After he experienced a psychological crisis accompanied by severe depression. In 1910 Rilke completed the loosely autobiographical novel, Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge ( The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge) in which a young poet is terrified by the fragmentation and chaos of modern urban life. Rilke began writing the first and second elegies at Duino Castle, near Trieste, Italy, after hearing a voice in the wind while walking along the cliffs. In popular culture, his work is frequently quoted on the subject of love or of angels and referenced in television programs, motion pictures, music and other artistic works, in New Age philosophy and theology, and in self-help books. Rilke's poetry, and the Duino Elegies in particular, influenced many of the poets and writers of the twentieth century. man's loneliness, the perfection of the angels, life and death, love and lovers, and the task of the poet'. Together, the Duino Elegies are described as a metamorphosis of Rilke's ' ontological torment' and an 'impassioned monologue about coming to terms with human existence', discussing themes of 'the limitations and insufficiency of the human condition and fractured human consciousness . While labelling of these poems as 'elegies' would typically imply melancholy and lamentation, many passages are marked by their positive energy.

Rilke begins the first elegy in an invocation of philosophical despair, asking: 'Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angelic orders?' ( Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen?) and later declares that 'each single angel is terrifying' ( Jeder Engel ist schrecklich). The Duino Elegies are intensely religious, mystical poems that employ the symbolism of angels and salvation, but in a manner atypical of Christian interpretations. After their publication in 1923, the Duino Elegies were soon recognized as his most important work. With a sudden, renewed burst of frantic writing which he described as a 'boundless storm, a hurricane of the spirit' -he completed the collection in February 1922 while staying at Château de Muzot in Veyras, Switzerland. Aside from brief periods of writing in 19, he did not return to the work until a few years after the war ended. During this ten-year period, the elegies languished incomplete for long stretches of time as Rilke had frequent bouts with severe depression-some of which were related to the events of World War I and being conscripted into military service. The poems were dedicated to the Princess upon their publication in 1923. He was then 'widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets', and began the elegies in 1912 while a guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis at Duino Castle, on the Adriatic Sea. The Duino Elegies ( German: Duineser Elegien) are a collection of ten elegies written by the Bohemian- Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke.

Duino elegies