Letters to a Young Poet

published	August 1st 1993 by W. W. Norton & Company
binding	Paperback
isbn	0393310396 (isbn13: 9780393310399)
pages	123
description	It would take a deeply cynical heart not to fall in love with Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. At the end of this millennium, hi...more [close] It would take a deeply cynical heart not to fall in love with Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. At the end of this millennium, his slender book holds everything a student of the century could want: the unedited thoughts of (arguably) the most important European poet of the modern age. Rilke wrote these 10 sweepingly emotional letters in 1903, addressing a former student of one of his own teachers. The recipient was wise enough to omit his own inquiries from the finished product, which means that we get a marvelously undiluted dose of Rilkean aesthetics and exhortation. The poet prefaced each letter with an evocative notation of the city in which he wrote, including Paris, Rome, and the outskirts of Pisa. Yet he spends most of the time encouraging the student in his own work, delivering a sublime, one-on-one equivalent of the modern writing workshop: <blockquote> Go into yourself and test the deeps in which your life takes rise; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create. Accept it, just as it sounds, without inquiring into it. Perhaps it will turn out that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what recompense might come from outside. </blockquote> Every page is stamped with Rilke's characteristic grace, and the book is free of the breathless effect that occasionally mars his poetry. His ideas on gender and the role of the artist are also surprisingly prescient. And even his retrograde comment on the "beauty of the virgin" (which the poet derives from the fact that she "has not yet achieved anything") is counterbalanced by his perception that "the sexes are more related than we think." Those looking for an alluring image of the solitary artist--and for an astonishing quotient of wisdom--will find both in Letters to a Young Poet. --Jennifer Buckendorff [close]
date added	03-19-07 edit book

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Lindsey rated it:

(review of isbn 0486422453)

01/04/08

bookshelves: favorites

Read in January, 2005

recommends it for: Myers Brigg INF's

Favorite quotes from first reading:

"I know of no other advice than this: Go within and scale the depths of your being from which your very life springs forth."

"Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and books written in foreign languages. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live with them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At pr...more

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May rated it:

(review of isbn 0486422453)

02/26/08

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in February, 2008

rainer maria rilke is a name i've been admiring for years without ever attempting to even pronounce it. "rainer maria rilke", i don't know why but all these letters placed together look perfect to me. a small poem in itself. as when neil wrote "two sun nine".
briefly about the letters:
something i wish i had read when i was fifteen or so, not that his advices are not pertinent anymore, but that it would have been quite beneficial at the time to hear them, reassuring, moti...more rainer maria rilke is a name i've been admiring for years without ever attempting to even pronounce it. "rainer maria rilke", i don't know why but all these letters placed together look perfect to me. a small poem in itself. as when neil wrote "two sun nine".
briefly about the letters:
something i wish i had read when i was fifteen or so, not that his advices are not pertinent anymore, but that it would have been quite beneficial at the time to hear them, reassuring, motivating, enlightening.
also that at times i could hardly focus on the reading because my brain was too stimulated by what i had just read, and wandered on to thinking about future projects. very inspiring in this way.

here are two of my favorite passages:
"But please, ask yourself whether these large sadnesses haven't rather gone right through you. Perhaps many things inside you have been transformed; perhaps somewhere, deep inside your being, you have undergone important changes while you were sad. The only sadnesses that are dangerous and unhealthy are the ones that we carry around in public in order to drown them out with the noise; like diseases that are treated superficially and foolishly, they just withdraw and after a short interval break out again all the more terribly; and gather inside us and are life, are life that is unlived, rejected, lost, life that we can die of. If only it were possible for us to see farther than our knowledge reaches, and even a little beyond the outworks of our presentiment, perhaps we would bear our sadnesses with greater trust than we have in our joys. For they are the moments when something new has entered us, something unknown; our feelings grow mute in shy embarrassment, everything in us withdraws, a silence arises, and the new experience, which no one knows, stands in the midst of it all and says nothing."

