Letters to a Young Poet (Dover Thrift Editions) - Softcover

Rilke, Rainer Maria

Softcover

ISBN 10: 048683185X ISBN 13: 9780486831855

Verlag: Dover Publications Inc., 2019

Inhaltsangabe

Born in Prague when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire and recognized today as a master of verse, poet Rainer Maria Rilke was considerably less well known in 1902 when he received a heartfelt letter from an aspiring poet. A 19-year-old student sent Rilke some of his verses, seeking an opinion of their worth. Rilke declined to offer a critique, instead encouraging the student to rely upon his own inner judgment: "Nobody can advise and help you, nobody. There is only one single means. Go inside yourself."
This seemingly dismissive letter proved to be the first of ten, written during a six-year period that coincided with an important stage in Rilke's artistic development. The poet offered his young correspondent further advice on developing a rich inner life as well as guidance on broader philosophical and existential issues. These letters, which explore many of the themes that later emerged in Rilke's best works, remain a captivating source of insights into the artistic identity and process.

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Although his poetry was recognized and admired by leading European artists, Austro-German poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) was virtually unknown during his lifetime. He achieved international acclaim with his last two works, Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus, and he has come to be recognized as a master of verse.

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Letters to a Young Poet

By Rainer Maria Rilke, Reginald Snell

Dover Publications, Inc.

Copyright © 2019 Dover Publications, Inc.
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-486-83185-5

Contents

Translator's Preface, xiii, 
Translator's Introduction, xv, 
Introduction by the Young Poet, 1, 
The Letters, 3, 
Commentary, 33, 
Rilke in English, 55, 

CHAPTER 1

THE LETTERS

I

Paris, February 17th 1903.

Dear Sir,

Your letter reached me only a few days ago. I want to thank you for its great and welcome trust. I can hardly say more. I cannot go into the quality of your verses; for I am too far removed from every kind of critical intention. In making contact with a work of art nothing serves so ill as words of criticism: the invariable result is more or less happy misunderstandings. Things are not all so comprehensible and utterable as people would mostly have us believe; most events are unutterable, consummating themselves in a sphere where word has never trod, and more unutterable than them all are works of art, whose life endures by the side of our own that passes away.

Having written this note by way of introduction, may I just go on to tell you that your verses have no individual quality, but rather, quiet and hidden tendencies to something personal. I feel this most clearly in the last poem My Soul. And in the beautiful poem To Leopardi there is perhaps growing up a kind of relationship with that great and solitary man. All the same, the poems are not yet anything in themselves, nothing independent, not even the last one or the one to Leopardi. Your friendly letter which accompanied them did not fail to explain to me a number of deficiencies which I felt in reading your verses, without however being able to give a name to them.

You ask if your verses are good. You ask me. You have previously asked others. You send them to journals. You compare them with other poems, and you are troubled when certain editors reject your efforts. Now (as you have permitted me to advise you) I beg you to give all that up. You are looking outwards, and of all things that is what you must now not do. Nobody can advise and help you, nobody. There is only one single means. Go inside yourself. Discover the motive that bids you write; examine whether it sends its roots down to the deepest places of your heart, confess to yourself whether you would have to die if writing were denied you. This before all: ask yourself in the quietest hour of your night: mustI write? Dig down into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be in the affirmative, if you may meet this solemn question with a strong and simple "I must," then build your life according to this necessity; your life must, right to its most unimportant and insignificant hour, become a token and a witness of this impulse. Then draw near to Nature. Then try, as if you were one of the first men, to say what you see and experience and love and lose. Do not write love poems; avoid at first those forms which are too familiar and usual: they are the most difficult, for great and fully matured strength is needed to make an individual contribution where good and in part brilliant traditions exist in plenty. Turn therefore from the common themes to those which your own everyday life affords; depict your sorrows and desires, your passing thoughts and belief in some kind of beauty — depict all that with heartfelt, quiet, humble sincerity and use to express yourself the things that surround you, the images of your dreams and the objects of your memory. If your everyday life seems poor to you, do not accuse it; accuse yourself, tell yourself you are not poet enough to summon up its riches; since for the creator there is no poverty and no poor or unimportant place. And even if you were in a prison whose walls allowed none of the sounds of the world to reach your senses — would you not still have always your childhood, that precious, royal richness, that treasure house of memories? Turn your attention there. Try to raise the submerged sensations of that distant past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will extend itself and will become a twilit dwelling which the noise of others passes by in the distance. — And if from this turning inwards, from this sinking into your private world, there come verses, you will not think to ask anyone whether they are good verses. You will not attempt, either, to interest journals in these works: for you will see in them your own dear genuine possession, a portion and a voice of your life. A work of art is good if it has grown out of necessity. In this manner of its origin lies its true estimate: there is no other. Therefore, my dear Sir, I could give you no advice but this: to go into yourself and to explore the depths whence your life wells forth; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create. Accept it as it sounds, without enquiring too closely into every word. Perhaps it will turn out that you are called to be an artist. Then take your fate upon yourself and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking for that reward which might come from without. For the creator must be a world for himself, and find everything within himself, and in Nature to which he has attached himself.

Perhaps however, after this descent into yourself and into your aloneness, you will have to renounce your claim to become a poet; (it is sufficient, as I have said, to feel that one could live without writing, in order not to venture it at all.) But even then this introversion which I beg of you has not been in vain. Your life will at all events find thenceforward its individual paths; and that they may be good and rich and far reaching I wish for you more than I can say. What more shall I say to you? Everything seems to me to have its proper emphasis; I would finally just like to advise you to grow through your development quietly and seriously; you can interrupt it in no more violent manner than by looking outwards, and expecting answer from outside to questions which perhaps only your innermost feeling in your most silent hour can answer.

It was a joy to me to find the name of Professor Horacek in your letter; I retain a great admiration for that dear and learned man, and a gratitude that persists through the years. Will you please tell him of this sentiment of mine; it is very good of him still to remember me, and I know how to appreciate it.

The verses which you kindly entrusted to me I am returning at the same time as this. And I thank you again for the magnitude and cordiality of your trust; in this answer, given with sincerity and to the best of my knowledge, I have sought to make myself a little worthier of it than, as a stranger, I actually am.

With every respect and sympathy:

Rainer Maria Rilke.

II

Viareggio near Pisa (Italy), April 5th 1903.

You must forgive me, my dear and honored Sir, for not gratefully remembering your letter of February 24th before today: I was suffering the whole time, not exactly from an illness, but oppressed by an influenza-like exhaustion which made me incapable of anything. And finally, when it would not improve, I came to this southerly sea, whose benefit has helped me before now. But I am not yet well, I find writing difficult, and so you must take these few lines in lieu of more.

You must of course know that you will always give me pleasure with every letter, and be only indulgent towards the answer, which will often perhaps leave you empty handed;...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Dover Publications Inc.
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2019
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 048683185X
• ISBN 13: 9780486831855
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 58
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: preigu GmbH & Co. KG; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; Niedersachsen; 49078; Deutschland