Prospero. Rivista di letterature e culture straniere
Abstract
Between 1910 and 1914 Rainer Maria Rilke spent several months in the Duino Castle as guest of Marie von Thurn und Taxis. His sojourns in the ancient fortress overlooking the Gulf of Triest inspired not only the poetry masterpiece which owes its name to that place, the Duino Elegies, but also other literary projects, such as The Life of the Virgin Mary, some translations of Italian texts and a series of single poems. The Duino experience proved significant for the Prague author from a personal point of view as well: this period was characterized by relevant encounters, fruitful intellectual exchanges, evocative memories and inspiring landscapes, but also by silence, concealment and solitude. Examining both Rilke’s and Marie von Thurn und Taxis’ papers as well as documents of local history, the present article aims at outlining Rilke’s relationship to Duino by tracing the places and identifying the people that marked, in different ways, the poet’s experience on the Adriatic coast of the Habsburg Empire. Real sites which are nowadays only partly recognizable (like the Duino Castle itself and the path on the cliffs along the sea), people present there at Rilke’s time and people belonging to the memory of his host’s family history come to recreate a sort of virtual socio-geographical map including biographical and topographical data, personal memories and artistically transfigured experiences. These elements will prove to be closely connected with the author’s literary production and his poetical considerations of those years and will therefore contribute to the interpretation of a crucial artistic phase in Rilke’s oeuvre.
