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Letters to a Young Poet (Modern Library)

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Written with a simple, elegant, and com(passionate) prose, Rainer Maria Rilke pens a series of letters to a young aspiring poet, Franz Xaver Kappus that contain a stunningly beautiful argument and plea for living an authentic life, that addresses the silent questions that exist in the deepest chambers of our hearts, the grand themes of literature, and hence life: the meaning of solitude and how to love.

The first letter gives the greatest advice anyone can give to someone aspiring to be anything. You have to ask yourself the following question: "must I?" If you answer in the affirmative, then "build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into it's humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse." That you must only judge Art by the following value, has it arisen out of necessity?

The second letter, he warns against the role of irony running through your life and one must guard against it by searching "into the depths of Things: there irony never descends."

The third letter argues that one must always trust in yourself and your own feelings. Do not fall victim to convention. Which is nothing more than unwillingness on each of our parts to not fully engage life, but rather to take what others have said and done as well-traveled roads to walk through life upon. For the person living a poetic life, "everything is gestation and then birthing. To let each impression and each embryo of a feeling come to completion, entirely in itself, in the dark, in the unsayable...and with deep humility and patience to wait for the hour when a new clarity is born: this alone is what it means to live as an artist: in understanding as in creating."

The fourth letter argues for one to trust in Nature. We all must learn how to "win the confidence of what seem poor." A fundamental change in our mindset must occur in our hearts, a shift from convention to authenticity. We have "to love the questions themselves, as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language." The incredible thirst for quick and easy answers to life's most difficult questions must end. We have to take in the questions, which are really emotions or feelings without names into our bloodstreams. To "live the questions." He goes on to expand upon our relations to sex. "Sex is difficult." We all have to create out of each of our own unique lives an individual relation to sex and hence to our lovers, without carrying the luggage that society and convention loads us down with, then you will approach being a human being. Sex has to become more than a stimulant or balm to cover a more fundamental ache in our spirits. We should be stewards of our own "fruitfulness" to "gather sweetness , depth, and strength for the song of some future poet." (DO YOU DO THAT INBETWEEN THE SHEETS! )

The sixth letter concerns the notion of "solitude." We all create a "vast inner solitude." To walk inside yourself for hours without meeting anyone, that is what you must be able to attain. Through this you gain a child-like perspective, a great "wise not-understanding in exchange for defensiveness and scorn (of adults)." It is within the vast ocean of your solitude that we can truly approach and understand the dimensions of divinity that exists. How do you confront God? By being "patient and without bitterness, and realize that the least we can do is make coming into existence no more difficult for Him than the earth does for spring when it wants to come."

The entire series of letters find its zenith in the seventh letter in which Rilke takes the notion of Solitude and marries it with Love. He argues that yes "love is difficult." But that we must put our trust "in what is difficult as Nature does, to exercise our beings to their fullness." The act of Loving another human being is the "most difficult task...for which all other work is mere preparation." Each of us must "learn" how to love. To know that it springs from our oceans of solitude not from a formless merging of ourselves to another. But rather that each of us must "ripen" into individuals that can experience and give love, "to hearken and hammer day and night." To Love is to accept a "burden and apprenticeship" that allows each authentic person to grow and become rather than fall back and lose what makes them unique and rare. The ultimate aim of life is "the love that consists in this: that two solitudes protect and border and greet each other."

The seventh letter deals with the meaning and confronting of sadness. Rather than running away or fearing sadness, Rilke argues that it is something that must be embraced as an opportunity. These are the moments when something new is entering us "our feelings grow mute in shy embarrasment, 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." In the face of this sadnessthe only courage required is to "face the strangest, most unusual, most inexplicable experiences that meet us." Not to run and cower before the immensity of those feelings and experiences, but to recognize them for what they are, an opportunity to blossom.

The ninth letter argues that we must trust our feelings. But only those feelings that uplift us entire, not by portion. Feelings that raise only a part of us, distort us.

The final letter argues for this poetic life. For Rilke, "Art too is a way of living, and however one lives, one can, without knowing, prepare for it."

These ten letters show you how.

I find Stephen Mitchell's translation far superior to that if The New World Library. Compare this passage:
"Perhaps all dragons in our lives are really princesses just waiting to see us just once being beautiful and courageous."(NWL)
"Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are really princesses waiting for us to act, just once, with beauty and courage."(SM)
I only wish Miller's were as beautifully hard bound as NWL's.

