Escaping the chaos and emotional stagnation of the aftermath of the first world war, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke at last found the hermitage he sought in a small village in Switzerland. There, in February of 1922, he endured a visitation of such creative intensity it has become a legend unto itself. Not one but two masterworks arrived, seemingly out of nowhere, in a storm of poetic vision.

This afternoon, Walker Brents III will offer a glimpse into Rilke’s inner world, through a remembrance of this time and a consideration of two great poem-cycles: the Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus, that were its fruits.

At Cháteau de Muzot.
Rilke with the young violin virtuoso, Alma Moodie
and the conductor Werner Reinhardt.

In a letter to Nanny Wunderly-Volkart, about Moodie, he writes:

“What a sound, what richness, what determination. That and the Sonnets to Orpheus,
those were two strings of the same voice. And she plays mostly Bach!
Muzot has received its musical christening….”