The only sadnesses that are dangerous and unhealthy are the ones that we carry around in public in order to drown them out with the noise; like diseases that are treated superficially and foolishly, they just withdraw and after a short interval break out again all the more terribly; and gather inside us and are life, are life that is unlived, rejected, lost, life that we can die of.

During the later part of this decade Rilke spent extended periods in Ronda the famous bull-fighting center in southern Spain. During this time Reinhart introduced Rilke to his protégée the Australian violinist Alma Moodie. While doing so he pricked his hand on a thorn.

His writings include one novel several collections of poetry and several volumes of correspondence in which he invokes haunting images that focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief solitude and profound anxiety. These deeply existential themes tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist writers. While born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire Rilke travelled extensively throughout Europe and North Africa including Russia Spain Germany France Italy and in his later years settled in Switzerland—settings that were key to the genesis and inspiration for many of his poems.