(remember this below was written in 1904)
"...Women, in whom life lingers and dwells more immediately , more fruitfully, and more confidently, must surely have become riper and more human in their depths than light, easygoing man, who is not pulled down beneath the surface of life by the weight of any bodily fruit and who, arrogant and hasty, undervalues what he thinks he loves. This humanity of woman, carried in her womb through all her suffering and humiliation, will come to light when she has stripped off the conventions of mere femaleness in the transformations of her outward status, and those men who do not yet feel it approaching will be astonished by it. Someday (and even now, especially in the countries of northern Europe, trustworthy signs are already speaking and shining), someday there will be girls and women whose name will no longer mean the mere opposite of the male, but something in itself, something that makes one think not of any complement and limit, but only of life and reality: the female human being.

This advance (at first very much against the will of the outdistanced men) will transform the love experience, which is now filled with error, will change it from the ground up, and reshape it into a relationship that is meant to be between one human being and another, no longer one that flows from man to woman. And this more human love (which will fulfill itself with infinite consideration and gentleness, and kindness and clarity in binding and releasing) will resemble what we are now preparing painfully and with great struggle: the love that consists in this: that two solitudes protect and border and greet each other."...less

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Carey rated it:

(review of isbn 0486422453)

11/26/07

Read in February, 1991

recommends it for: Souls

Stick with the M.D. Herder Norton translation:

Sex is difficult; yes. But they are difficult things with which we have been charged; almost everything serious is difficult, and everything is serious. If you only recognize this and manage, out of your self, out of your own nature and ways, out of your own experience and childhood and strength to achieve a relation to sex wholly your own (not influenced by convention and custom), then you need no longer be afraid of losing yourself and becom...more Stick with the M.D. Herder Norton translation:

Sex is difficult; yes. But they are difficult things with which we have been charged; almost everything serious is difficult, and everything is serious. If you only recognize this and manage, out of your self, out of your own nature and ways, out of your own experience and childhood and strength to achieve a relation to sex wholly your own (not influenced by convention and custom), then you need no longer be afraid of losing yourself and becoming unworthy of your best possession.

Physical pleasure is a sensual experience no different from pure seeing or the pure sensation with which a fine fruit fills the tongue; it is a great unending experience, which is given us, a knowing of the world, the fullness and glory of all knowing. And not our acceptance of it is bad; the bad thing is that most people misuse and squander this experience and apply it as a stimulant at the tired spots of their lives and as distraction instead of a rallying toward exalted moments. Men have made even eating into something else: want on the one hand, superfluity upon the other, have dimmed the distinctness of this need, and all the deep, simple necessities in which life renews itself have become similarly dulled. But the individual can clarify them for himself and live them clearly (and if not the individual, who is too dependent, then at least the solitary man). He can remember that all beauty in animals and plants is a quiet and enduring form of love and longing, and he can see animals, as he sees plants, patiently and willingly uniting and increasing and growing, not out of physical delight, not out of physical suffering, but bowing to necessities that are greater than pleasure and pain and more powerful than will and withstanding. . . . “The thought of being creator, of procreating, of making,” is nothing without its continuous great confirmation and realization in the world, nothing without the thousandfold concordance from things and animals—and enjoyment of it is so indescribably beautiful and rich only because it is full of inherited memories of the begetting and bearing of millions. In one creative thought a thousand forgotten nights of love revive, filling it with sublimity and exaltation. And those who come together in the night and are entwined in rocking delight do an earnest work and gather sweetnesses, gather depth and strength for the song of some coming poet, who will arise to speak of ecstasies beyond telling. And they call up the future; and though they err and embrace blindly, the future comes all the same, a new human being rises up. . . . And those who live the secret wrongly and badly (and they are very many), lose it only for themselves and still hand it on, like a sealed letter, without knowing it.

...less

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Lani rated it:

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09/05/07

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in January, 1994

recommends it for: everyone who seeks self-understanding and self-awareness

I was first acquainted with this book through an excerpt I heard in the tape of Beauty and the Beast, Love and Hope. It goes: "How should we be able to forget those ancient myths, those myths about dragons that at thelast moment turn into princesses. Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses,who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrble is, in its deepest being, something helpless that wants help from us. So you must not be frightened when ...more I was first acquainted with this book through an excerpt I heard in the tape of Beauty and the Beast, Love and Hope. It goes: "How should we be able to forget those ancient myths, those myths about dragons that at thelast moment turn into princesses. Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses,who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrble is, in its deepest being, something helpless that wants help from us. So you must not be frightened when a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen. Or a restiveness, like light and cloud shadows passes over your hand, and over all you do. You must think that life has not forgotten you. That it holds you in its hands. It will not let you fall."

