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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 untitled poem of "Rilke's Poems on Other Difficulties," Rilke writes, "Play the ____, the single ones, quickly and you..."
(a) Deaths.
(b) Harps.
(c) Loves.
(d) Kisses.

2. In a very short untitled poem, Rilke writes, "The voices warned me so I _____."
(a) Desisted.
(b) Ran.
(c) Wept.
(d) Ceased.

3. How old was Rilke when he wrote "The Dragon-Princess"?
(a) His forties.
(b) His teens.
(c) His twenties.
(d) His thirties.

4. Whose influence helped to expand Rilke's vision, according to Mood?
(a) Goethe.
(b) Donne.
(c) Nietzsche.
(d) Beckett.

5. What does the poet say in his untitled poem to do with that which, "offers itself to us with starlight"?
(a) Hide from it.
(b) Take it seriously.
(c) Cry with it.
(d) Let it be free.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Rilke write of "screams of women" in "Blood-Remembering"?

2. What shall we "indeed turn" upon recognizing our solitude in "The Dragon-Princess"?

3. What author does Rilke refer to in "The Dragon-Princess"?

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

5. From whose point of view does the passage in "Blood-Remembering" come?

(see the answer key)

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