Rilke: The Last Inward Man

An incisive and intimate account of the life and work of the great poet Rilke, exploring the rich interior world he created in his poetry

'Lesley Chamberlain has a rare gift for animating philosophy through intensely human stories' Sunday Telegraph

When Rilke died in 1926, his reputation as a great poet seemed secure. But as the tide of the critical avant garde turned, he was increasingly dismissed as apolitical, the angels and roses of his poems deemed irrelevant. In Rilke: The Last Inward Man, acclaimed writer Lesley Chamberlain uses this charge as the starting point from which to explore the expansiveness of the inner world Rilke created in his poetry.

Weaving together searching insights on Rilke's life, work and reputation, Chamberlain casts the poet's inwardness as a profound response to a world that seemed to be losing its spirituality. In works of dazzling imagination and rich imagery, Rilke sought to restore value to Western materialism, encouraging not narrow introversion but the cultivation of a new sensibility in a secular world after the death of God.