The twin summits of German-language modernist poetry. The Elegies grapple with angels, mortality, and "the Open" (existence beyond human consciousness); the Sonnets transform Orpheus into the figure for poetry itself. Written in a two-week creative surge after a decade of silence, the Sonnets emerged simultaneously with the Elegies' completion. Together they constitute the greatest single contribution to European lyric poetry in the 20th century.

The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.