This post will be on the short side as the book itself is quite short. Short, but extraordinary. Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke is made up of ten letters that Rilke wrote to Franz Kappus through the years 1903-1908. This correspondence began when Kappus, then nineteen, wrote to Rilke, a twenty-seven year old poet, seeking advice. Kappus learned from his school’s chaplain that Rilke had attended a similar military school supervised by the same chaplain. Kappus then wrote to Rilke and enclosed some of his writing for advice about pursuing the life of an artist. The letters that Rilke responded with were filled with advice and wisdom not only about being an artist but also about the ways in which to live life. Rilke had so many ideas about distinguishing the important from the unimportant and the delights that result from a sometimes difficult life. The following passages were some of my favorites (I tried to limit myself) but in no way do justice to the immense depth and intelligence that are found in this seemingly small book.
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, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life.(p. 4)
Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast. I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything! (p. 24-25)It is good to love: because love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation.
Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person (for what would a union be of two people who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent--?), it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become world in himself for the sake of another person; it is a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him to vast distances. (p. 68-70)
And as for the rest, let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.
And about feelings: 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. (p. 101)