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This book is a treasure of a man of solitude and poetic ability to FEEL life, not simply an intellectual exercise like 99% people in our so called "enlightened" world so do. It's amazing how insightful Rilke was at such a young age. And yet the world today, the power, control and politics currently live in a fundamentally thinking world of one-sided blindness that is so far apart from Rilke that it is like a regression of humanity of large and major proportion, and in such a short amount of time.

On solitude and the ability to be childlike (not childish), that is, living in the present moment in appreciation of what simply is, apart from all concepts, occupations and fundamental thinking and answers of security and certainty, Rilke writes:

"There is one solitude and that is great . . . a great inner solitude. Going into oneself and for hours meeting no one - this one must be able to attain. To be solitary, the way one was solitary as a child, when the grownups went around involved with things that seemed important and big because they themselves looked so busy . . . and when one day one perceives that their occupations are paltry, their professions petrified and no longer linked with (real) living . . Only the individual who is solitary is like a thing placed under profound laws, and when he goes out into the morning that is just beginning, or looks out into the evening that is full of happening . . . all status drops from him as a dead man, though he stands in the midst of sheer life. pp. 45-47

Rilke knew that life was creative, an art not grasped by criticism and intellectualism:

"Words of art are of an infinite loneliness and with nothing so little to be reached as with criticism. Only love can grasp and hold and be just toward them." p. 29

This is because life is not about the answers, for truth only stands in relativity, as the intellectual fails to realize, only living in despair or in bogus formulas for safety. For life is about living dangerously in the difficult, not in the comfort zones, which ultimately are not real comfort, but illusion of such. Living in the fast lane but with discernment, there is a balance, like a tamed down Dr. Faust.

"Do not 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." p. 35

" We must assume our existence as broadly as we in any way can; everything, even the unheard-of, must be possible in it. That is at bottom the only courage that is demanded of us: to have courage for the most strange, the most singular and the most inexplicable that we may encounter."

And finally to sum Rilke's incredible insight,

"Nobody can counsel you and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself."

A dear friend of mine gave me this book to read around the time of my twenty-first birthday. He saw that I had been having trouble finding what my true calling in life was. Once I read this great work I was blessed with a new outlook on life and its true meaning. Rilke speaks to the reader's innermost emotions with his thoughts on solitude and how it can make one see life in a new light. I would definatly recommend this book to any of my friends who needed a guiding light in their search for inner peace.

Why have I not read this glorious volume sooner? l can't imagine living one day longer without immersing myself within the folds of the pages of Rainer Maria Rilke's Letter's To A Young Poet. This book is solely responsible for setting me free a a writer and creative spirit. After reading it, I feel as if I have the permission to create not only works of my own writing but high art, or whatever is inside my soul needling to be set free.

I leave you with this quote which tells all: "No one can advise or help you - no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple 'I must,' then build you life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse."

Rilke's letters to a young poet are deeply moving in their honesty and clarity. Responding to the corrospondence of a student of one of Rilke's former teachers, Rilke not only explains what it is to be a poet ("ask yourself in the most silent hour of the night: MUST I write? ... if you meet this solmn question with a strong, simple "I must," then build your life in accordance with this necessity;") but what it is to exist and experience life in the modern world. ("Don't search for answers now, because you would not be able to live them .. the point is, to live everything. LIVE the questions now.")

The power of Rilke's words are in their truth, but also in the beauty of their sentiments. This is one of my favorite books of all time for this reason, and I highly recommend it.

Although the letters found in this slim little volume was written to a young man, almost a hundred years ago, yet I found it deeply personal. It is as if Rilke is addressing no one else but to me. I cannot but admire the warm and graceful prose as well as the sharp insight which the poet has to offer about poetry and life. It is a book which many a reader will return to from time to time. I know that I would.

I had already read this book a couple of months ago and was moved by Rilke's incredible wisdom. And just a few days ago, while I was preparing for a philosophy exam, I chanced upon this book once more and, seeing certain parallels between Rilke's words and other philosophers', truly understood and admired Rilke and his perspective on life. Rilke speaks of dragons in our lives... who could be princesses in disguise "...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..." This is one book that should be constantly reread and pondered on by anyone who wishes to move towards the true meaning of what it is to be human...

I was given this book when I was eighteen, when I needed it most. One cannot measure the importance of Rilke's poems to an adult and his letters to an adolescent.

The translation by Mitchell is the most modern and accessible. I recommend this over the rest.