 The Duino Elegies ( German : <unk> <unk> ) are a collection of ten elegies written by the Bohemian @-@ Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke ( 1875 – 1926 ) . Rilke , who is " widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German @-@ language poets , " began writing the elegies in 1912 while a guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis ( 1855 – 1934 ) at Duino Castle , near Trieste on the Adriatic Sea . The poems , 859 lines long in total , were dedicated to the Princess upon their publication in 1923 . During this ten @-@ year period , the elegies languished incomplete for long stretches of time as Rilke suffered frequently from severe depression — some of which was caused by the events of World War I and being conscripted into military service . Aside from brief episodes of writing in 1913 and 1915 , Rilke did not return to the work until a few years after the war ended . With a sudden , renewed inspiration — writing in a frantic pace 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 <unk> , in Switzerland 's Rhone Valley . After their publication in 1923 and Rilke 's death in 1926 , the Duino Elegies were quickly recognized by critics and scholars as his most important work . 
