Abstract

All the cycle of the 55 Sonnets to Orpheus was written by Rainer Maria Rilke in a rapture of inspiration in February 1922 some days after having finished his famous Duino Elegies What stimulated him to do it was the death in 1919 of a young and beautiful dancer Wera Ouckama-Knoop for whom he felt great admiration In a letter to Margot Sizzo of April 12 1923 the poet speaks of her in the following terms This beautiful girl who began first to dance and draw the attention of all who saw her by her innate art of movement and transformation declared one day to her mother that she could or would not dance anymore Her body changed in a very peculiar way without losing its beautiful Asiatic features it became strangely heavy and solid which already signaled at the beginning of her mysterious glandular disease which so soon led to her death In the time that remained to her Wera dedicated herself to music and finally only to drawing as if dance were to be cut off from her more and more gently and discretely but never outright