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Download high-resolution image Look inside

Letters to a Young Poet

Author Rainer Maria Rilke
Foreword by Stephen Mitchell
Translated by Stephen Mitchell
Look inside
Mass Market Paperback
$12.00 US
Knopf | Vintage
On sale Oct 12, 1986 | 128 Pages | 978-0-394-74104-8
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  • English > Comparative Literature > Literary Criticism
  • English > Comparative Literature: European > German
  • English > Creative Writing > Poetry
  • English > Literature > Introduction to Poetry
  • About
  • Excerpt
  • Author
Written when the poet was himself still a young man with most of his greatest work before him, they were addressed to a student who had sent Rilke some of his work, asking for advice about becoming a writer. The two never met, but over a period of several years Rilke wrote him these ten letters which can be enjoyed for what Stephen Mitchell calls the "vibrant and deeply felt experience of life" that informs them.
Paris
February 17, 1903

Dear Sir,
Your letter arrived just a few days ago. I want to thank you for the great confidence you have placed in me. That is all I can do. I cannot discuss your verses; for any attempt at criticism would be foreign to me. Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism: they always result in more or less fortunate misunderstandings. Things aren't all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsayable than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, who life endures beside our own small, transitory life.

With this note as a preface, may I just tell you that your verses have no style of their own, although they do have silent and hidden beginnings or something personal. I feel this most clearly in the last poem, "My Soul." There, something of your own is trying to become word and melody. And in the lovely poem "To Leopardi" a kind of kinship with that great, solitary figure does perhaps appear. Nevertheless, the poems are not yet anything in themselves, not yet anything independent, even the last one and the one to Leopardi. Your kind letter, which accompanied them, managed to make clear to me various fault that I felt in reading your verses, though I am not able to name them specifically.

You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise you 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 root 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 is this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple "I must," then build your 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.
Copyright © 2001 by Rainer Maria Rilke. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) was one of the greatest lyric German-language poets. Born in Prague, he published his first book of poems, Leben und Lieber, at age 19. In 1897 he met Lou Andreas-Salomé, the talented and spirited daughter of a Russian army officer, who influenced him deeply. In 1902 he became a friend, and for a time the secretary, of Rodin, and it was during his 12-year Paris residence that Rilke enjoyed his greatest poetic activity. In 1919 he went to Switzerland where he spent the last years of his life. It was there that he wrote his last two works, Duino Elegies (1923) and Sonnets to Orpheus (1923). View titles by Rainer Maria Rilke

About

Written when the poet was himself still a young man with most of his greatest work before him, they were addressed to a student who had sent Rilke some of his work, asking for advice about becoming a writer. The two never met, but over a period of several years Rilke wrote him these ten letters which can be enjoyed for what Stephen Mitchell calls the "vibrant and deeply felt experience of life" that informs them.

Excerpt

Paris
February 17, 1903

Dear Sir,
Your letter arrived just a few days ago. I want to thank you for the great confidence you have placed in me. That is all I can do. I cannot discuss your verses; for any attempt at criticism would be foreign to me. Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism: they always result in more or less fortunate misunderstandings. Things aren't all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsayable than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, who life endures beside our own small, transitory life.

With this note as a preface, may I just tell you that your verses have no style of their own, although they do have silent and hidden beginnings or something personal. I feel this most clearly in the last poem, "My Soul." There, something of your own is trying to become word and melody. And in the lovely poem "To Leopardi" a kind of kinship with that great, solitary figure does perhaps appear. Nevertheless, the poems are not yet anything in themselves, not yet anything independent, even the last one and the one to Leopardi. Your kind letter, which accompanied them, managed to make clear to me various fault that I felt in reading your verses, though I am not able to name them specifically.

You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise you 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 root 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 is this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple "I must," then build your 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.
Copyright © 2001 by Rainer Maria Rilke. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Author

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) was one of the greatest lyric German-language poets. Born in Prague, he published his first book of poems, Leben und Lieber, at age 19. In 1897 he met Lou Andreas-Salomé, the talented and spirited daughter of a Russian army officer, who influenced him deeply. In 1902 he became a friend, and for a time the secretary, of Rodin, and it was during his 12-year Paris residence that Rilke enjoyed his greatest poetic activity. In 1919 he went to Switzerland where he spent the last years of his life. It was there that he wrote his last two works, Duino Elegies (1923) and Sonnets to Orpheus (1923). View titles by Rainer Maria Rilke

Additional formats

  • Letters To a Young Poet
    Letters To a Young Poet
    Rainer Maria Rilke
    978-0-307-81935-2
    $10.99 US
    Ebook
    Random House
    Apr 28, 2020
  • Letters to a Young Poet
    Letters to a Young Poet
    Rainer Maria Rilke
    978-0-307-78723-1
    $8.99 US
    Ebook
    Vintage
    Feb 16, 2011
  • Letters to a Young Poet
    Letters to a Young Poet
    Rainer Maria Rilke
    978-0-679-64232-9
    $16.00 US
    Hardcover
    Modern Library
    Dec 04, 2001
  • Letters To a Young Poet
    Letters To a Young Poet
    Rainer Maria Rilke
    978-0-307-81935-2
    $10.99 US
    Ebook
    Random House
    Apr 28, 2020
  • Letters to a Young Poet
    Letters to a Young Poet
    Rainer Maria Rilke
    978-0-307-78723-1
    $8.99 US
    Ebook
    Vintage
    Feb 16, 2011
  • Letters to a Young Poet
    Letters to a Young Poet
    Rainer Maria Rilke
    978-0-679-64232-9
    $16.00 US
    Hardcover
    Modern Library
    Dec 04, 2001

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    Letters on Loss, Grief, and Transformation
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    Aug 14, 2018
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    978-0-8041-5357-7
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    Jan 21, 2015
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    978-0-14-119232-1
    $14.00 US
    Paperback
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    Mar 25, 2014
  • Duino Elegies & The Sonnets to Orpheus
    Duino Elegies & The Sonnets to Orpheus
    A Dual-Language Edition
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    978-0-307-47373-8
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
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  • The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Briggs
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    Rainer Maria Rilke
    978-0-14-118221-6
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Penguin Classics
    Aug 25, 2009
  • The Poet's Guide to Life
    The Poet's Guide to Life
    The Wisdom of Rilke
    Rainer Maria Rilke
    978-0-307-43249-0
    $10.99 US
    Ebook
    Modern Library
    Dec 18, 2007
  • Letters on Life
    Letters on Life
    New Prose Translations
    Rainer Maria Rilke
    978-0-8129-6902-3
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Modern Library
    Apr 11, 2006
  • Rilke's Book of Hours
    Rilke's Book of Hours
    Love Poems to God
    Rainer Maria Rilke
    978-1-57322-585-4
    $13.00 US
    Paperback
    Riverhead Books
    Apr 01, 1997
  • Rilke: Poems
    Rilke: Poems
    Edited by Peter Washington
    Rainer Maria Rilke
    978-0-679-45098-6
    $14.95 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Oct 22, 1996
  • The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
    The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
    A Novel
    Rainer Maria Rilke
    978-0-679-73245-7
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Nov 27, 1990
  • The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
    The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
    Bilingual Edition
    Rainer Maria Rilke
    978-0-679-72201-4
    $18.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Mar 13, 1989
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