That was one of my favorites in the tape, but that time I didn't know who wrote it. I would spend several hours poring over poetry books in bookstores to find out who wrote those beautiful and uplifting words. Then, I heard that excerpt again in a priest's sermon, one time when I was attending mass. The priest was talking about despair and darkness and he quoted those same words, saying it was written by Rainier Maria Rilke, one of Pope John Paul II's favorite poets. I found him in a church!

I eventually found Letters to a Young Poet and read the entire book straight. Reading it felt like being thirsty for so long and finally able to drink. You just want to drink and drink and drink. Most of what he wrote echoed what I have thought before, but was never sure whether those thoughts were right, or if they made sense in the real world. I especially like the part about the joys and pains of solitude, which I totally agree with. Others, I still did not understand, due to my own inexperience in life then. I was at the point of my life where I was starting to be independent, and was figuring out the direction I wanted to take.

From that time on, when I felt confused or sad or depressed about things, I would read Letters and find a profound consolation. Reading somebody's thoughts which almost echoes one's own, makes one feel less alone.

As I grew older and wiser, everytime I read Letters, it was like opening different doors of understanding. The words are the same, but it seems like he speaks to you in different ways, depending on your level of consciousness and comprehension. What is consistent, though, is the gentle comfort his words bring. ...less

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Casey rated it:

(review of isbn 1577311558)

01/25/08

Read in July, 2004

I love this book.

"Here, where I am surrounded by an enormous landscape, which the winds move across as they come from the seas, here I feel that there is no one anywhere who can answer for you those questions and feelings which, in their depths, have a life of their own; for even the most articulate people are unable to help, since what words point to is so very delicate, is almost unsayable. But even so, I think that you will not have to remain without a solution if you trust in Thing...more I love this book.

"Here, where I am surrounded by an enormous landscape, which the winds move across as they come from the seas, here I feel that there is no one anywhere who can answer for you those questions and feelings which, in their depths, have a life of their own; for even the most articulate people are unable to help, since what words point to is so very delicate, is almost unsayable. But even so, I think that you will not have to remain without a solution if you trust in Things that are like the ones my eyes are now resting upon. If you trust in Nature, in the small Things that hardly anyone sees and that can so suddenly become huge, immeasurable; if you have this love for what is humble and try very simply, as someone who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier for you, more coherent and somehow more reconciling, not in your conscious mind perhaps, which stays behind, astonished, but in your innermost awareness, awakeness, and knowledge. You are so young, so much before all beginning, and I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. Perhaps you do carry within you the possibility of creating and forming, as an especially blessed and pure way of living; train your for that - but take whatever comes, with great trust, and as long as it comes out of your will, out of some need of your innermost self, then take it upon yourself, and don't hate anything. Sex is difficult; yes. But those tasks that have been entrusted to us are difficult; almost everything serious is difficult; and everything is serious." ...less

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Robert rated it:

(review of isbn 0486422453)

01/23/08

bookshelves: finished, owned-and-gave-away

Read in January, 2003

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet (Norton, 1962)

I should preface my judgment on this by saying that I've been misled for the past twenty years regarding this book, which I somehow never got around to reading until I was older than both of the principals therein (the young poet hasn't yet reached his twenties at the beginning of the correspondence; Rilke is twenty-eight). Norton's categorization of it as literature (instead of philosophy), and various rave reviews of it that concentra...more Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet (Norton, 1962)

I should preface my judgment on this by saying that I've been misled for the past twenty years regarding this book, which I somehow never got around to reading until I was older than both of the principals therein (the young poet hasn't yet reached his twenties at the beginning of the correspondence; Rilke is twenty-eight). Norton's categorization of it as literature (instead of philosophy), and various rave reviews of it that concentrate on the fact that Rilke wrote these letters to a person who wrote him looking for help with his (the original writer's) poetry, led me to believe this small collection of essays had to do with poesy. No, they have to do with philosophy. Rilke informs his reader that he (Rilke) is unqualified to remark on craft and technique on the very first page, and does not do so for the rest of the book. So, in other words, I didn't get what I was expecting.

