Institut Ramon LLull

One day “a scantily-dressed girl” came across a book that Albert Roig had read eighteen years before. She said to him: “This Rilke is an odd man, of a boiled fish”. She might have received a vague reply but instead Roig’s answer came in the form of a book. Like the rose in Rilke’s epitaph — Rose, oh reiner Widerspruch, Lust, Niemandes Schlaf zu sein unter soviel Lidern [Rose, oh pure contradiction, delight of being no one’s sleep under so many lids] Rainer Maria Rilke wore many masks, behind which lies a mystery. Rilke was the child able to see within a dog, a man who made illness a profession, a lover of princesses, a rake who frittered away the little money he had, the visionary who said that the angels dictate elegies, Rodin’s proud secretary. In portraying Rilke’s many masks, Albert Roig works with biographical materials and their exegesis but he also transcends them. In a deep, enlightening dialogue, he seeks the mystery that nurtures Rilke’s poetry.