Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

Letters to a Young Poet
Letters to a Young Poet
Letters to a Young Poet
Ebook80 pages1 hour

Letters to a Young Poet

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

()

Read preview

About this ebook

These have been called the most famous and beloved letters of the past century. Rainer Maria Rilke himself said that much of his creative expression went into his correspondence, and here he touches upon a wide range of subjects that will interest writers, artists,and thinkers.

This luminous translation of Rainer Maria Rilke's classic offers brilliant inspiration to all people who seek to know and express their inner truth. Letters to a Young Poet is a classic that should be required reading for anyone who dreams of expressing themselves creatively.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 4, 2010
ISBN9781577313267
Author

Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) ist der weltweit berühmteste Dichter deutscher Sprache. Seine Werke sind ebenso populär wie schwer zu verstehen - der „Cornet“, das „Stunden-Buch“, die „Neuen Gedichte“, die „Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge“, die „Duineser Elegien“ und „Die Sonette an Orpheus“, ebenso seine Prosaschriften und seine Übersetzungen aus dem Französischen, Italienischen und anderen Sprachen.

Read more from Rainer Maria Rilke

Related to Letters to a Young Poet

Related ebooks

Composition & Creative Writing For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for Letters to a Young Poet

Rating: 4.217104914035088 out of 5 stars
4/5

1,140 ratings43 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    In our 'constantly connected' computer age, Rilke's deep exploration of solitude and patient artistic growth is a breath of inspiration.

    "Only love can touch and hold [works of art] and be fair to them," he writes to Kappus, and then admonishes him to "believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it."

    It is an understatement to say that Rilke sets the bar high for poetic expression, but every time I read through these letters I'm inspired to at least try to create what he'd call a few good lines before I breathe my last.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    These ten letters from the poet Rilke’s contain not only advice on poetry and writing in general, but advice on many of the facets of life itself. Franz Kappus wrote to Rilke who had been at the same military school as Rilke around a decade earlier, and received this letters in return to his ongoing correspondence between 1903 and 1908. This was an interesting time for Rilke, who throughout was struggling to work productively. Though he had already published two collections of poems which had made him relatively well-known, he was in a rut throughout much of this period, travelling around and working on various things, including a study of Rodin whom he got to know quite well. It was only years later that Rilke receive the intense bout of creative inspiration that led to his writing the scores of poems of the celebrated Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus which he completed over a few weeks in 1922. Rilke is very sympathetic and understanding in these letters. He is kindly and helpful, and has much insight on the difficulties of life. We do not have here the letters that Kappus wrote to Rilke, as these letters were only published years later by Kappus, who naturally did not have the copies of the letters he himself sent. At the end of this volume we have a brief section covering the context of what Rilke was doing around the time when he wrote each of these letters, which is useful to have. These letters are not just of use to the would-be poet, but contain so much good advice and insight into life that they would be worth reading for anyone who does not quite know what to do with themselves. Generally a handy volume to have around to dip back into when necessary.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Rilke wrote a series of letters to the young poet, Franz Xaver Kappus, beginning in 1902. Kappus was reading Rilke's poetry under the chestnut tress at the Military Academy in Wiener Nuestadt when his teacher, Horaček, noticed the volume. Rilke had been a pupil at the Military Lower School in Sankt Pölten when Horaček was a chaplain there, and Horaček had known Rilke personally. The military proved not to be for Rilke, and he continued his studies in Prague. Kappus, however, felt that his own choice to pursue a military career was "directly opposed to my own inclinations", yet would continue his military career for years after. In the meantime, Kappus decided to write to Rilke to ask for feedback on his own poetry, and Rilke maintained their correspondence despite his constant travels. By Rilke's tone in the letters, it is obvious that he enjoyed his correspondence with Kappus, and often told Kappus that if he wished to be a poet, he would need to change careers, or, at worst, he might find time in barracks life to keep at his poetry. The book provides Rilke's correspondence to Kappus, beginning with his return letter of 1903 and continuing until 1908. The book also includes a second work, The Letter from the Young Worker, which adopts a letter format to "a polemic against Christianity". This style recalls the dialogues of Plato and others, but in this case is one side of a potential written conversation. In many ways, the style mirrors the way we read Rilke's correspondence with Kappus, only having (mostly) one side of the narrative. In his first response, Rilke provides some important feedback. He suggests that Kappus' poetry lacks an identity. He suggests that Kappus is looking to the outside, but the answer is (pp. 6-7):Go into yourself. Examine the reason that bids you to write. This above all: ask yourself in your night's quietest hour: must I write? Dig down deep into yourself for a deep answer. And if it should be affirmative, if it is given to you to respond to this serious question with a loud and simple "I must', then construct your life according to this necessity; your life right into its most inconsequential and slightest hour must become a witness to this urge... A work of art is good if it has risen out of necessity... Accept this answer as it is, without seeking to interpret it. Perhaps it will turn out that you are called to be an artist... Then assume this fate and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking after the rewards that may come from outside.Imagine having such a mentor? Rilke was patient, kind, and wise. His connection with Kappus has, perhaps, something to do with being a poet while in the military system, something I identify with personally (having found that the military was, once I neared the tell-tale signs of the evening of my youth, "directly opposed to my own inclinations"). There is so much in such a short work, with Rilke's advice becoming "Candidean" - "take refuge in [subjects] offered by your own day-to-day life" - and focused on the individual rather than the work (and not in a mean-spirited way but as a mentor). Given that Kappus continues his military career and does not become a poet of any note, and that Rilke was the opposite in springing from the military's well, it makes me wonder: should we take care in choosing our careers so we do not waste time in the wrong station? Or should we learn what really floats our boat through trial and error? I suspect, based on Rilke's care for Kappus' work, that Rilke really knew himself as a result, while I felt that, perhaps, Kappus had taken the easy option.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    "...we will also gradually learn to realize that that which we call destiny goes forth from within people, not from without into them."From this incredibly sensitive and thoughtful man one can receive a lifetime's worth of advice on nearly all the topics pertinent to being human; namely, love, but also work, work/life balance, forgiveness, childhood difficulties, youthful exuberances, sex and poetry. Rilke was so remarkably giving of his wisdom, his thoughts, his deeply personal inner life. What a fortunate man, was Mr. Kappus, to have such a pen pal.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is a charming little book, as fluid and emotive as Rilke's own poetry. Honest in its advice, and how it is unafraid to take on the darker realms of emotion and embrace the fate of the world.

