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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. Rilke remarks in his letters that his sex is "not directed only toward posterity" but is is what?
(a) "The answer within the wind."
(b) "The joy of my life."
(c) "The secret of my own life."
(d) "The solution of days."

2. In what year did Rilke write "The Seven Phallic Poems"?
(a) 1905.
(b) 1915.
(c) 1940.
(d) 1925.

3. What shall we "indeed turn" upon recognizing our solitude in "The Dragon-Princess"?
(a) Unabashed.
(b) Brazen.
(c) Powerful.
(d) Dizzy.

4. Mood writes in the Epilogue that one translator said of Rilke's controversial line, "even ____would not bother to satirize."
(a) Voltaire.
(b) Van Gogh.
(c) Rodin.
(d) Brockett.

5. "Woman's Lament II" ends with the line, "and the ________ is not in vain."
(a) Ballerina.
(b) Sparrow.
(c) Butterfly.
(d) Nightingale.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Rilke write about in conjunction with love and sex in Part VI of "The Seven Phallic Poems"?

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

3. Mood writes that the affirmative tone of "The Dragon-Princess" comes from its ambiguity and what?

4. Rilke is regarded in his letters and his writing to be distinctly ahead of his time in what respect?

5. Who insisted on placing a large cross on a separate tombstone for Rilke?

(see the answer key)

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