 While at Duino , Rilke and Princess Marie discussed the possibility of collaborating on a translation of Dante Alighieri 's La Vita Nuova ( 1295 ) . After the Princess left to join her husband at their <unk> estate , Rilke spent the next few weeks at the castle preparing to focus on work . During these weeks , he was writing Marien @-@ Leben ( The Life of Mary ) . While walking along the cliffs overlooking the Adriatic Sea near the castle , Rilke claimed to hear a voice calling to him speaking the words of the first line , Wer , wenn ich <unk> , <unk> mich denn aus der Engel <unk> ? ( " Who , if I cried out , would hear me among the hierarchies of angels ? " ) which he quickly wrote in his notebook . Within days , he produced drafts of the first two elegies in the series and drafted passages and fragments that would later be incorporated into later elegies — including the opening passage of the tenth elegy . 
