Austrian · 1875–1926
Austrian poet who wrote the Duino Elegies and made lyric poetry metaphysical. Born in Prague, he wandered Europe as guest in aristocratic houses, loving Lou Andreas-Salomé, serving briefly as Rodin's secretary, and writing constantly. The early poems are musical and melancholic; the Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus, completed in a burst in 1922, are visionary and difficult. His only novel, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, reimagined autobiography through modernist fragmentation. He died of leukemia in Switzerland. The influence on subsequent poetry, especially in Germany and America, is immense.