The latter was, for Rilke, the crucial undertaking of an aspiring poet. He saw the journey of the artist as, above all, an inward quest, involving less the mastery of technique or tradition than the relentless exploration of the soul. “Sir,” he wrote to Kappus in the first letter, “I can’t give you any advice but this: to go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows.”
