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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Where does Rilke suggest a person might be removed from his room and placed, in discussing a metaphor for solitude?
(a) A great mountain.
(b) An endless sea.
(c) A vast desert.
(d) A spider web.

2. Rilke writes in "Blood-Remembering," One must be able to forget them when they are many and one must have the great _____ to wait until they come again."
(a) Fortitude.
(b) Patience.
(c) Strength.
(d) Will.

3. Of what does Rilke write is, "to have courage for the most strange, most singular, and the most inexplicable that we may encounter"?
(a) The single obstacle in love.
(b) The only courage that is demanded of us.
(c) The singular obstacle in life.
(d) The only feeling we must feel.

4. Rilke writes in "The Dragon-Princess," that "fear of the inexplicable has not alone ______ the existence of the individual."
(a) Blinded.
(b) Killed.
(c) Drowned.
(d) Impoverished.

5. What does Rilke address in his epitaph?
(a) A tree.
(b) A statue.
(c) A rose.
(d) A lion.

6. The accompaniment to writing poetry as a subject to Rilke is what?
(a) Living life.
(b) Dreaming.
(c) Water.
(d) Love.

7. From what comes the line, "Murderers are / easily comprehended"?
(a) Duino Elegies.
(b) Letters to a Young Poet.
(c) Sonnets to Orpheus.
(d) The Seven Phallic Poems.

8. For the sake of what, much one see many cities, men and things, etc.?
(a) A single verse.
(b) A song.
(c) A novel.
(d) A poem.

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

10. The final lines of Rilke's epitaph read: "To be no one's sleep under so many ____."
(a) Loves.
(b) Leaves.
(c) Lids.
(d) Eyes.

11. In "Blood-Remembering," Rilke writes "One must be able to think back to roads in ________."
(a) Remote lands.
(b) Days of yore.
(c) Childhood memory.
(d) Unknown regions.

12. Speaking of solitude, Rilke writes, "We are solitary. We may _____ ourselves and act as though this were not so."
(a) Deny.
(b) Trick.
(c) Lie to.
(d) Delude.

13. On what word does Mood focus in examining the ambiguity of "The Dragon-Princess"?
(a) Until.
(b) Hope.
(c) Maybe.
(d) Perhaps.

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

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

Short Answer Questions

1. Who said, "You have heard that it was said to the men of old, 'You shall not kill; and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment.' But I say to you that every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment."

2. Rilke says in "The Dragon-Princess," that "the experiences called 'visions,' the whole so-called 'spirit world'," etc. has been so crowded out of life that the "sense we could have grasped them with has" done what?

3. What "gesture" must one know in order to write?

4. What is the "romantic notion held by many young people," that Mood speaks of in introducing "Blood-Remembering"?

5. What does Rilke write that verses are in "Blood-Remembering"?

(see the answer keys)

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