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Letters to a Young Poet

Letters to a Young Poet

Rainer Maria Rilke Original title Briefe an einen jungen Dichter (German, 1929)

Letters to a Young Poet is a collection of ten letters written by Bohemian-Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke to Franz Xaver Kappus , a 19-year-old officer cadet at the Theresian Military Academy in Wiener Neustadt. Rilke, the son of an Austrian army officer, had studied at the academy's lower school at Sankt Pölten in the 1890s. Kappus corresponded with the popular poet and author from 1902 to 1908 seeking his advice as to the quality of his poetry, and in deciding between a literary career or a career as an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army. Kappus compiled and published the letters in 1929—three years after Rilke's death from leukemia.

“There is probably no point in my going into your questions now; for what I could say about your tendency to doubt or about your inability to bring your outer and inner lives into harmony or about all the other thing that oppress you - : is just what I have already said: just the wish that you may find in yourself enough patience to endure and enough simplicity to have faith; that you may gain more and more confidence in what is difficult and in your solitude among other people. And as for the rest, let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Nine (4 November 1904)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

“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 the 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.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Four (16 July 1903)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

“Irony: Do not let yourself be governed by it, especially not in unproductive moments. In productive ones try to make use of it as one more means of seizing life.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Two (5 April 1903)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

“A good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

“All emotions are pure which gather you and lift you up; that emotion is impure which seizes only one side of your being and so distorts you.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Nine (4 November 1904)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)
Context: All feelings that concentrate you and lift you up are pure; only that feeling is impure which grasps just one side of your being and thus distorts you. Everything you can think of as you face your childhood, is good. Everything that makes more of you than you have ever been, even in your best hours, is right. Every intensification is good, if it is in your entire blood, if it isn't intoxication or muddiness, but joy which you can see into, clear to the bottom.

“Art too is just a way of living, and however one lives, one can, without knowing, prepare for it; in everything real one is closer to it, more its neighbor, than in the unreal half-artistic professions, which, while they pretend to be close to art, in practice deny and attack the existence of all art - as, for example, all of journalism does and almost all criticism and three quarters of what is called (and wants to be called) literature.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Ten (26 December 1908)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

“Do not allow yourself to be misled by the surfaces of things.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

“And as for the rest, let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Variant: Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.
Source: Letters to a Young Poet

“That is the principal thing-not to remain with the dream, with the intention, with the being-in-the-mood, but always forcibly to convert it all into things.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

“Things are not as easily understood nor as expressible as people usually would like us to believe. Most happenings are beyond expression; they exist where a word has never intruded.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

“Perhaps then, some day far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

“Destiny itself is like a wonderful wide tapestry in which every thread is guided by an unspeakable tender hand, placed beside another thread and held and carried by a hundred others.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Three (23 April 1903)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)
Context: No experience has been too unimportant, and the smallest event unfolds like a fate, and fate itself is like a wonderful, wide fabric in which every thread is guided by an infinitely tender hand and laid alongside another thread and is held and supported by a hundred others.

“A work of art is good if it has grown out of necessity.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter One (17 February 1903)
Source: Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

“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 life and reality: the female human being.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Seven (14 May 1904)
Source: Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

“And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Four (16 July 1903)
Variant: 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. (Translation by Stephen Mitchell)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)
Context: Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

“And you should not let yourself be confused in your solitude by the fact that there is something in you that wants to move out of it.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

“most people come to know only one corner of their room, one spot near the window, one narrow strip on which they keep walking back and forth.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

“In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself, must I write?”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

“Keep growing quietly and seriously throughout your whole development; you cannot disturb it more rudely than by looking outward and expecting from outside replies to questions that only your inmost feeling in your most hushed hour can perhaps answer.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

“If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

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