The initial enthusiasm aroused by Rilke in Europe and America has deepened and strengthened during the war, which is something to be profoundly grateful for in the Atomic Age. Not only has the number of translations of the poems and letters increased steadily; but this book, which has caused intense and widespread dissatisfaction, is actually in sufficient demand to be reissued. In view of the hostility it has provoked, I am now faced with the question as to whether or not I wish to modify any of the statements it contains, or retract them in this Preface. Undoubtedly I should like to rephrase many sentences and paragraphs, and tone down some of the adjectives and nouns, notably in the description of the Requiem for a Friend. But this would be merely tinkering with the text, for my attitude has not fundamentally altered, though my enthusiasm for Rilke's poetry is even greater than it was. We are all fallible; and I may have misinterpreted and misjudged him; but what additional evidence has come to hand during the war about his personality has not caused me to change my mind.

This evidence includes the highly revealing work called Rilke und Benvenuta, Vienna, 1943, a close-up of the poet during one of his most serious and romantic love-affairs. Further, the very sympathetic Erinnerungen an Rilke by Regina Ullmann, St Gallen, not dated, but recent. There is also a small volume of Briefe, letters written by Rilke to R. R. Junghanns and Rudolf Zimmermann, Olten, 1945. The Inselverlag has reissued several volumes of letters, and has enriched the series by a volume of Tagebücher aus der Frühzeit, which prints for the first time the Florentine diary, referred to by me in this book as the Tuscan diary. Die neue Zeitung of 3 June 1946 gives a letter written by Rilke to Franciska von Reventlow on 12 November 1901 from Westerwede; and the Sunday Supplement to the Basler Nachrichten of 5 October 1941 brought some excerpts from thirty-nine letters of the poet to an anonymous female correspondent written from 1907–25.