Rainer Maria Rilke

Cecília Meireles

Paulo Rónai

Escritas entre 1903 e 1908 sem outra intenção senão a de mostrar a um aprendiz de poesia - o jovem poeta Franz Xaver Kappus (1883-1966) - os caminhos do mundo interior do escritor, as Cartas a um jovem poeta são hoje uma das obras mais conhecidas de Rainer Maria Rilke, quer pela intensidade da vivência que o autor transmite ao jovem e ao leitor, quer pela sinceridade e simplicidade com que o mestre se dirige ao desconhecido que o procurara com um grito de socorro. "Ninguém o pode aconselhar ou ajudar - ninguém", responde-lhe Rilke, na tradução de Paulo Rónai. "Não há senão um caminho. Procure entrar em sim mesmo. Investigue o motivo que o manda escrever; examine se estende suas raízes pelos recantos mais profundos de sua alma; confesse a si mesmo; morreria se lhe fosse vedado escrever? Isto acima de tudo; pergunte a si mesmo na hora mais tranquila de sua noite; 'Sou forçado a escrever?' Escave dentro de si uma resposta profunda. Se for afirmativa, se puder contestar aquela pergunta severa por um forte e simples 'sou', então construa sua vida de acordo com esta necessidade. Três anos depois da morte de Rilke, Kappus decidiu publicar as cartas que recebera do poeta em um momento decisivo de sua vida, na certeza de que as lições que recebeu de Rilke poderiam ser úteis a outros jovens, vivendo os naturais conflitos da idade. Principalmente, porque de Rainer Maria Rilke, Franz Kappus não recebeu lições de como escrever, mas sim lições de vida. Este volume apresenta ainda, em tradução de Cecília Meireles, A canção de amor e de morte do porta-estandarte Cristóvão Rilke, que, escrita de um só fôlego pelo poeta numa noite de 1899, espalhou-se rapidamente pela Europa e pela América, alcançando extraordinária fama. A nova edição também contém, no posfácio inédito em português, um discurso de Robert Musil, proferido pouco depois da morte de Rilke, em que a importância do autor é avaliada como a do "maior poeta que os alemães possuíram desde a Idade Média".

CARTAS A UM JOVEM POETA

Letters to a young poet

Viet-Hung Nguyen

Most experiences are unsayable; they become real to us in a space no word has entered. And least sayable of all are works of artistic expression, which live on, full of mystery, compared to our brief lives.

Don't try to find the answers now. They cannot be given anyway, because you would not be able to live them. For everything is to be lived. Live the questions now. Perhaps you then may gradually, without noticing, one day in the future, live into the answers.

And if we will live with faith in the value of what is challenging. then what seems most difficult will become our truest and most trustworthy friend. How could we forget the myths about dragons who at the last moment transform into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses waiting to see us act just once with courage. Perhaps every terror is, at its core, something helpless that wants our help. 

We have no reason to distrust our world, for it is not against us. If our world has fears, they are our fears. If it has an abyss, it belongs to us. If dangers appear, we must try to love them.

We are solitary. We can delude ourselves and act as if it were not so. That is all we can do. How much better to realize from the start that that is what we are, and to proceed from there. It can, of course, make our heads spin, for everything our eyes rest upon will be taken from us. No longer is anything near, and what is far is endlessly far.

Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love. So you mustn’t be frightened, dear Mr. Kappus, if a sadness rises in front of you, larger than any you have ever seen; if an anxiety, like light and cloudshadows, moves over your hands and over everything you do. You must realize that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall.

Nica

It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension, which we feel as paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished emotions living. Because we are alone with the unfamiliar presence that has entered us; because everything we trust and are used to is for a moment taken away from us; because we stand in the midst of a transition where we cannot remain standing. That is why the sadness passes: the new presence inside us, the presence that has been added, has entered our heart, has gone into its innermost chamber and is no longer even there,—is already in our bloodstream. And we don’t know what it was. We could easily be made to believe that nothing happened, and yet we have changed, as a house that a guest has entered changes. We can’t say who has come, perhaps we will never know, but many signs indicate that the future enters us in this way in order to be transformed in us, long before it happens. And that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad: because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps into us is so much closer to life than that other loud and accidental point of time when it happens to us as if from outside. The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us, and the more we can make it our own, the more it becomes our fate; and later on, when it “happens” (that is, steps forth out of us to other people), we will feel related and close to it in our innermost being.

