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A review by jonscott9
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
2.0
Was not whelmed by this. Maybe lost in translation a bit, from the German. And maybe just not the right timing, you know? Happens.
Interesting thoughts at times on relationships and love, and on loneliness and the solitary life, which is to say, the life of a writer. Didn't agree with all of those thoughts, and it seems Rilke sort of worshiped the solitary life, exalted it. It got to be a bit cloying.
Just too much of it was esoteric, between Rilke and the young poet, and those pieces take the reader out of the letters. And sometimes Rilke just seemed a bit smug, a bit in love with his own words.
I do dig the idea of "living and writing in heat." Vivid.
some shards I did quite like:
"Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all--ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write?"
"[B:]e patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now 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. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answers."
"Do not observe yourself too much. Do not draw too hasty conclusions from what happens to you; let it simply happen to you. ... Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is right, in any case."
"And if there is one thing more that I must say to you, it is this: Do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life has much difficulty and sadness and remains far behind yours. Were it otherwise he would never have been able to find those words."
Interesting thoughts at times on relationships and love, and on loneliness and the solitary life, which is to say, the life of a writer. Didn't agree with all of those thoughts, and it seems Rilke sort of worshiped the solitary life, exalted it. It got to be a bit cloying.
Just too much of it was esoteric, between Rilke and the young poet, and those pieces take the reader out of the letters. And sometimes Rilke just seemed a bit smug, a bit in love with his own words.
I do dig the idea of "living and writing in heat." Vivid.
some shards I did quite like:
"Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all--ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write?"
"[B:]e patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now 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. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answers."
"Do not observe yourself too much. Do not draw too hasty conclusions from what happens to you; let it simply happen to you. ... Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is right, in any case."
"And if there is one thing more that I must say to you, it is this: Do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life has much difficulty and sadness and remains far behind yours. Were it otherwise he would never have been able to find those words."