Letters to a Young Poet

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It would take a deeply cynical heart not to fall in love with Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. At the end of this millennium, his slender book holds everything a student of the century could want: the unedited thoughts of (arguably) the most important European poet of the modern age. Rilke wrote these 10 sweepingly emotional letters in 1903, addressing a former student of one of his own teachers. The recipient was wise enough to omit his own inquiries from the finished product, which means that we get a marvelously undiluted dose of Rilkean aesthetics and exhortation.

The poet prefaced each letter with an evocative notation of the city in which he wrote, including Paris, Rome, and the outskirts of Pisa. Yet he spends most of the time encouraging the student in his own work, delivering a sublime, one-on-one equivalent of the modern writing workshop: Go into yourself and test the deeps in which your life takes rise; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create. Accept it, just as it sounds, without inquiring into it. Perhaps it will turn out that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what recompense might come from outside. Every page is stamped with Rilke's characteristic grace, and the book is free of the breathless effect that occasionally mars his poetry. His ideas on gender and the role of the artist are also surprisingly prescient. And even his retrograde comment on the "beauty of the virgin" (which the poet derives from the fact that she "has not yet achieved anything") is counterbalanced by his perception that "the sexes are more related than we think." Those looking for an alluring image of the solitary artist--and for an astonishing quotient of wisdom--will find both in Letters to a Young Poet. --Jennifer Buckendorff


From Book News, Inc.
An unfussy translation (by Joan M. Burnham) that wisely stays out of the way of the great poet's (1875-1926) famous letters. Published by New World Library, 58 Paul Drive, San Rafael, CA 94903. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.


Review
"The common reader will be delighted by Stephen Mitchell?s new translation of that slim and beloved volume by Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet . . . the best yet."
--Los Angeles Times


From the Hardcover edition.


Book Description
A beloved classic of writerly wisdom. Drawn by some sympathetic note in his poems, young people often wrote to Rilke with their problems and hopes. From 1903 to 1908 Rilke wrote a series of remarkable responses to a young would-be poet, on poetry and on surviving as a sensitive observer in a harsh world. Accompanying the letters is a chronicle of Rilke's life showing what he was experiencing in his own relationship to life and work when he wrote these letters.


Language Notes
Text: English, German (translation)


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This classic of sincerity and deepness, if you never got 'round to reading it, is composed of 10 letters written by one of the century's greatest poets to a young poet-admirer. Rilke offers no advice on technique but plenty on attitude and preparation for the poetic calling. Each short entry is preceded by an epigraph taken from the body of the letter. Here's an example of Rilke's general epistolary tone: "Beware of general themes. Cling to those that your everyday life offers you. Write about your sorrows, your wishes, your passing thoughts, your belief in anything beautiful. Describe all that with fervent, quiet, and humble sincerity." In this age of Irony and Cynicism it just may be time to revisit Earnestness in this small, handsome volume fit for wandering and pondering. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)


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