The girl and the woman, in their new, individual unfolding, will only in passing be imitators of male behavior and misbehavior and repeaters of male professions. After the uncertainty of such transitions, it will become obvious that women were going through the abundance and variation of those (often ridiculous) disguises just so that they could purify their own essential nature and wash out the deforming inuences of the other sex. Women, in whom life lingers and dwells more immediately, more fruitfully, and more confidently, must surely have become riper and more human in their depths than light, easygoing man, who is not pulled down beneath the surface of life by the weight of any bodily fruit and who, arrogant and hasty, undervalues what he thinks he loves. This humanity of woman, carried in her womb through all her suffering and humiliation, will come to light when she has stripped o the conventions of mere femaleness in the transformations of her outward status, and those men who do not yet feel it approaching will be astonished by it. Someday (and even now, especially in the countries of northern Europe, trustworthy signs are already speaking and shining), someday there will be girls and women whose name will no longer mean the mere opposite of the male, but something in itself, something that makes one think not of any complement and limit, but only of life and reality: the female human being.

It is also good to love: because love is dicult. For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most dicult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the nal test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation. That is why young people, who are beginners in everything, are not yet capable of love: it is something they must learn. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered around their solitary, anxious, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning-time is always a long, secluded time, and therefore loving, for a long time ahead and far on into life, is—: solitude, a heightened and deepened kind of aloneness for the person who loves.

But this is what young people are so often and so disastrously wrong in doing: they (who by their very nature are impatient) ing themselves at each other when love takes hold of them, they scatter themselves, just as they are, in all their messiness, disorder, bewilderment ... : And what can happen then? What can life do with this heap of half-broken things that they call their communion and that they would like to call their happiness, if that were possible, and their future? And so each of them loses himself for the sake of the other person, and loses the other, and many others who still wanted to come.

Society has been able to create refuges of every sort, for since it preferred to take love-life as an amusement, it also had to give it an easy form, cheap, safe, and sure, as public amusements are.

 It is true that many young people who love falsely, i.e., simply surrendering themselves and giving up their solitude (the average person will of course always go on doing that—)

How can they, who have already flung themselves together and can no longer tell whose outlines are whose, who thus no longer possess anything of their own, how can they and a way out of themselves, out of the depths of their already buried solitude?

They act out of mutual helplessness, and then if, with the best of intentions, they try to escape the convention that is approaching them (marriage, for example), they fall into the clutches of some less obvious but just as deadly conventional solution. For then everything around them is—convention. Wherever people act out of a prematurely fused, muddy communion, every action is conventional: every relation that such confusion leads to has its own convention, however unusual (i.e., in the ordinary sense immoral) it may be; even separating would be a conventional step, an impersonal, accidental decision without strength and without fruit.

Children are still the way you were as a child, sad and happy in just the same way—and if you think of your childhood, you once again live among them, among the solitary children, and the grownups are nothing, and their dignity has no value.

Why should you want to give up a child’s wise not-understanding in exchange for defensiveness and scorn, since not-understanding is, after all, a way of being alone, whereas defensiveness and scorn are a participation in precisely what, by these means, you want to separate yourself from.

Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

Read as little as possible of literary criticism-such things are either partisan opinions, which have become petrified and meaningless, hardened and empty of life, or else they are just clever word-games, in which one view wins today, and tomorrow the opposite view. Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism. Only love can touch and hold them and be fair to them.—Always trust yourself and your own feeling, as opposed to argumentations, discussions, or introductions of that sort; if it turns out that you are wrong, then the natural growth of your inner life will eventually guide you to other insights. Allow your judgments their own silent, undisturbed development, which, like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be forced or hastened.

