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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through The Difficulty of Dying: Rilke's Self-Composed Epitaph.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. In what amount of time did Rilke write over 1,600 lines of poetry plus a major essay during "the great giving"?
(a) Three weeks.
(b) Six months.
(c) Three months.
(d) Six weeks.

2. Mood writes in the Epilogue, "Perhaps no poet, not even ____, grew poetically as much as Rilke."
(a) Shelley.
(b) Keaton.
(c) Byron.
(d) Yeats.

3. What does Rilke write in Part V of "The Seven Phallic Poems" has "weakened you and me"?
(a) Too strong an adversary.
(b) Too ample space.
(c) Too great a distance.
(d) Too strong a love.

4. What has the fear of the inexplicable also impoverished, according to Rilke?
(a) Relationships between human beings.
(b) Trust in God.
(c) Belief in self.
(d) Relationships with God.

5. Rilke writes in "The Seven Phallic Poems," "We close ______ by means of our gazes."
(a) Our lips.
(b) The night.
(c) Our blankets.
(d) A circle.

Short Answer Questions

1. In what poem does Rilke write "Life and death: they are one, at core intertwined"?

2. Who does Mood quote in the Epilogue as having written, "A social order which draws a distinction between the wish and the deed, between the criminal and the righteous, is this a kingdom of darkness"?

3. What literary term applies to the following: "exhaust yourself like a spring"?

4. Rilke writes in "The Dragon-Princess," that if we think of the existence of the individual as a "larger or smaller" what?

5. Rilke writes, as the first lines of "Blood-Remembering," "Ah! but verses amount to so little when one writes them _____."

(see the answer key)

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