LIFE OF A POET: Rainer Maria Rilke.

By Ralph Freedman. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 640 pp. $35

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875--1926) is that rare oxymoron, a popular poet. Not in the academy, where young Germanists stake their careers in trendier soil, but among the ragged ranks of the reading public, Rilke is one of the most beloved poets of the 20th century. Born in Prague of a German-speaking family, he rejected the military and business career that was expected of him and, after a brief marriage to the sculptor Clara Westhoff, became a wandering artist, cultivating friends and admirers all over Europe. In the modernist age he began as a romantic, evolving over time into a visionary poet who revolutionized the German language.

One might quibble with the emphasis, or lack thereof, given certain minor works and figures in this biography. But Freedman, emeritus professor of comparative literature at Princeton University, manages to distill Rilke's letters, and many other sources besides, to their narrative essence--while doing justice to the major works, personae, and events. (Rilke scholars will also appreciate the book's comprehensive appendix.) Of special interest are the portraits of the writer Lou Andreas-Salome, arguably the most influential woman in Rilke's life, and of the artist Paula Modersohn-Becker, whose enigmatic painting of Rilke graces the book's cover and whose tragic early death inspired the poem "Requiem for a Friend."

Rilke's concept of nonpossessive love (besitziose Liebe) was central to his life and work, even though it caused him great anguish. In his letters to the artist Baladine Klossowska, the conflict between Rilke's calling as a poet (and the solitude it required) and his attraction to certain creative women comes through most clearly. As Freedman shows, Klossowska actually helped Rilke complete his most important work, the Duino Elegies (1923), by finding him a permanent home in the Chateau de Muzot, a primitive 13th-century tower in the Valais canton of Switzerland.

Rilke is sometimes seen as a pampered would-be aristocrat, flitting from one noble lord's (or lady's) castle to another. Yet while Freedman makes no attempt to gloss over the poet's shortcomings, the overall picture that emerges from these pages is admiring--and deservedly so. Rilke's life was hardly one of ease; his emotional and financial travails were real. But from pain he made poetry, as he himself explained in his Letters to a Young Poet: "Do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life has much difficulty and sadness.... Were it otherwise he would never have been able to find these words."