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BBC Radio 4 Extra

Poetry Extra

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Weekly opportunity for listeners to revisit the riches of the BBC radio poetry archive

A brand new poetry slot on Radio 4 Extra gives listeners a weekly opportunity to revisit the riches of the BBC radio poetry archive

Poetry Extra: Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus - Dancing the Orange

24/04/2016

Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus - Dancing the Orange

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Poetry Extra, Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus - Dancing the Orange

Daljit Nagra introduces the story of a great modern masterpiece.

4 Extra Debut. Daljit Nagra introduces the story of a great modern masterpiece, the 'Sonnets to Orpheus' by poet Rainer Maria Rilke. From July 2013.

BBC Radio 4's Poet in Residence, Daljit Nagra revisits the BBC's radio poetry archive with Rainer Maria Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus - Dancing the Orange.

Leading us through the nuances of their meaning, Karen Leeder alerts us to the beauty and power 
of one of the great modernist works of literature of 1922.

After a lifetime wandering about Europe Rilke was at last able to settle when his patron, Werner Reinhart, bought the Château de Muzot in the Swiss Valais so that he could live there, and write. His aim was to complete his monumental work, 'The Duino Elegies'. But this plan was interrupted in February when, 'completely unexpected' the 'Sonnets to Orpheus' broke upon him'. Within three weeks he had completed 55 poems, of great variety, but all sonnets.

Rilke didn't like English and never visited Britain. Yet the 'Sonnets to Orpheus' have fascinated English language readers and writers ever since they appeared - with translations every decade. 

With writers Martyn Crucefix and Don Paterson, plus German scholar and poet Rüdiger Görner, Karen Leeder teases out the major issues the poems address; death, love and, the creation and role of poetry - for Rilke a song of praise for life, and even death, in a creation without God, through which meaning is accomplished.

Karen visits the Château de Muzot and with Nanni Reinhart, who lives there now, to considers its impact on the composition of the poems.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2013.

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