4.22 AVERAGE

challenging hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

There is good advice in this small book about loneliness, creativity, being yourself and more. 

I loved the inclusion of Kappus' letters to Rilke. It was heartwarming to read his boyish voice, enthusiastic but also somewhat at a loss. 

As for Rilke's letters themselves, I could benefit from multiple rereads of various translations. I just want to ingrain his words in my mind. 
hopeful informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

czarnola's review against another edition

DID NOT FINISH: 51%

Something didn't sit right with me, perhaps the instructive tone of all these letters. Hard to tell. But that's a shame because I have been looking forward to read this thing for a very long time. I guess that other people found Rilke's advice more useful.
hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted reflective medium-paced
rose_android97's profile picture

rose_android97's review

2.0
informative reflective medium-paced

Felt more like a self-help book than an actual self-help book.

And the advices that are provided as well as the words spoken by the writer definitely provides a new introspection on the life that we live, especially for me, as a part of the youth.
inspiring slow-paced

"You are so young, all still lies ahead of you, and I should like to ask you, as best I can, dear Sir, to be patient towards all that is unresolved in your heart and to try to love /the questions themselves/ like locked rooms, like books written in a foreign tongue. Do not now strive to uncover answers: they cannot be given you because you have not been able to live them. And what matters is to live everything. /Live/ the questions for now. Perhaps then you will gradually, without noticing it, live your way into the answer, one distant day in the future." (24)

"What goes on in your innermost being is worth all your love, this is what you must work on however you can and not waste too much time and too much energy on clarifying your attitude to other people." (36)

"It is good to be alone, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult should be one more reason to do it." (42)

"We have no reason to be mistrustful of our world, for it is not against us. If it holds terrors they are our terrors, if it has its abysses these abysses belong to us, if there are dangers then we must try to love them." (56)

"I am young, and there is much rebelliousness in me;—I cannot be certain that I act in accordance with my judgement in every case, where impatience and bitterness get the better of me; in my innermost being though, I know that subjection leads further than revolt." (82)
reflective fast-paced

Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them.

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