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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. 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) Patience.
(b) Fortitude.
(c) Will.
(d) Strength.

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

3. Who does the commentator conclude that Rilke's epitaph addresses?
(a) Madonna.
(b) Pan.
(c) Orpheus.
(d) God.

4. 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?
(a) Collapsed.
(b) Melted.
(c) Diminished.
(d) Atrophied.

5. Mood writes in "The Difficulty of Dying," "the contradiction is a ____ one, that is, it resides in the bloom itself."
(a) Alluring.
(b) Pure.
(c) Complex.
(d) Distinct.

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

7. 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"?
(a) Nietzsche.
(b) Samuel Beckett.
(c) Norman O. Brown.
(d) Jesus Christ.

8. What does Rilke write that one ought to wait and gather "a whole life long," in "Blood-Remembering"?
(a) Experience and memory.
(b) Age and memory.
(c) Memory and truth.
(d) Sense and sweetness.

9. In his final lines of the Epilogue, Mood writes, "That much would be sufficient--for beginning is perhaps the most ______ thing of all."
(a) Rudimentary.
(b) Loving.
(c) Significant.
(d) Difficult.

10. In "Blood-Remembering," from what comes poetry?
(a) Truth.
(b) Life.
(c) Blood-remembering.
(d) Secrets.

11. From what comes the line, "Killing is a form of our wandering mourning"?
(a) Duino Elegies.
(b) The Seven Phallic Poems.
(c) Letters to a Young Poet.
(d) Sonnets to Orpheus.

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

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

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

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

Short Answer Questions

1. Rilke suggests to the reader in "The Dragon-Princess," "we must assume our existence as _____ as we in any way can."

2. Mood writes in "The Difficulty of Dying," "The sleep is no one's, yet it belongs intimately to ____."

3. Rilke writes, "So for him who becomes solitary, all distances, all measures ____."

4. Mood writes in "The Difficulty of Dying," that Rilke says of lovers, "Being full of life, ... are full of ____."

5. Speaking of solitude, Rilke writes, "We are solitary. We may _____ ourselves and act as though this were not so."

(see the answer keys)

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