That these two early stories by Rilke ("King Bohush" and "The
Siblings") are being released now may say more about the growing
American interest in Prague than about any concern for the poet's
apprentice fiction. But they will interest readers concerned with
Rilke's literary development and with how his young mind grappled
with some of the cultural problems of his day: Prague's
relationship to Western Europe, particularly Germany, and the
distemper of Europe at the turn of the century. (Kirkus Reviews)
Two Stories of Prague signifies the maturation of a poet and of a
people. Most readers know Rainer Maria Rilke as a mature,
cosmopolitan poet prominent among Continental literati of the early
20th century. But the protagonists in "King Bohush" and "The
Siblings", who strongly echo elements of Rilke's own youth, sketch
a different picture. Here we can discern a young writer
self-consciously exploring his development as a man and his
emergence as an artist. The result, Angela Esterhammer writes in
her introduction, is that in symbolic, stylistic, and biographical
terms these two stories "record the process by which Rilke fashions
himself into an independent, empowered individual". But the stories
contribute more than insight into Rilke's personal and artistic
maturation. "The more explicit subject is the city of Prague
itself", Esterhammer asserts. For woven into these two tales is a
keen awareness of the political, social, and cultural currents
swirling through Rilke's native city. Seething tensions between
Germans and Czechs, the influence of Czech nationalism on art, and
the isolation and artificiality of Prague German culture are themes
underlying Rilke's exploration of a milieu that had driven him into
a self-imposed exile by 1899, when he wrote these stories. Glimpsed
through these early works, the story of Rilke's youth is not only a
record of one man's artistic evolution but also, Esterhammer
concludes, "a story of domestic, social, and political tensions in
a city imbued with a consciousness of religion, superstition, and
grand but often tragic history".
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