    Being a writer or a poet is a task of intense devotion, and Rilke gives it proper reverence. Rilke's focus is on the benefits of solitude and meditation, but also the steady work involved in this task, and how the writer must keep working so as to refine their craft.

    This is a (dare I say?) very spiritual book. Recommended to all.

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Lovely collection of letters, advising a younger poet about life and art. As with most great works, it's greater than the sum of its parts. Rilke's musings and recommendations penetrate into humans' purpose, and how we fulfill that purpose. Or don't.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I'll preface this with the admission that I'm not a poet and neither an avid poetry reader nor writer. "Roses are red, violets are not. I've got hay fever and plenty of..." You get the point. I was led to read this by my brother-in-law who spontaneously recites appropriate German poetry to fit the situation and then kindly translates it into English. I was particularly taken by a poem he recited by Rainer Maria Rilke, and sought out more information about him. This work is essentially ten letters that Rilke wrote to a younger poet over a relatively short period of time. While some of each is rather mundane sorry-I-didn't-write-sooner type stuff, much is extremely compelling, insightful, thought-provoking, and lyrically-phrased. What he has to say in some letters goes way beyond how-to-be-a-better-poet to how to view and deal with life itself. I cannot say that I understand or agree with everything he has said, but he most definitely got my attention.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Maybe a century has made this work less -- shocking? valuable? relatable?
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    These are 10 letters that Rainer Maria Rilke sent in reply to a young man who began the correspondence with regard to his own poetry's worth.I would very much like to read more from this man. Many, many things that he said (though not all) were deeply-profound and affecting, one quote by him in particular was relevant and moving in my life right now, and so I am thankful to have been able to read such words as his. His perspective, even where mine differed, engaged me in deep and interesting thought."To express yourself, use the things that surround you, the pictures of your dreams and the objects of your recollections. When your daily life seems barren, do not blame it; blame yourself rather and tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for the creative worker knows no barrenness and no poor indifferent place.""And when from this turning inwards, from this retreat into your own world, verses come into being, then you will not think of asking anyone, whether they are good verses.""You cannot disturb [your course of development] more drastically than if you direct your thoughts outwards and expect from without the answer to questions which probably only your innermost feeling in the quietest hour of your life can answer.""Attach yourself to Nature, to the simple and small in her, which hardly anyone sees, but which can so unexpectedly turn into the great and the immeasurable.""Ripen like a tree which does not force its sap, but in the storms of spring stands confident without being afraid that afterwards no summer may come."It makes me long for such meaningful correspondence with another, and I think that all artists should glimpse upon these words, for the book is short, but will last beyond the pages."And for the rest, let life happen to you. Believe me, life is right in every case."
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    LOVE THIS.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    These ten letters give us a glimpse into Rilke's philosophies of writing and life in general. They are at times very interesting, but at times boring. The mini biography of Rilke's life at the back gives the letters context, but is very boring.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is a short but thought-filled book that provides sage advice for writers, poets, and just about anyone. Rainer discusses topics such as the value of solitude, the nature of love, and personal growth. Written with wisdom and compassion, the book is filled with life experience that has been processed and well understood through time. In these ten short letters, Rilke provides some great advice, especially concerning our uncertainties about ourselves and the unknown future."Just as people for a long time had a wrong idea about the sun's motion, they are even now wrong about the motion of what is to come. The future stands still, Dear Mr. Kappus, but we move in infinite space."
