Tender Taxes and Other Departures
The poems 1922–1926 are a body of work that has not received as much attention as it should. The most significant development is that Rilke, partly under the influence of Valéry whom he continued to translate, begins writing a large number of poems in French. What exactly does this turn to French mean? The main focus is on the Quatrains valaisans and the informal cycle of landscape poems in German related to the seasonal cycle, both of which are attempts to write a modern version of pastoral. This chapter makes the case for taking Rilke’s French poems seriously and for seeing them as enabling him to do something different from his German work. It explores a lightness and song-like quality in Rilke’s writing as the inheritance of the Sonette, while also attending to the German poems and the interactions between the two.