about the author

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) was a Bohemian poet and novelist who is widely regarded as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets, and his works have been characterized as mystical and haunting. When I first encountered “Einsamkeit,” I actually read this anonymous translation of it in Korean. When I read the original German, and later an English translation, I found that the English failed to capture certain qualities and meanings that I considered essential in the Korean translation. Thus I translated “Einsamkeit” from the Korean, to try to capture some of these missing qualities that I believe make the poem so simple and reverberating.