Château de Muzot

In 1921, it was purchased by Swiss merchant and arts patron Werner Reinhart who then invited Bohemian-Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) to live there rent-free.

[1] It was at Muzot, during a few weeks in February 1922, that Rilke after a long silence caused by severe depression finally completed the Duino Elegies and wrote the entire Sonnets to Orpheus (both published in 1923).

[3] Muzot appears in a reference within the poem cycle Sonnets from China (1936) by British poet W.H.

And with the gratitude of the Completed He went out in the winter night to stroke That little tower like a great old animal[4] The reference here to stroking "that little tower" is Muzot, and is derived from a series of letters written while Rilke was completing the Elegies including a letter he wrote to his current lover Baladine Klossowska,[5] and one to his former lover, Lou Andreas-Salomé.

In the letter to Andreas-Salomé, he writes "I went out and stroked the little Muzot, which protected it and me and finally granted it, like a large old animal.".