Rainer Maria Rilke

'What matters is to live everything. Live the questions for now.'

A hugely influential collection for writers and artists of all kinds, Rilke's profound and lyrical letters to a young friend advise on writing, love, sex, suffering and the nature of advice itself.

One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battles and elephants.

Letters to a Young Poet

What goes on in your innermost being is worth all your love, this is what you must work on however you can and not waste too much time and too much energy on clarifying your attitude to other people.

Love your solitude and bear the pain it causes you with melody wrought with lament. For the people who are close to you, you tell me, are far away, and that shows that you are beginning to create a wider space around you. And if what is close is far, then the space around you is wide indeed and already among the stars; take pleasure in your growth, in which no one can accompany you, and be kind-hearted towards those you leave behind, and be assured and gentle with them and do not plague them with your doubts or frighten them your confidence or your joyfulness, which they cannot understand. Look for some kind of simple and loyal way of being together with them which does not necessarily have to alter however much you may change; love in them a form of life different from your own and show understanding for the older ones who fear precisely the solitude in which you trust.

You are so young, all still lies ahead of you, and I should like to ask you, as best I can, dear Sir, to

be patient towards all that is unresolved in your heart and to 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. Perhaps then you will gradually, without noticing it, live your way into the answer, one distant day in the future.

Nobody can advise you and help you, nobody. There is only one way. Go into yourself. 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. 

ame 

Here is the angel, who does not exist, and the devil, who does not exist; and man, who does exist, is in between them and, I cannot help it, their unreality makes him more real for me.

We have no reason to be mistrustful of our world, for it is not against us. If it holds terrors they are our terrors, if it has its abysses these abysses belong to us, if there are dangers then we must try to love them.

In the deepest and most important things, we are unutterably alone, and for one person to be able to advise, let alone help, another, a great deal must come about, a great deal must come right, a whole constellation of things must concur for it to be possible at all.

Things must first get bad, worse, worst, beyond what any language can hold. I creep about all day in the thickets of my life, screaming like a wild man and clapping my hands. You would not believe what hair-raising creatures this flushes up.

« but there is much beauty here, because there is much beauty everywhere. »

what a profound book, a stunning exploration of human feelings and poetry. this will be one of those books that will stay with me for the years to come.

florine

« but there is much beauty here, because there is much beauty everywhere. »

what a profound book, a stunning exploration of human feelings and poetry. this will be one of those books that will stay with me for the years to come.

maitha mana

Rilke's heartfelt letters talk about looking inwards into one's self, embracing solitude and making it a haven and an inspiration

Maria

we have no reason to be mistrustful of our world, for it is not against us.

Maximus

A beautiful and benevolently breathtaking insight into the correspondence shared between the poet Rainer Maria Rilke and a military officer and aspiring poet at the time, Mr. Franz Kappus. This 52 paged book is comprised of 10 letters dated from 1902 to 1908 that Rilke wrote to Kappus bestowing deep advice and sage-like wisdom on many elements crucial to experiencing a better and more well-rounded life.

This correspondence read as if Rilke was communicating with Kappus on a celestial level of humane embrace. Every segment of each letter regarding its topic was meticulously explained and yet, not a word was wasted or misplaced. A mesmerizing paradox.

The letters touched on a variety of topics. A few that I can remember reading about were, firstly, the pivotal and progressive triad that exists between youth, loneliness and love. Secondly, the significant impact that expressions of art (or an art-form) and creativity can have, so long as it comes from a pure place. Thirdly, the value which comes from embracing and accepting personal sadnesses as a means to adequately prepare oneself for the future. Fourthly, that it’s okay to let things happen, and that it’s important to bring oneself away from trying to wonder why, in order to avoid the arrival at wrong conclusions and misplaced blame. Lastly, the crucial momentousness of dedicating oneself to a being in solitary.

To summarise this book in a sentence:
"If you're like me and can't afford therapy, this book acts as the more cost-effective and emotionally beneficial alternative which you never knew you needed."

Of course, there was so much more to this book. However, I will stop my review here in the hopes that it has piqued your interest enough and let you experience it for yourself.

Beatriz Aguiar

4.5 The writing is completely amazing! loved it

“We are only now just coming to the point where we can consider the relationship of one human individual to another objectively and without prejudice, and our attempts to live such a relation have no model to go on.”

Audrey Dubois

Ary Dias 

It was good but it was all very... Abstract and Im more of a facts kinda person. But the writing is really good

laila

Emily Morgan

Reviewed 12 August 2021:

I am feeling a lot of things tonight so I returned to my old friend Rilke. I love how tenderly he writes to Kappus, it all feels so warm and personal. This is truly the one book I think I could read again and again and again, and never grow tired of it, and always find something new in it. 

The words I needed tonight:

“Perhaps everything terrifying is deep down a helpless thing that needs our help. So dear Mr Kappus, you shouldn’t be dismayed if a sadness rises up in front of you, greater than any you have ever seen before…You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall.”

And, of course:

“You are so young, all still lies ahead of you, and I should like to ask you, as best I can, dear Sir, to be patient towards all that is unresolved in your heart, and to try to love the questions themselves…” 



Reviewed 31 December 2019:

I was going through a box where I keep old notes and postcards, and I found this book, half-read and full of old receipts and a ticket from the Met Breuer. 

I’ve read pieces of it here and there, but never finished it. Which is odd, because I know it contains one of my favourite ever quotes. One I stumbled upon on tumblr (yes, that long ago). “Be patient towards all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves...”

Rilke always feels like an old friend, and I’m really glad he was my last read of the decade. I feel like this is one of those books I need to keep returning to, until all of the lines live within me. 

“To let every impression and the germ of every feeling come to completion inside, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious...to wait with deep humility and patience for the hour when a new clarity is delivered: that alone is to live as an artist...

These things cannot be measured by time, a year has no meaning, and ten years are nothing. To be an artist means: not to calculate and count; to grow and ripen like a tree which does not hurry the flow of its sap and stands at ease in the spring gales without fearing that no summer may follow. It will come.”

Letters to a Young Poet

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