The poems are composed of ten elegies Rilke started writing in 1912 while a guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis (1855–1934) at Duino Castle, near Trieste on the Adriatic Sea. Rilke (1875–1926) ...

Rilke's existentialist cry in the shadow of Duino castle was heard by no one but himself. He thought he was alone in the universe, delivering a lamentation for the lost. He was wrong.