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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. From which of Rilke's poems does Mood quote "The Difficulty of Dying," "the glance while, as though caught by a whirlpool's / circling, swims a little while"?
(a) "The Lovers."
(b) "The Rose Window."
(c) "Dying Rose."
(d) "Greek Love-Talk."

2. Which poem begins with the line, "And the last perhaps will not return"?
(a) "Greek Love-Talk."
(b) "Woman's Lament I."
(c) "The Lovers."
(d) "Woman's Lament II."

3. Rilke writes, "So for him who becomes solitary, all distances, all measures ____."
(a) Grow.
(b) Change.
(c) Evolve.
(d) Expand.

4. The commentator regards that Rilke's "justly famed deep spirituality" is rooted essentially in what?
(a) God.
(b) Sex.
(c) Nature.
(d) Heaven.

5. In one untitled love poem, Rilke writes, "Drinking would seem too much, too ____, to me"?
(a) Plain.
(b) Loving.
(c) Lustful.
(d) Overwhelming.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does the translator comment in the Prologue that his translations of Rilke are?

2. When did Rilke undertake "the great giving"?

3. What does the poet say in his untitled poem to do with that which, "offers itself to us with starlight"?

4. What literary technique is used in the following? "lifted out of the riverbed of endless possibilities"?

5. In which poem does Rilke begin, "She who sleeps... To be so very awake, / near pure waking, that we into sleepers grow"?

(see the answer key)

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