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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Rilke writes in his letters on love, "Once we were ______ in every part, now we are that in one part only."
(a) Sex.
(b) Nature.
(c) Love.
(d) Children.

2. In the last of the untitled love poems, the poet writes, "Do you feel, distant dear miss, / since you are _______ me."
(a) Caressing.
(b) Loving.
(c) Reading.
(d) Kissing.

3. In the poem, "Mausoleum," what punctuation does Rilke use in a nontraditional way, at the beginning of two lines?
(a) A comma.
(b) A semicolon.
(c) A colon.
(d) A period.

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

5. Who does the commentator compare Rilke's relationship toward sex to in the Introduction?
(a) Norman Mailer.
(b) Fitzgerald.
(c) Robert Frost.
(d) Hemingway.

6. Who does Rilke say is incapable of such loving as he calls for?
(a) Religious people.
(b) Virgins.
(c) Young people.
(d) Women.

7. In "Gravity," Rilke writes, "Yet from the _____ falls, / as from a stored up cloud, / abundant rain of force."
(a) Dreamer.
(b) Sleeper.
(c) Lover.
(d) Weeper.

8. From what language has the author translated the poems and prose excerpts of "Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties"?
(a) German.
(b) French.
(c) Austrian.
(d) Bohemian.

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

10. Rilke writes in his letters, "Why have they made our sex _______, instead of making it the place for the festival of our competency?"
(a) Loving.
(b) Carefree.
(c) Dangerous.
(d) Homeless.

11. What does Rilke comment in the excerpt from the Introduction that Eros "cannot be"?
(a) Fair.
(b) Ugly.
(c) Faithful.
(d) Joyful.

12. Rilke writes in one letter, "At bottom ______ can help anyone else in life."
(a) Men.
(b) No one.
(c) Women.
(d) Everyone.

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

14. The translator claims that the poems in "Rilke's Poems on Love" deserve to take their place alongside whose great love poems?
(a) Dante's.
(b) Shelley's.
(c) Ovid's.
(d) Byron's.

15. Rilke writes in an untitled poem, "Who keeps innerly _____, touches the roots of speech."
(a) Stoic.
(b) Loved.
(c) Remembered.
(d) Silent.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Rilke write in his first letter, imploring the reader to try to love?

2. In the seventh of "The Seven Phallic Poems," what does the poet write that his "semen climbs gladly like"?

3. In an untitled poem from "Rilke's Poems on Other Difficulties," Rilke writes, "Great star of love's priestesses, which _____ kindles from its own right."

4. What is the title of the poem which begins, "Center, how you draw yourself out"?

5. In the excerpt of Rilke's letter in the Introduction, what essay does he refer to reading?

(see the answer keys)

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