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    It is a moving book and a youthful book. I wish I had it all along. Rilke writes with love and deep understanding, thoughts that at first seem like platitudes because of their generality and ring of truth. They could be in a self help book if not for the complexity of thought and phrasing he brings, the thought-throughness of it, and the many unconventional quirks he throws in. This is a book to be re-read many times over.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Beautiful... Not a "how to write" book, a beautiful book about the art of writing.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Worth reading, especially if you are an artist or writer. There are gems of advice tucked here and there. Rilke's letters to Franz Kappus make we wish I could travel back in time and talk to one or both of them.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I loved it. A little too much religion and emphasis on purity, and I'm pretty sure why he's as depressive as he was, but still mainly good advice.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Ten letters written between 1903 and 1908 to Franz Xaver Kappus, an aspiring poet writing to Rilke for advice. Rilke wrote the letters from Paris, Viareggio (near Pisa, Italy, and near where Shelley drowned), Rome, and Sweden. Much if not all of the collected letters discuss the creative process and the writing life. They were written (as the editor's supplementary biographical "chronicle" illustrates) during a time when Rilke was reflecting on his own unproductive spells. Rilke arguably wrote the letters more to himself and to the eternity of future writers as a kind of "credo" than to his particular correspondent, so for those seeking to understand Rilke the exclusion of Kappus' letters is probably inconsequential. Topics include: the creative process, irony, the poet's proper indifference to criticism and even feedback, sex (and its closeness to artistic experience), solitude, God, difficulty ("we must always hold to the difficult"), love (loving rightly and wrongly), the difference between the sexes, the future, convention and the poet's anti-conventionalism, repetition, emotions and doubt. "This, above all, ask yourself in the stillest hour of the night: must I write? Delve deep into yourself. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this question witha strong and simple 'I must' then build your lfie according to this necessity; your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and a testimony to it."The book can be read in a day, and should be read by every aspiring writer in a very quiet place, in solitude. Very German.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a young poet, at the beginning of the twentieth century.In 1903, by choosing to answer a letter and few poems sent him by the nineteen-year-old Mr. Kappus, Rilke, then twenty-seven, initiated a five-year intermittent exchange of letters that became one of the most famous in the literature of the world. The two men started off by acknowledging solitude as both a burden and a gift, but even more as the sole foundation without which no genuine poetic work could even emerge -- this solitude seen as the center around which their letters, and their lives, revolved and to which their discussions returned again and again.Both men wrote out of that particular reality each was facing and dealing with at the time: Kappus, revealing himself to another as never before, out of his confusion and need for help; and Rilke, now with wife and child, starting to see for the first time how terribly great that distance was both within and around him because of who and what at core he was. He feared it greatly and longed to be freed of the suffering it brought; he even touched on it in these letters, but though he finally came to see the kind of relating that would transcend it, he could not manage to arrive there. The powerful themes of creativity and love arise, and insights are found here regarding both of these as profound as any to be found anywhere. As Pascal once observed: the ones we love the most are not those who give us something we did not have before, but those who show us the richness of what we already possess. That is a way of saying what Rilke was doing for Kappus: showing him the richness -- as well as the cost -- of acquiring what he already possessed. And in doing this, Rilke was also speaking to himself as well.What the two found is seen in what they wrote. Their efforts were rewarded. Will yours be in reading of theirs? What you will find, depends on whether you bring to the reading of their words that same fullness of living from your life that they brought to the writing of theirs. But there is, perhaps, a way of getting at least an inkling of whether reading the book would be worth your time. Try reading this: "And if it frightens and torments you to think of childhood and of the simplicity and silence that accompanies it, because you can no longer believe in God, who appears in it everywhere, then ask yourself, dear Mr. Kappus, whether you have really lost God. Isn't it much truer to say that you have never yet possessed him? For when could that have been? Do you think that a child can hold him, him whom grown men bear only with great effort and whose weight crushes the old? Do you suppose that someone who really has him could lose him like a little stone? . . . But if you realize that he did not exist in your childhood, and did not exist previously, if you suspect that Christ was deluded by his yearning and Muhammad deceived by his pride -- and if you are terrified to feel that even now he does not exist, even at this moment when we are talking about him -- what justifies you then, if he never existed, in missing him like someone who has passed away and in searching for him as though he were lost?"Why don't you think of him as the one who is coming, who has been approaching from all eternity, the one who will someday arrive . . . What keeps you from projecting his birth into the ages that are coming into existence, and living your life as a painful and lovely day in the history of a great