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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. What does Rilke suggest we do to the possible dangers at hand in life?
(a) Run from them.
(b) Arrest them.
(c) Conquer them.
(d) Try to love them.

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

3. 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 kills us.
(b) What blinds us.
(c) What we most trust.
(d) What frees us.

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

5. Unlike the characters in Poe's stories, Rilke writes that we are not what?
(a) Idiots.
(b) Prisoners.
(c) Slaves.
(d) Rats.

Short Answer 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"?

2. Rilke writes in "Blood-Remembering" that quite at the end of life, one might be able to write how many verses that were good?

3. What does Rilke write of memories of parents in "Blood-Remembering"?

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

5. Mood writes that the affirmative tone of "The Dragon-Princess" comes from its ambiguity and what?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is sacred to Mood regarding Rilke's writing? How does he express this in regarding his grave?

2. What is remarkable about Rilke's vision in "The Dragon-Princess"?

3. What metaphor does Rilke make in the end of "The Dragon-Princess" which echoes that of theories of psychology?

4. What comparison does Rilke use to explain human experience in "The Dragon-Princess"?

5. What metaphor does Rilke use in describing solitude in "The Dragon-Princess"?

6. What has Rilke accomplished in his epitaph, according to Mood?

7. What does "under so many lids" reference in "The Difficulty of Dying"?

8. Of what does Rilke say regarding insecurity in human relationships in "The Dragon-Princess"?

9. What does Rilke remark in "Blood-Remembering" of the memories themselves?

10. Describe in your own words what Rilke means in his metaphor of man's world in "The Dragon-Princess."

(see the answer keys)

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