Rainer Maria Rilke - O Livro de Horas

The term "Book of Hours" refers to breviaries (prayer books used by priests) intended for lay people, containing prayers for specific times of day, as is evident in the poetic style of the first book in this volume by Rilke. They were widely disseminated from the 12th to the 16th centuries, and French books of hours, especially those richly illustrated and adorned, are still known today. The other two books in this volume by the author point to life as a pilgrimage, facing adversities such as poverty and death. […]

The Book of Hours is not only the basis of Rilke's fame as a poet – it was the first of his books to become widely known – but it also marked an era in his work. This is the first truly complete poetic cycle: not only because it arose from a threefold inspiring impulse invested with immediate validity, such that even the sequence of writing could be maintained as an organizing principle, but above all because in its inventory of motifs, in its images and myths, in its formal structure and in its stylistic physiognomy it projects a cohesive model of the poetic world.

In this way he achieved his goal of "finding images for my transformations" (SW III 699). Therefore, *The Book of Hours* marks the beginning of his mature poetic work.

(From the Preface by Maria Teresa Dias Furtado)