582 BCE–485 BCE), especially known for love lyrics.

Antepirrhema: Continuation of an epirrhema (see below).

Atlas: In Greek mythology, the Titan who holds up the sky, and who gave his name to the Atlantic Ocean.

Behramgur: According to Persian legend, King Behramgur of the Sassanids (d. 440 CE) spoke in verse to one of his slave girls, Dilaram, and she replied in kind, ending her lines with similar sounding words. Thus they jointly invented rhyme.

Dilaram: See Behramgur.

Epirrhema: In classical Greek drama: following the chorus, a verse in which the chorus leader addresses the audience.

Doge of Venice: The Doge, elected leader of the city, was traditionally rowed out into the lagoon each year to throw a ring into the water to symbolize the wedding of Venice, as a maritime trading nation, to the sea.

Elf-King: Goethe’s friend and mentor Johann Gottfried von Herder translated a Danish folk ballad “Elf-king’s Daughter” into German, and this inspired Goethe’s ballad. “Erlking” could mean “alder king” as well as “king of the elves.”

Ganymede: In Greek myth, a beautiful young shepherd abducted by Zeus to serve as his cupbearer.

Ginkgo Biloba: An Asian tree cultivated in European botanical gardens since around 1800. Its broad leaf has a central groove which makes it appear like two leaves that have grown together.

Hafiz (or Hafez): Persian poet of the twelfth century whose “Divan” (poetry collection) was known to Goethe through a translation into German (1814) by the Austrian Orientalist Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall. This inspired Goethe’s own West-Eastern Divan poetry collection (1819), written in collaboration with Marianne von Willemer.

Harz: Mountain range in North Germany.

Hatem: Persian pseudonym for Goethe himself in the West-Eastern Divan.

Maecenas: Wealthy Roman (c. 70 BCE–8 BCE), friend of Augustus Caesar and patron of poets including Horace and Virgil.

Mignon: An androgynous young woman who is devoted to Wilhelm Meister (the eponymous hero of Goethe’s novel), but is suffering from a mysterious trauma in the past, probably in Italy, which she has vowed to conceal. Her father is the Harpist, a lonely wanderer and beggar, who fathered her through an incestuous union with his own sister.

Nepomuk: John of Nepomuk was a saint and martyr of the twelfth century who refused to divulge the confession of the Queen of Bohemia to her husband King Wenceslas, who ordered him to be tortured and drowned.

Parabasis: In classical Greek drama, a direct address to the audience on behalf of the author.

Prometheus: Figure of Greek myth who created humans from clay and gave them the gift of fire in defiance of Zeus and the Olympian gods. He was then punished by being pinned to a rock where an eagle (emblem of Zeus) attacked his liver daily.

Prooemion: Preamble or introduction to a work.

Schiller: Friedrich Schiller, the German dramatist and friend of Goethe, died in 1805 and was buried in a collective grave in Weimar. In 1826 the mayor, Karl Leberecht Schwabe, excavated the grave, collected various bones and skulls, and decided that the largest skull must be Schiller’s. Later, Goethe took home this skull, which he believed showed outward marks of Schiller’s divine genius. Schiller’s supposed remains were later reinterred, but recent DNA tests show that they are probably not his.

Suleika: Persian name corresponding to Marianne von Willemer, Goethe’s beloved and collaborator on the West-Eastern Divan.

Titans: The race of Greek gods, including Atlas and Prometheus, overthrown by the Olympian deities led by Zeus.

Thule: Mythical island supposed to be the furthest land north reached by Greek navigators, variously identified as Greenland, Iceland, the Shetland Islands, or the Orkney Islands.

Werther: Hero of Goethe’s best-selling novel The Sufferings of Young Werther (1774), who committed suicide in the wake of an unhappy love affair with Lotte, the fiancée of another man.

Zeus: King of the Olympian gods in Greek mythology.

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

Graham Good is professor emeritus of English and Comparative Literature at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. His career as a translator began at Princeton University, where a version of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus formed part of his PhD thesis in Comparative Literature. Continuing to work on Rilke over the years, he published Rilke’s Late Poetry: Duino Elegies, The Sonnets to Orpheus, and Selected Last Poems with Ronsdale Press in 2005. Since then, the poems of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe have been the main focus of his translating work. He has also published books on the essay as a literary genre—The Observing Self: Rediscovering the Essay (London and New York: Routledge, 1988, reissued in 2014 in the series Routledge Revivals) — and on recent literary theory—Humanism Betrayed: Theory, Ideology and Culture in the Contemporary University (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001). Graham makes his home in Vancouver, British Columbia.

PRAISE FOR GRAHAM GOOD’S

RILKE’S LATE POETRY

“Graham Good’s translations of Rilke read like fresh, original poems, fresh in their English rhymes and cadences, fresh as Rilke in transforming elegy into eulogy, sorrow into consolation. . . .”

— Robert Fagles, late Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University, translator of Homer, Virgil and Aeschylus

“Graham Good’s translations are quiet and careful, with an ear, especially, for the shimmering experiences behind the words.”

— Norman Fischer, poet, author and Zen Buddhist priest

“Elegant and vigorous, these translations give us the Rilke we know, anew. Graham Good’s sensitivity makes this collection especially intimate and moving.”

— Stephanie Bolster, Governor General’s Award-winner for poetry

“Good’s rendition is respectful and creative, and our perceptions of Rilke are deepened by reading his book.”

— Vancouver Sun

“The work is lucid and accessible, its lambent language as if Rilke had written the poems today. . . . An excellent text.”

— Pacific Rim Review of Books

“Good’s translation . . . [is] as clear in imagery, as dexterous in syntax and smooth and sharp in rhythm as one could hope”

— Canadian Notes and Queries

“The strength of Good’s translation is that while he is faithful to the original, he strives to make the work relevant to current poetics. . . .