Beyond the reach of one's own understanding, and with deep humility and patience to wait for the hour when a new clarity is born: this alone is what it means to live as an artist: in understanding as in creating.

I can’t give you any advice but this: to go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to the question of whether you must create. Accept that answer, just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it.

No one can advise or help you—no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself.

Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism: they always result in more or less fortunate misunderstandings.

clara

Things are not all so easy to grasp and to express as most people would have us believe; most events are inexpressible, and take place in a sphere that no word has ever entered. Most inexpressible of all are works of art, existences full of secrets whose life continues alongside ours, whilst ours is transitory.

Yona

but there is a great deal of beauty here, because there is beauty everywhere

Florence

Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us. 

We know little, but we must hold to what is difficult is a certainty that will not forsake us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it. 

With nothing can one approach a work of art so little as with critical words: they always come down to more or less happy misunderstandings 

An original translation of Rainer Maria Rilke's most famous work by acclaimed translators Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy. Originally written from 1902-1908, Letters to a Young Poet is a compilation of famous German poet Rainer Maria Rilke's (1875-1926) thoughts and reflections on the vocation of writing. The letters urge his correspondent to look inward and understand his motivations for pursuing a life devoted to the written word, looking beyond those who attempt to criticize and critique his work. His advice can be extended to all young writers. For the first time in twenty years, Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy offer a new translation of this classic work that speaks to a new generation of artists, poets, and writers. With a new introduction and commentary on each letter, this edition places Rilke's letters in the context of today's world and the unique challenges of modern writers. Barrows and Macy are the first women to translate Letters to a Young Poet and their edition offers a fresh perspective on this work.

A New Translation and Commentary

Letters to a Young Poet

fira

amid the festivities, you experience your loneliness more heavily than at other times.

'Most unsayable of all are works of art, mysterious existences whose lives exist alongside ours' At the start of the twentieth century, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a series of letters to a young officer cadet, advising him on writing, love, sex, suffering and the nature of advice itself; these profound and lyrical letters have since become hugely influential for writers and artists of all kinds. This book also contains the 'Letter from a Young Worker', a striking polemic against Christianity written in letter-form, near the end of Rilke's life. In Lewis Hyde's introduction, he explores the context in which these letters were written and how the author embraced his isolation as a creative force. Charlie Louth's afterword discusses the similarities and contrasts of the two works, and Rilke's religious and sexual wordplay. This edition also contains a chronology, notes, and suggested further reading. Translated, edited and with notes and an afterword by Charlie Louth Introduced by Lewis Hyde

maia

The future is fixed, dear Mr Kappus, but we move around in infinite space. How could things not be dificult for us?

To love is also good, for love is hard. Love between one person and another: that is perhaps the hardest thing it is laid on us to do, the utmost, the ultimate trial and test, the work for which all other work is just preparation.

Not a big fan of living but maybe I DO want to live after the influence of th following passage:

"Do you recall, from your childhood on, how very much this life of yours has longed for greatness? I see it now, how from the vantage point of greatness it longs for even greater greatness. That is why it does not let up being difficult, but that is also why it will not cease to grow." 

"We must accept our existence to the greatest extent possible; everything, the unprecen-dented also, needs to be accepted. That is basically the only case of courage required of us: to be courageous in the face of the strangest, the most whimsical and unexplainable thing that we could encounter." 

RUNE.

Not a big fan of living but maybe I DO want to live after the influence of th following passage:

"Do you recall, from your childhood on, how very much this life of yours has longed for greatness? I see it now, how from the vantage point of greatness it longs for even greater greatness. That is why it does not let up being difficult, but that is also why it will not cease to grow." 

"We must accept our existence to the greatest extent possible; everything, the unprecen-dented also, needs to be accepted. That is basically the only case of courage required of us: to be courageous in the face of the strangest, the most whimsical and unexplainable thing that we could encounter." 

