Rainer Maria Rilke was a Bohemian-Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most significant poets in the German language. His haunting images focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety: themes that tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist poets. Alfred de Zayas is an American lawyer (Harvard) and historian (Gottingen), former Secretary of the United Nations Human Rights Committee and currently professor of international law at the Geneva School of Diplomacy. He was founder and President of the United Nations Society of Writers and since 2006 is President of the PEN Centre Suisse Romand, Switzerland. www.alfreddezayas.com