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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. 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 only feeling we must feel.
(b) The single obstacle in love.
(c) The singular obstacle in life.
(d) The only courage that is demanded of us.

2. What "gesture" must one know in order to write?
(a) With which the flowers open.
(b) Of the seas.
(c) Of the rivers running.
(d) Of the music.

3. What has the fear of the inexplicable also impoverished, according to Rilke?
(a) Trust in God.
(b) Belief in self.
(c) Relationships between human beings.
(d) Relationships with God.

4. What must "one know" in order to write a single verse?
(a) The rivers.
(b) The animals.
(c) The world.
(d) The women.

5. What is the principle subject of "Blood-Remembering"?
(a) Writing.
(b) Sculpting.
(c) Painting.
(d) Love.

6. From what book of the Bible does Mood quote in the Epilogue?
(a) Matthew.
(b) Ecclesiastes.
(c) James.
(d) Luke.

7. Of what excerpt does Mood write is "the most affirmative passage of nonfiction prose I have ever come across"?
(a) "The Dragon-Princess."
(b) "Letters to a Young Poet."
(c) "Blood-Remembering."
(d) "The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge."

8. Which word of Rilke's epitaph is set aside by commas?
(a) Rose.
(b) Love.
(c) Sensual.
(d) Desire.

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

10. In "The Dragon-Princess," Rilke suggests that we hold our life to the most difficult, and that which now "still seems to us the most alien will become" what?
(a) What frees us.
(b) What blinds us.
(c) What kills us.
(d) What we most trust.

11. What does Rilke refer to death as?
(a) The other side of life.
(b) The killer of children.
(c) The lover's quarrel.
(d) The sleeping beast.

12. In "The Dragon-Princess," Rilke writes, "It is not _____ alone that is responsible for human relationships repeating themselves from case to case..."
(a) Inertia.
(b) Desperation.
(c) Fear.
(d) Luxury.

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

14. Which poem of Rilke's does Mood refer to in the lines, "And this: that one opens like a lid, / and lying under there nothing but eyelids"?
(a) "The Lovers."
(b) "The Rose Window."
(c) "The Bowl of Roses."
(d) "Greek Love-Talk."

15. Rilke wrote less about the craft of writing than what, according to Mood?
(a) The heart.
(b) The inner life discipline.
(c) The structure.
(d) The integrity.

Short Answer Questions

1. From what novel is the excerpt "Blood-Remembering" taken?

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

3. What does Rilke write "that rushed along on high and flew with all the stars"?

4. What does Mood write is the fallacy of expression theory in art?

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

(see the answer keys)

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