duino Elegies are recognized by critics and scholars as his most important work, and have influenced many subsequent poets and writers.

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