The philosophy therein seems pretty dated forty years after that fact (and almost a century since the letters were actually written), but we didn't have an avalanche of self-help books in 1962, many of which were probably derived at least in part from Rilke's words, feeding us this endless stream of unbearable pap. The book can be summed up neatly in the words of a particularly memorable Monty Python song (I'm sure I don't have to mention which), but that's not something to hold against the book. Rilke was a thinker of the illigitimi non carborundum school of thought; while his prose does get a tad wordy in a few places, he generally sticks to the point, and his words are far more intelligent than those of what has come since.

The Norton edition of 1962 also contains a mini-bio of Rilke centered around the time the letters were written, to give the reader background on the events in Rilke's life that were influencing his words. Nice addition that helps deepen the understanding of what he was on about.

I just wish he'd been on about poetry. *** ...less

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nanto rated it:

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02/04/08

bookshelves: a-must-read-book-for-me, cerpen-dan-essay, nant-s-book

Aku janji kirim buku ini ke kamu yah lim,
belum sempet tak kopiin, sori ye..

tak kutipin beberapa yang menarik:

"No one can advise or help you - no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write, find out wether it spreading out its root in the deepest places of your heart...Delve into yourself for a deep answer."

Then try, like some first human being, to say what you see and experience, and love and lose...describe you...more

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Matthew rated it:

(review of isbn 0486422453)

05/12/07

Letters to A Young Poet is a correspondence between Rainer Maria Rilke (German lyrical poet) and Franz Xaver Kappus (A young struggling student). I was given this book by a good friend while I was teaching English in Belmead, TX (a small urban community north of Waco). This book came to me in a time when I was struggling with life and needed some encouragement to show me that what I was doing was needed and necessary. This book gave me that and more.

The dialogue between these two men is...more

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Francesca rated it:

(review of isbn 0486422453)

11/28/07

Read in November, 2007

Rilke's letters to Kappus are addressed to a young man who obviously reminds Rilke of his younger life and self.
Within these letters are intimate statements on the artist's solitude, love, ambitions, and sorrow.

Rilke writes, "As to my own books, I wish I could send you any of them...but I am very poor, and my books, as soon as they are published, no longer belong to me. I can't even afford them myself".

If Rilke was left without the ability to share his work as he wished with...more

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Javier rated it:

(review of isbn 0486422453)

06/12/07

bookshelves: collegeleisuretime

Read in June, 2007

A different read than most that I've experienced, Letters to a Young Poet is a sensitive, courageous expression of some of Rilke's romantic thoughts on life. I definitely appreciated the stress he places on solitude as a means by which to discover oneself and engage in meaningful creation; the beauty and importance of his claim here, sadly enough, remind me of H. Marcuse's observation in One-Dimensional Man, which seems right, ...more

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Núria rated it:

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06/20/08

bookshelves: 2008, literatura-alemana, no-ficcion, owned

Read in June, 2008

recommends it for: a todos los que la soledad o la tristeza a veces nos agobia

No sé cuánto tiempo no hacía esto por placer. Pero 'Cartas a un joven poeta' me ha obligado a coger un lápiz y no sólo a subrayar frases/pasajes sino también escribir notas al margen. Así que algo tiene que significar. Es como un libro de autoayuda pero escrito desde la humildad, sin paternalismos ni pretenciosidad ni lugares comunes. Es una obra sincera y llena de pasión por la literatura y por la vida. Huye de los convencionalismos y nos enseña que la soledad y la tristeza son necesar...more

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Daniel rated it:

10/15/07

Read in April, 2008

recommends it for: everyone

Irony: Don't let yourself be controlled by it, especially during uncreative moments. When you are fully creative, try to use it, as one more way to take hold of life. Used purely, it too is pure, and one needn't be ashamed of it; but if you feel yourself becoming too familiar with it, if you are afraid of this growing familiarity, then turn to great and serious objects, in front of which it becomes small and helpless. Search into the depths of Things: there, irony never descends - and when you a...more

