A review by gwyl
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

dark hopeful inspiring reflective slow-paced

4.0

it is strange to think of this as a "book", or an instance of the epistolary form, when it is the real correspondence between real men who lived in the eighteenth century. and for that reason, i had my reservations, sceptical about whether the musings of an eighteenth-century austrian poet would have any bearing on me today (asian girl, 21st century). to my delight, i was highlighting passage upon passage from these letters which were so much more sincere and compassionate than i anticipated. the introduction in my edition emphasised that these were both letters to and by a young poet as rainer maria rilke was only 26 when he penned the first one. a truly unexpected source of comfort, advice that cuts to - and also warms - the heart of early adulthood and its landscape of solitude. 

my favourite takeaways: to love and live the question, that all the dragons in our lives may be princesses waiting to see us act with beauty and courage, to do things because they are difficult, the future comes upon us in the quiet and uneventful moment so much more than when it seems to come from the outside in that noisy and accident point