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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Prologue and Letters on Love.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Rilke suggest that the young are apt to do in love?
(a) Give oneself away.
(b) Stand solitary.
(c) Marry for money.
(d) Not listen to each other.

2. What is the only novel that Rilke wrote?
(a) Lessons of a Forgotten Soul.
(b) The Grapes of Wrath.
(c) The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge.
(d) Letters to a Young Poet.

3. In the Prologue, who does the commentator say is the other of the two greatest writers of the twentieth century?
(a) Ernest Hemingway.
(b) James Joyce.
(c) F. Scott Fitzgerald.
(d) Samuel Beckett.

4. Rilke writes in one letter, "Almost everything ______ is difficult, and everything is _______."
(a) Sensual.
(b) Serious.
(c) Love.
(d) Sexual.

5. Rilke writes in his letters, "Why have they made our sex _______, instead of making it the place for the festival of our competency?"
(a) Dangerous.
(b) Homeless.
(c) Carefree.
(d) Loving.

Short Answer Questions

1. The commentator remarks in the Introduction, "It should be emphasized that Rilke's language is thoroughly _______."

2. What does Rilke write in his first letter, imploring the reader to try to love?

3. From what language has the author translated the poems and prose excerpts of "Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties"?

4. Rilke writes in one letter, "At bottom ______ can help anyone else in life."

5. Rilke writes of love that "So whoever loves must try to act as if he had a _________."

(see the answer key)

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