pregnancy? Don't you see how everything that happens is again and again a beginning, and couldn't it be His beginning, since, in itself, starting is always so beautiful?"Remember, that is only his prose. We've yet to get to the poetry that critics of every kind admit extended the range of the German language, bringing forth melodies and a use of imagery that wasn't found in it before. But if you find no such promise in this, then I recommend you pass this book by and go on to other things that strike and stir you instead.Of the numerous translations of Rilke's book into English, Stephen Mitchell's is the one I most prefer. For me, his comes closest to the common tongue, and has such a natural elegance to it that it lets Rilke's own shine through. Rilke's book speaks for itself, and Mitchell has the humility to let it. Enough said.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    These are the letter Rainer Maria Rilke wrote to the young, aspiring poet Franz Xaver Kappus. Through these letters, Rilke imparts his thoughts and feelings on living your life to its fullest potential, but to also make sure that you stay true to yourself throughout. I read through this book every couple of years, and it never fails to amaze me how a collection of letters written over 90 years ago can still have so much to offer us today. My copy is dog-eared from multiple readings, with numerous passages underlined, but I still seem to find something new in each reading that is relevant to my life right now.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I've loved every bit of Rilke's poetry I've read, but I couldn't stand these letters. Half of me saw them as a tired, private communication between an artist and an aspirant, How to Live Authentically; reasonable letters, bad book. The other half of me was repulsed, unable to look past the fawning, excessive chic granted them.
    Life-changing they are not.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Beautiful, poignant prose and advice. "Heavy" and "depressing" at times. I would have liked to see Mr. Kappus' letters to Rilke included in the collection, but, nevertheless, it has some great advice for all types of writers.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Sincere, and beautifully written letters that provide inspiration to aspiring poets. Very heartfelt and revealing in content.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Rilke gives practical advice and hard-won lessons to a young acolyte. A great gift for young or aspiring writers...
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    These days everyone prefers the Stephen Mitchell translation, but I first read this book in Norton's translation and I confess to thinking it superior. I fell in love with this book when my dear friend Nicole Salimbene gave it to me for college graduation. I have loved it for many years, often going to it to remember to "love my solitude."
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Ten of Rilke's letters to a young aspiring poet. Practical advices and recommended readings amongst meditations on moral and solitude life. A mixed bag, had some interesting parts but in whole it was a bit boring.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A lot of this is Rilke pointing out how true poetic souls like him are just a hell of a lot more realke than ordinary folks (journalists and critics in particular). He’s also obsessed with solitude — in Rilke’s cosmology, every man, woman and dog is an island. But he does make a good point about the potential for women’s lib to make things better (“even now, especially in the countries of Northern Europe, trustworthy signs”) and in general he doesn’t seem completely off his rocker à la Whitman for example. He’s a fan of Poe, which can’t be a bad thing:“And yet how much more human is the dangerous insecurity which drives those prisoners in Poe’s stories to feel out the shapes of their horrible dungeons and not be strangers to the unspeakable terror of their cells.”Although he immediately denies that this is in fact the human condition. He’s inadvertently funny once or twice:“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”— but the best laugh comes in Stephen Mitchell’s foreword:“You can see it in his eyes: the powerful intuition of the state of being that is called God, the huge, oppressive longing for it, and the desolation. (I once showed a psychic friend of mine a late photo of Rilke, and it took her three hours to recover from the glance.)”
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Membaca kumpulan surat ini rasanya hangat apa lagi dijaman sekarang yang jarang orang berkirim surat.
    Tentang nasihat seorang senior kepada juniornya dalam menulis puisi berkarya dan hidup pada umumnya.
    cocok untuk kamu yang sedang berkarya entah menulis puisi, pelukis atau apapun itu.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    An Easy read. Beautiful book. Will definitely read this again.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Reading Rilke is like mindfulness meditation. Being aware, like floating in a body of water calmly and alone. It's blissful.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book was an experience to be had. The insightful words, warmth the cold in anyone’s soul. Please read this if you want to experience new dimensions of yourself.

Book preview

Letters to a Young Poet - Rainer Maria Rilke

Enjoying the preview?
Page 1 of 1