Bonnevaux Retreat: Everything Matters – Living the Questions & Daring the Present with Rainer Maria Rilke

Rilke belongs to the handful of poets whose writings have had a shaping influence on the cultures of Modernity, and this year marks the 150^th anniversary of his birth (1875 – 1926). Already a bestselling poet and writer during his lifetime, his influence has grown exponentially over the century since his death. Many readers will remember the epiphanies they experienced when they read his Letters to a Young Poet in which he famously advised us not to seek answers but rather dare to “live the questions.” His poems—from his early Book of Hours (1905) to his last two collections, The Sonnets to Orpheus and The Duino Elegies (1923)—do just this: they invite us to live into what he described as “the Open.” To embrace the mysteries that are always close at hand. To accept the “here-ness” and “once-ness” of this life as an invitation. And to discover how we belong to what he came to call “the Whole.”

Join us to explore a selection of Rilke’s poems and writings with the award-winning translator, poet, and Rilke scholar Mark S. Burrows, professor emeritus of the University of Applied Sciences in Bochum, Germany, who most recent book is You Are the Future: Living the Questions with Rainer Maria Rilke (2024), a book that draws on Rilke’s poems as an encouragement in facing inner doubts and outer struggles. During the retreat we will turn to Rilke’s early poems from The Book of Hours (1905) in Burrows’ first-ever English rendition of them in their original version (published as Prayers of a Young Poet [3^rd revised edition 2023]) as well as his new translation of Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus (2024).