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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Rilke writes in one letter, "Almost everything ______ is difficult, and everything is _______."
(a) Sensual.
(b) Serious.
(c) Love.
(d) Sexual.

2. In "The Poet Praises," Rilke writes, "Maidens, you warm ones, maidens, you mute and dumb, / dance the taste of the experienced _____!"
(a) Fruit.
(b) Berries.
(c) Jams.
(d) Silence.

3. Which poem begins with the line, "And the last perhaps will not return"?
(a) "The Lovers."
(b) "Greek Love-Talk."
(c) "Woman's Lament I."
(d) "Woman's Lament II."

4. The poem "Gong" makes use of what literary technique?
(a) Onomatapeia.
(b) Irony.
(c) Absurdism.
(d) Segmentation.

5. In the excerpt of Rilke's letter in the Introduction, what essay does he refer to reading?
(a) Plato's Symposium.
(b) Cicero's Symposium.
(c) Platos' Cave.
(d) Homer's Odyssey.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Rilke write that he holds to be "the highest task of a bond between two people"?

2. In the introduction to "Rilke's Poems on Love," the commentator states that Rilke's imagery is all what?

3. Of what fruit does Rilke write of in "The Poet Praises"?

4. Rilke writes in his letters on love, "Once we were ______ in every part, now we are that in one part only."

5. Rilke writes of love that "So whoever loves must try to act as if he had a _________."

Short Essay Questions

1. What sexual elements are undertaken in The Seven Phallic Poems?

2. What does Rilke say regarding the institute of marriage and solitude?

3. What is the poet writing about in "The Poet Praises"?

4. How does Rilke regard the difficulty of sex in his opening letters?

5. What does the commentator say regarding Rilke's feminism in the Prologue?

6. What does Rilke say regarding the young and marriage in his letters?

7. What does Rilke write of "silence" in his untitled poems?

8. In the untitled poems of "Rilke's Poems of Other Difficulties," how does Rilke write of the gods?

9. What references to Venus does Rilke make in the untitled poems of "Poems of Other Difficulties"?

10. How does Rilke suggest sexuality should be regarded in terms of innocence? What does he say of children?

(see the answer keys)

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