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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Poems on Other Difficulties.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. According to Rilke, there is "scarcely anything more difficult" than what?
(a) To birth a child.
(b) To leave one's love.
(c) To stand alone.
(d) To love one another.

2. Rilke is regarded in his letters and his writing to be distinctly ahead of his time in what respect?
(a) Politics.
(b) Writing.
(c) Feminism.
(d) Religion.

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

4. In Part III of "The Seven Phallic Poems," Rilke writes, "Granted by you, the image of the ____ stands/at the gentle crossroads under my clothes."
(a) Flower.
(b) Madonna.
(c) Tower.
(d) God.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. What does the commentator say was Rilke's mode of exploration during "the long periods between his well-known great creative bursts of energy"?

2. In the Prologue, who does the commentator say is the other of the two greatest writers of the twentieth century?

3. Who does the commentator compare Rilke's relationship toward sex to in the Introduction?

4. The translator claims that the poems in "Rilke's Poems on Love" deserve to take their place alongside whose great love poems?

5. "Woman's Lament II" ends with the line, "and the ________ is not in vain."

(see the answer key)

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