“It is also good to love: because love is difficult. For one human being to love another is perhaps the most difficult task.”

was incredibly well written, full of truths I didn’t know I needed

elinabel hidalgo 

“It is also good to love: because love is difficult. For one human being to love another is perhaps the most difficult task.”

was incredibly well written, full of truths I didn’t know I needed

Anna 

on one hand, I am that type of person that HATES when somebody tells me what to do, how to live my life and how to feel. so of course this was not the most comfortable read. I am still a teenager, still feel some kind of rebellion towards an authority that wants to teach me the ways of life (and an authority only 8 years older than me, for that matter? oh I will rebel even more)

on the other hand, I can see why this is a great piece of literature. I understand (most of) the points that he makes, I even tabbed quite a lot of thoughts of his. 

but I feel like I'm still quite young to truly appreciate this. I am, however, interested to see my reactions to this book in five, ten years' time.

the letter from a young worker was way more interesting to me. the points he makes are similar to my thoughts, it is written rather beautifully and I didn't feel like my whole life was being bellitled by it :D

Ryan Greene

Prakash Rajendran

Didn’t want to mark the book as read as I kept coming back ;)

Grace Edwards

Not sure how to feel about this one. I thought parts were really insightful and true but overall it didn’t do much for me. I was also a little put off by the translation that I read — maybe I shouldn’t have read the commentary as I went but I thought the translators had sort of a weird presence and perspective. I wish they didn’t take portions out of the main letters. 3.5 because apparently every rating has to have a half star.

Arihant Verma

If you are a poet/ a writer / artist / admirer of art / or even see art as something just passing, book a date with these letters.

3.5 stars — this would be life-changing for me if i had read this at 15. nevertheless, i’d probably still think about these letters from time to time.

Damion Searls

Franz Xaver Kappus

"Nearly a century after the publication of Rilke's inspirational work, the missing letters of the young poet himself finally appear in this canonical edition. For more than ninety years, eager writers and young poets, even those simply looking for a purpose in life, have embraced the wisdom of Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, first published in 1929. Most readers and scholars assumed that the letters from young poet were forever lost to posterity. Yet, shockingly, the letters were recently discovered by Erich Unglaub, a Rilke scholar, and published in German in 2019. The acclaimed translator Damion Searls has now not only retranslated Rilke's original letters but also translated the letters by Franz Xaver Kappus, an Austrian military cadet and, yes, aspiring poet. This timeless edition, in addition to joining the two sets of letters together for the first time in English, provides a new window into the workings of Rilke's visionary poetic and philosophical mind, allowing us to reexperience the literary genius of one of the most inspiring works of twentieth-century literature"--

With the Letters from the Young Poet

Isabella 

loved the gentleness of the letters and of course it is filled with rich thoughts. enjoyed reading them and needed to hear some of them at present

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.

Qonita

It got good ideas and stuff I second with, a tiny bit inspiring. But half of the book is just pretty words I don't really care about tbh. 3.5

annalyse! 

If you want to squeeze in some light but thought-provoking reading to your day, maybe at a coffee shop or a flight away from home, it needs to be this book.

Letters to a Young Poet is a book I wish I had read when I myself was a young poet trying to rhyme words, balancing white space and phrases, often sacrificing my ideas in favor of what I thought was the correct way of writing poems.

Rilke's wisdom poured into me, ready to patiently fill my cup with notes on connection, solitude, on seeking intrinsically to answer the question — must i write?

I don't usually read self-help books but I imagine a really good one must make me feel this way.

y✦

If you want to squeeze in some light but thought-provoking reading to your day, maybe at a coffee shop or a flight away from home, it needs to be this book.

Letters to a Young Poet is a book I wish I had read when I myself was a young poet trying to rhyme words, balancing white space and phrases, often sacrificing my ideas in favor of what I thought was the correct way of writing poems.

Rilke's wisdom poured into me, ready to patiently fill my cup with notes on connection, solitude, on seeking intrinsically to answer the question — must i write?

I don't usually read self-help books but I imagine a really good one must make me feel this way.