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Ayla rated it:

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05/13/07

bookshelves: goodnonfiction

Read in January, 1999

recommends it for: anyone willing to suspend their cynicism for a moment

I found this book in a dusty used book store in Billings, Montana while shopping with my father. I can't remember anymore if he told me about it once I picked it up, but in retrospect it was one of those magical book experiences. I remember scanning the back of my tattered edition and thinking it looked interesting, without any idea who Rilke was, and somehow having never heard the book referenced before. I read it, and was totally enchanted. I only discovered later that most of the world ha...more

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Meredith rated it:

(review of isbn 0486422453)

05/17/07

recommends it for: Anyone, especially saps like me

I can't express how much this book speaks to me--I've read and reread it at various points since receiving it as a gift during college. It will speak to you no matter what your situation, but I've felt overwhelmed by the passages dealing with loneliness, insecurity, grief, aspiration, etc. It's a bunch of letters written from one artist to another, but the ideas they touch on apply to everyone.

I think my favorite passage is the following:

"And if there is one more thing that I must...more

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Ying rated it:

(review of isbn 1577311558)

07/30/07

Read in July, 2007

recommends it for: the artist in everyone

Art through necessity. In Rilke's correspondences with his intent student, he describes art's goodness as synonymous not with the product, but with the origin. The impulse to make art, without which one is not the same, is the telltale sign of a true artist. He or she must live his craft. For anyone who has ever dabbled in the arts, they know art is one part desire and another part skill. I hope that anyone who picks up this insightful little volume will walk away feeling a little more empo...more

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Denis rated it:

(review of isbn 1577311558)

08/04/08

Read in August, 2008

recommended to Denis by: Britannie

I started reading this book with the expectation that I would work my way through it quickly, but I ended up being driven through each letter by a hunger that had me finishing the whole thing in an hour. Among the many effects it had on me, I was left feeling humbled by the depth of what was able to express. He went far beyond simply addressing the concerns of how to be a true artist (though his insights in that respect were priceless), and he touched various inarticulate threads of my spirit wi...more

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Mary Katherine rated it:

03/31/08

Read in March, 2008

What I liked the most about this book is that in nearly every letter to the young poet, Rilke promotes the poet to search himself and thrive in his own solitude. Rilke's letters of honesty to the young poet resound with me because he advises the poet but does not demand that his young protege do anything other than embrace all that solitude brings to him, to understand the difficulty of solitude, and to realize that the difficult is more fulfilling than any other endevour the young poet could ...more

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James rated it:

(review of isbn 0486422453)

02/24/08

Read in January, 1991

This is a book I read over and over again during a particularly difficult time in my life.

(I had had a freak accident where both my legs were broken, and that in turn seem to be the catalyst for the disintegration of the life and sense of self I had constructed up to that point in life. Because of this accident I found myself in a situation feeling like I had to construct a new life and conception of myself.)

During that time (and it probably lasted for two years at its most intense) I ...more

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kt rated it:

(review of isbn 0486422453)

01/01/08

Read in December, 2007

well, i have had two copies of this sitting on our bookshelf. my lovely partner gave me a new one a couple years ago as a present. i finally decided to read it AFTER reading the anna deveare smith book (see review for that under my other books). i love rilke's passion and his faith in humanity, his reverence for the power woman have, and, of course, i love his solitude. his words are hopeful, but i had to remind myself that we are in a different time, that the romantic notion of the lone wolf ar...more

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Mike rated it:

(review of isbn 0486422453)

04/16/08

bookshelves: theater-poetry

Poetry is a lost art in most circles. We don't appreciate that an entire story can be capsulized in a form different than the norm. No one has spanned many languages better than Rilke. His writing, deep with sensuous emotion and deeply held convictions is difficult for a prose reader to catch at first. He is the german equivalent of Dylan Thomas (my other favorite poet). He sees life and then quantifies it in as few words as possible. Of course, he doesn't overdo it like William Carlos Williams,...more

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Letters to a Young Poet

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