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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How much earlier than his death did Rilke pen his epitaph?
(a) Three years.
(b) Two months.
(c) Fifteen months.
(d) One month.

2. Rilke writes that most people only know a corner of their room, and thus have a certain what?
(a) Blindness.
(b) Desperation.
(c) Security.
(d) Love.

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

4. Rilke writes in "The Dragon-Princess," He would think himself falling or hurled _________, or exploded into a thousand pieces."
(a) Onto the moon.
(b) Into the ocean.
(c) Across the universe.
(d) Out into space.

5. In what year was Rilke's only full-length novel completed?
(a) 1922.
(b) 1916.
(c) 1910.
(d) 1925.

6. What of the sea does Rilke write of remembering in "Blood-Remembering"?
(a) Evenings.
(b) Sunsets.
(c) Lovemaking.
(d) Mornings.

7. Rilke suggests to the reader in "The Dragon-Princess," "we must assume our existence as _____ as we in any way can."
(a) Openly.
(b) Broadly.
(c) Narrowly.
(d) Brazenly.

8. Rilke writes, as the first lines of "Blood-Remembering," "Ah! but verses amount to so little when one writes them _____."
(a) Young.
(b) Old.
(c) Blind.
(d) Through dreams.

9. From which of Rilke's poems does Mood quote "The Difficulty of Dying," "the glance while, as though caught by a whirlpool's / circling, swims a little while"?
(a) "Greek Love-Talk."
(b) "The Rose Window."
(c) "The Lovers."
(d) "Dying Rose."

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

11. 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."
(a) Matthew.
(b) Luke.
(c) Samuel Beckett.
(d) Jesus Christ.

12. 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) Jesus Christ.
(b) Norman O. Brown.
(c) Nietzsche.
(d) Samuel Beckett.

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

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

15. 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 Bowl of Roses."
(b) "Greek Love-Talk."
(c) "The Lovers."
(d) "The Rose Window."

Short Answer Questions

1. What must "one know" in order to write a single verse?

2. In "The Dragon-Princess," Rilke writes "That mankind has in this sense been cowardly has done life endless _____."

3. Mood writes that Rilke's novel is "dialectically" what?

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

5. Rilke writes in "The Dragon-Princess," that "fear of the inexplicable has not alone ______ the existence of the individual."

(see the answer keys)

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