Kendall McClain

jack

so good. one of the kindest things i've read in a while with such a positive and helpful outlook on life

Annika Arguemore

Very insightful, relevant, and heartfelt. One for the books.

jess

everything seems to tie with solitary in Rilke's mind from the cumulated letters between him and Kappus; that delved into many aspects of their lives and their philosophical thoughts; from love and self-doubt, to fear and sadness, and what it means to be solitary.

Letters to a Young Poet (Spiritual Classics)

rilke the only acceptable white man of the 20th century

ame 

12/2023 reread

rilke the only acceptable white man of the 20th century



jennifer 

fiona

i probably have to reread this because it's so loved but i just was beyond bored

second time reading this great little pocketbook. a combination of 10 letters to an aspiring poet that inspires me and makes me fall more and more in love with literature and writing 

jaz ☁️

Jony Ringo

Nota ao próprio:
Diria que: (1) Compra a versão física do livro, pois seria interessante conhecer outra tradução que não a de Stephen Mitchell e em Português; (2) Lê-o como um marco na tua vida que, quando te sentes perdido e disjungido do mundo, as suas palavras te relembrem a beleza que a vida pode ter - e ser. Ouve a Natureza e compreende a sua pureza, percebe que a arte é uma experiência maior do que qualquer crítica pode conceber, ...

Ainda não terminei o livro, pelo que termino por aqui. Mas os sentimentos que me permitiu reviver... não tenho palavras para isso.

[20 de Agosto de 2019]
É belo o modo como Rilke escreve cada palavra com uma atenção, amizade, ternura, que também nos fazem chorar pela seu cuidado e por nos fazer perceber que apenas nos resta a sua arte. Que ela continue a ser bem apreciada e mantenha vivos o seu espírito e as suas sábias palavras. Quero lê-las sempre.
Fico feliz por ser o meu segundo livro. E que fico feliz por Rilke ser o meu amor platónico... Mas, falando a sério, as suas palavras são, como disse, de uma ternura e lucidez brilhantes. Adorava que ambos se tivessem encontrado e se conhecessem pessoalmente - ah, e que soubessemos o conteúdo das suas cartas. Ainda não sei qual o propósito de ter divulgado a correspondência, mas o mundo agradece. Não posso comparar Rilke a outros artistas, por diferentes razões, e nem por isso o quero, pelo que apenas me permito imaginar que felizmente mais cartas de igual sabedoria são trocadas pelo mundo.
Posso apenas dizer que o lado negativo do livro foi eu querer que as cartas terminassem depressa. A celeridade com que queria terminar o livro não me permitiu usufruir ao máximo do seu conteúdo, pelo que quero voltar a este livro no futuro.

charisa

“Therefore save yourself from these general themes and seek those which your own everyday life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, passing thoughts and the be­lief in some sort of beauty—describe all these with loving, quiet, humble sincerity, and use, to express yourself, the things in your environment, the im­ages from your dreams, and the objects of your memory. 

If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.” 

during an especially rough season this year, a friend read an excerpt of this small book aloud to me. it feels so different to read it for myself now, months later. as we hover on the cusp of the new year, i’m full of anticipation. i want to follow rilke’s advice and create art and write things from whatever heart i can offer, gleaning wonder and beauty from every corner of my life. it used to be so dark; i’m thankful for the light breaking through.

ramya v 

deep and wise stuff written so so beautifully that when you read it, it feels like it's said by God and this is how people talk in heaven.

Maria

Favorite passages:

Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.

Things aren't all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsay able than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life.

I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

Allow your verdicts their own quiet untroubled development which like all progress must come from deep within and cannot be forced or accelerated. Everything must be carried to term before it is born. To let every impression and the germ of every feeling come to completion inside, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, in what is unattainable to one’s own intellect, and to wait with deep humility and patience for the hour when a new clarity is delivered: that alone is to live as an artist, in the understanding and in one’s creative work.

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. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are simply there in their vast, quiet tranquillity, as if eternity lay before them. It is a lesson I learn every day amid hardships I am thankful for: patience is all!

CARTAS A UM JOVEM POETA

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