Prologue and Letters on Love Summary

John J. L. Mood opens his book with a prologue describing the profound effect Ranier Maria Rilke's writing had on him, and his resulting desire to spread the appreciation of Rilke's work to the world. He describes the difficulty of speaking to so profound an appreciation, but recounts finally beginning the task with the exhaustive translation of his poems from German to English and the compilation of excerpts from his essays, as presented in this book. He dedicates it to Rilke-lovers, categorizing him with James Joyce as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, and hoping to inspire appreciation among newcomers for the beauty of his work.

In his introduction, he describes the process of compiling essays on the topic of love and how, in his early reading of Rilke in the 1960s...