Entrance

“Entrance” is an English translation of a short lyric poem written in German by Rainer Maria Rilke, one of the most prominent of 20th-century poets. It was published in July 1902 in Rilke’s The Book of Pictures (Das Buch der Bilder, sometimes translated as The Book of Images). This was Rilke’s first collection of poetry, published when he was 26 years old and containing poetry written over the period 1898-1901. The title in German is “Eingang.” It is a poem about the creative act and about seeing the world in a way that is fresh and new, uncluttered by old habits. Over the years the poem has had many translators, including C. F. MacIntyre, Robert Bly, Edward Snow, and Dana Gioia. It is Gioia’s version, published in 2001, that will be used for this study guide. Gioia is an American poet in his own right, and his version of the poem appeared in his third collection, Interrogations at Noon.

Poet Biography

Rainer Maria Rilke was born on December 4, 1875 in Prague, in Bohemia, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was the son of Josef, a railroad official, and Sophie Rilke. Rilke’s parents divorced in 1884, and Rilke attended a military school from 1886 to 1891 and a trade school in Linz for a year after that.