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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 one of the untitled love poems, Rilke writes, "What fields are fragrant as your ______?"
(a) Lips.
(b) Eyes.
(c) Hands.
(d) Kiss.

2. In what form is "The Dragon-Princess"?
(a) A letter.
(b) A poem.
(c) A novel.
(d) A short-story.

3. Of what does Rilke write "that so strangely began with such a number of profound and grave transformation" in "Blood-Remembering"?
(a) Of childhood illnesses.
(b) Of depressions.
(c) Of lost loves.
(d) Of painful thoughts.

4. From which work of Samuel Beckett does Mood quote from in the Epilogue?
(a) Waiting for Godot.
(b) How It Is.
(c) Happy Days.
(d) Endgame.

5. What does Rilke accuse of vilifying sensuality and love?
(a) Mankind.
(b) Christianity.
(c) The government.
(d) Womankind.

Short Answer Questions

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

2. What does Rilke write that one ought to wait and gather "a whole life long," in "Blood-Remembering"?

3. Who does Mood quote in the Epilogue with the line, "... tormentor and tormented pedant and dunce wooer and wooed speechless and reafflicted with speech in the dark mud nothing to emend there"?

4. Rilke writes in "Blood-Remembering" that "verses are not, as people imagine," what?

5. What does Rilke write that he holds to be "the highest task of a bond between two people"?

(see the answer key)

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