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A review by julianpyre
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
5.0
“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 experience is 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.”
As mentioned by Rilke himself, nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism. Hence, I will refrain from tainting this novel with my words of praise (which I do not think would even begin to match the appreciation I hold for this literary work). Read this. You won’t regret it.
“…love in them a form of life different from your own…”
“If it were possible for us to see further than our knowledge reaches, and a little beyond the outworks of our intuitions, perhaps we should then bear our sadness with greater assurance than our joys. For they are the moments when something new enters into us, something unknown to us; our feelings, shy and inhibited, fall silent, everything in us withdraws, a stillness settles on us, and at the centre of it is the new presence that nobody yet knows, making no sound.”
As mentioned by Rilke himself, nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism. Hence, I will refrain from tainting this novel with my words of praise (which I do not think would even begin to match the appreciation I hold for this literary work). Read this. You won’t regret it.
“…love in them a form of life different from your own…”
“If it were possible for us to see further than our knowledge reaches, and a little beyond the outworks of our intuitions, perhaps we should then bear our sadness with greater assurance than our joys. For they are the moments when something new enters into us, something unknown to us; our feelings, shy and inhibited, fall silent, everything in us withdraws, a stillness settles on us, and at the centre of it is the new presence that nobody yet knows, making no sound.”