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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through The Difficulty of Dying: Rilke's Self-Composed Epitaph.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Over what does the poet write, "we will together contend" in "Greek Love-Talk"?
(a) The forest.
(b) Your breasts.
(c) This war.
(d) Our love.

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

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

4. Mood notes in his introduction to Rilke's poetry that the poet was "in no way an _______, nor in his life."
(a) Artist.
(b) Actor.
(c) Amateur.
(d) Aesthete.

5. What does Rilke write of "screams of women" in "Blood-Remembering"?
(a) In labor.
(b) In regret.
(c) In sorrow.
(d) In heartbreak.

Short Answer Questions

1. In one untitled poem from "Rilke's Poems of Other Difficulties," the poet writes, "Give me, oh earth, pure _____ / clay for the jug of tears."

2. The translator claims that the poems in "Rilke's Poems on Love" deserve to take their place alongside whose great love poems?

3. Where does Rilke suggest a person might be removed from his room and placed, in discussing a metaphor for solitude?

4. What of the sea does Rilke write of remembering in "Blood-Remembering"?

5. In "The Seven Phallic Poems," who "grasps suddenly the bull bud of his vitality"?

(see the answer key)

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