Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/Duino Elegies

Duino Elegies

This nomination predates the introduction in April 2014 of article-specific subpages for nominations and has been created from the edit history of Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests.

This is the archived discussion of the TFAR nomination for the article below. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/requests). Please do not modify this page.

The result was: scheduled for Wikipedia:Today's featured article/August 2, 2013 by Bencherlite^Talk 09:30, 17 July 2013‎ (UTC)

The Duino Elegies are a collection of ten poems written by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926), a Bohemian-Austrian poet. The elegies are intensely religious, mystical poems that employ a rich symbolism of angels and salvation weighing beauty and existential suffering while addressing issues such as the limits of the human condition, loneliness, love and death. Rilke began writing the elegies in 1912 while a guest of Princess Marie von Thurn und Taxis (1855–1934) at Duino Castle near Trieste, and they were dedicated to her upon publication. Aside from brief episodes of writing in 1913 and 1915, Rilke did not return to the work until a few years after the end of World War I. With a sudden, renewed inspiration—writing in a frantic pace he described as a "boundless storm, a hurricane of the spirit"—he completed the collection in February 1922 while staying at Château de Muzot in Veyras, Switzerland. The delay in completing the work was because he suffered frequently from severe depression caused by the events of the war. The Duino Elegies are recognized by critics and scholars as his most important work, and have influenced many poets and writers in the twentieth century. (Full article...)

I would say that this is article qualifies for two points, possibly three.

• Definite 2 points -- Main page representation (there have been articles on poets and authors, novels, but no TFA's for books of poetry in 2012, 2013 as far as I see)
• Possible 1 point -- The possible additional point would be for Diversity/Subject underrepresented at WP:FA...while the Literature category has more than 50 articles, I'd argue that because there are few works of poetry, works of poetry is rather underrepresented.

--ColonelHenry (talk) 12:55, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

• Comment: no extra point, a poem is scheduled for 18 July, - I would not mind that, though, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:19, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

• For the record, -3 points but I'm not bothered and will run this in a little while. As Gerda helpfully notes, a poem is TFA on 18th July which at present gives it a 3-point penalty. No additional point for diversity because there are more than 50 FA literature articles and we don't subdivide FA categories to give bonus points. While it's a delight to be spoiled for choices with poems, I will probably give it a couple of weeks after that poem runs to give other articles a fair crack of the whip(!) Blurb rewritten slightly and expanded to closer to the standard blurb length. Thanks for the nomination - a bit of change from your last TFA, isn't it? Bencherlite^Talk 13:39, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

• @Bencherlite: Quite a change from my last TFA, yes, indeed. Thanks for the revisions to the blurb, it definitely clarifies the depression/WWI delay better than I originally approached it. I was unaware of the July 18th TFA selection, and did my count of poetry TFA's before it was proposed (then proposed it after coming back from vacation, and low and behold, July 18th). I might have another 4 points in the near future for it because it looks like DE will be included at Vital Articles/Expanded.--ColonelHenry (talk) 00:55, 10 July 2013 (UTC)