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A review by thegbrl
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
5.0
"You are so young, all still lies ahead of you, and I should like to ask you, dear Sir, to be patient towards all that is unresolved in your heart, and 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 to you because you have not been able to live them. And what matters is to live everything. Live the questions for now..."
"What is needed is this: solitude, great inner loneliness. Going into oneself and not meeting anyone for hours – that is what one must arrive at. Loneliness of the kind one knew as a child, when the grown-ups went back and forth, bound up in things."
This is a short work, though one of Rilke's most famous. I read this in one sitting, in an attempt to seek a genuine 'encounter' with the artist and his craft. I thought that this might be an accessible and also intimate place to start. As I read through this collection of Rilke's letters to Franz Kappus, I felt myself enter into that ethereal space in which he inhabits, away from the suffocating allure of unrelenting and unfulfilling existence. In his first letter, he cautions the young writer of the perilous journey he is yet to undertake: "Examine the reason that bids you to write; check whether it reaches its roots into the deepest region of your heart, admit to yourself whether you would die if it should be denied you to write." Rilke's words have the capacity to enchant the reader, beckoning them to look within at the immense power of their own existence. For artists, these words might ignite that spark which allows them to create once more.
Rilke's work deals primarily with the notion of 'raum' or space, which is at the essence of one's being. He writes that it is necessary to "turn inwards" so as to "examine the depths from which (your) life springs". And yet the human can "come to resemble life so closely that if we keep still we can hardly be distinguished from all that surrounds us." He says that we are not prisoners if we simply choose to “be”. Reading Rilke reminds me of the immense passion that can be unearthed in the quotidian, and the illustrious joy that can be derived when we choose to sit with our suffering. It is this internal void that spawns the most thrilling of words. It is this “substance” that is sculpted by the most menial and most familiar of situations. Humbly, and without pretence, Rilke writes that, "his life is full of troubles and sadness and (he) falls far short of them. But if it were any different he could never have found the words that he did."
"What is needed is this: solitude, great inner loneliness. Going into oneself and not meeting anyone for hours – that is what one must arrive at. Loneliness of the kind one knew as a child, when the grown-ups went back and forth, bound up in things."
This is a short work, though one of Rilke's most famous. I read this in one sitting, in an attempt to seek a genuine 'encounter' with the artist and his craft. I thought that this might be an accessible and also intimate place to start. As I read through this collection of Rilke's letters to Franz Kappus, I felt myself enter into that ethereal space in which he inhabits, away from the suffocating allure of unrelenting and unfulfilling existence. In his first letter, he cautions the young writer of the perilous journey he is yet to undertake: "Examine the reason that bids you to write; check whether it reaches its roots into the deepest region of your heart, admit to yourself whether you would die if it should be denied you to write." Rilke's words have the capacity to enchant the reader, beckoning them to look within at the immense power of their own existence. For artists, these words might ignite that spark which allows them to create once more.
Rilke's work deals primarily with the notion of 'raum' or space, which is at the essence of one's being. He writes that it is necessary to "turn inwards" so as to "examine the depths from which (your) life springs". And yet the human can "come to resemble life so closely that if we keep still we can hardly be distinguished from all that surrounds us." He says that we are not prisoners if we simply choose to “be”. Reading Rilke reminds me of the immense passion that can be unearthed in the quotidian, and the illustrious joy that can be derived when we choose to sit with our suffering. It is this internal void that spawns the most thrilling of words. It is this “substance” that is sculpted by the most menial and most familiar of situations. Humbly, and without pretence, Rilke writes that, "his life is full of troubles and sadness and (he) falls far short of them. But if it were any different he could never have found the words that he did."