| Author Quoted | Rainer Maria Rilke |
| Title Quoted | Duino Elegies / translated into English by James Blair Leishman and Stephen Spender |
| Date (Year/Month/Day) | 1965/12/01 |
| Imprint | New York : W.W.Norton & Company. 1963 |
| Quotation | When I got up it was about thirty on the porch and now at dawn it is down to twenty-one. These are the coldest hours-meditation, lectio, and hot tea with lemon and a good fire. I am reading [Paul] Evdokimov [La Femme et le salut du monde, 1958]-after tea-and then the Duino Elegies. The Elegies I am just reading, without comment, especially the German, aloud, to try to get the magnificent substance of sound and to think in the German (it is a language I can't think in, as I can French and Spanish). I will go over it again for notes later. The Leishman-Spender [James Blair Leishman and Stephen Spender] translation is the best piece of translating done for Rilke. Rilke's long wait for the Elegies sobers me not a little. |
| Quotation Source | Dancing in the Water of Life: Seeking Peace in the Hermitage. The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 5, 1963-1965.; Edited by Robert E. Daggy. / San Francisco : Harper Collins. 1997, p. 319-20 |
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| Link to Merton's Copy |
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