Richard Meszleny/Messer – Ein (fast) vergessener Interpret des Werks von R. M. Rilke
Richard Meszleny / Messer - An (almost) forgotten interpreter of the work of R. M. Rilke

Summary/Abstract: This study is an attempt to reconstruct the ways through which Richard Messer/Meszleny (1881–1961) approached the work of Rainer Maria Rilke in his writings, starting with three German-language studies published in 1919 in journals – although it is probably fair to assume that Messer’s interest in Rilke’s oeuvre goes back further in time – following with other reflective pieces (in the journal Das Riff, the daily Prager Presse) and a Czech-German monograph entitled Moderní pražský mystik Rainer Maria Rilke [The Modern Prague Mystic Rainer Maria Rilke] (1923), as well as a tractate on Rilke which was part of a treatise on “the epic Mariology of German poetry in the middle and new ages” (1924). Messer, who worked at the Prague Czech Faculty of Arts until the 1950s as a German lecturer, returned to Rilke’s work in subsequent years – albeit more sporadically – and the final instance apparently was the article Internacionálnost moderní lyriky [The Internationality of Modern Lyricism], printed in 1948 in the Filosofická revue [Philosophical Revue].

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