Letters to a Young Poet

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Summary: "When a prince is going to speak silence must be made"
Review: "Letters to a Young Poet" is a very small book that allows us to enjoy the correspondence between a famous writer and an aspiring poet. This exchange of letters began in 1903 thanks to a missive that Franz Xaver Kappus sent to R. M. Rilke, and continued for many years, until 1908.

Why is this little book important?. Because it allows us to read what Rilke thought about many subjects, for example life, poetry, and art. And because, as F. X. Kappus said, "when a prince is going to speak, silence must be made".

Kappus wanted to share the insights that Rilke gave him, and thus compiled his missives in "Letters to a young poet". The letters are few, and not overly long, but in this case the knowledge offered is certainly greater than the number of pages.

It is easier to show you what I mean by giving you an example... For instance, what Rilke's advices Franz to do, when he tells him to: "Go into yourself and test the deeps in which your life takes rise; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create. Accept it, just as it sounds, without inquiring into it. Perhaps it will turn out that you are called to be an artist".

On the whole, I highly recommend this book to everybody. It will probably be more useful to aspiring writers, but people who simply enjoy literature will delight in it too :)

Belen Alcat



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Summary: The Ability to Feel Life - Apart From One-Sided Thinking
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This book is a treasure of a man of solitude and poetic ability to FEEL life, not simply an intellectual exercise like 99% people in our so called "enlightened" world so do. It's amazing how insightful Rilke was at such a young age. And yet the world today, the power, control and politics currently live in a fundamentally thinking world of one-sided blindness that is so far apart from Rilke that it is like a regression of humanity of large and major proportion, and in such a short amount of time.

On solitude and the ability to be childlike (not childish), that is, living in the present moment in appreciation of what simply is, apart from all concepts, occupations and fundamental thinking and answers of security and certainty, Rilke writes:

"There is one solitude and that is great . . . a great inner solitude. Going into oneself and for hours meeting no one - this one must be able to attain. To be solitary, the way one was solitary as a child, when the grownups went around involved with things that seemed important and big because they themselves looked so busy . . . and when one day one perceives that their occupations are paltry, their professions petrified and no longer linked with (real) living . . Only the individual who is solitary is like a thing placed under profound laws, and when he goes out into the morning that is just beginning, or looks out into the evening that is full of happening . . . all status drops from him as a dead man, though he stands in the midst of sheer life. pp. 45-47

Rilke knew that life was creative, an art not grasped by criticism and intellectualism:

"Words of art are of an infinite loneliness and with nothing so little to be reached as with criticism. Only love can grasp and hold and be just toward them." p. 29

This is because life is not about the answers, for truth only stands in relativity, as the intellectual fails to realize, only living in despair or in bogus formulas for safety. For life is about living dangerously in the difficult, not in the comfort zones, which ultimately are not real comfort, but illusion of such. Living in the fast lane but with discernment, there is a balance, like a tamed down Dr. Faust.

"Do not seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now." p. 35

" We must assume our existence as broadly as we in any way can; everything, even the unheard-of, must be possible in it. That is at bottom the only courage that is demanded of us: to have courage for the most strange, the most singular and the most inexplicable that we may encounter."

And finally to sum Rilke's incredible insight,

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

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Summary: An outstanding guide to finding one's inner self
Review: A dear friend of mine gave me this book to read around the time of my twenty-first birthday. He saw that I had been having trouble finding what my true calling in life was. Once I read this great work I was blessed with a new outlook on life and its true meaning. Rilke speaks to the reader's innermost emotions with his thoughts on solitude and how it can make one see life in a new light. I would definatly recommend this book to any of my friends who needed a guiding light in their search for inner peace.

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Summary: The book that can change a way of living
Review: A friend gave it to me when I was 18, and after all this years, I think that it is the best gift someone has done to me. After reading all it, I found that it was all marked that there were too many things to understand, to keep on mind, to keep on an special place of the mind. Things that are said, can help to look the life in a new form, more delightfull... looking all the details that are lost when you past them quickly.

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Summary: Images so beautiful it hurts.
Review: A simply beautiful book. I highly recommend it to those who love the written word.

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Summary: eternal wisdom should be shared with everyone
Review: A very good friend gave this book to me as I was struggling to find myself during my early college years. I was instantly amazed at how a book written over ninety years ago could be so precisely helpful to the many questions I was suffering with at the time. Rilke introduced me to the concept of solitude as a blessing. This idea has truly changed my life for the better as I have taken the time to step away from life and look inside for the answers I seek. If I had one gift to give someone I truly cared about, it would be this masterpiece. Although the contents of this book can not be appreciated by everyone, I challenge all to read it and see if it sparks the fire in them that it has brought to me.

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Summary: A Very Personal Book
Review: Although the letters found in this slim little volume was written to a young man, almost a hundred years ago, yet I found it deeply personal. It is as if Rilke is addressing no one else but to me. I cannot but admire the warm and graceful prose as well as the sharp insight which the poet has to offer about poetry and life. It is a book which many a reader will return to from time to time. I know that I would.

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Summary: A "must" for all Rainer Maria Rilke fans.
Review: Any seeking an inspirational keepsake edition of a classic will relish this collection of letters which appears here in a revised new edition including a new foreword by Kent Nerburn. The presentation makes this classic a winner.

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Summary: Devotional
Review: As much as it is a clichè, this is one of those books that makes it on to the desert-island shortlist (along with the Collected Works of Plato, but that's my island, not yours, you'll be glad to know). Not the finest transition from German to English (A-, A+ being Mitchell's translation of the poems, so you can see the curve), nevertheless no one should be afraid of buying this particular translation. It is sensitive to what Rilke wanted to say and says it in about as good English as you could get from such magnificent and dense language (the fact that these are actual letters does not mean that they are on the order of "hi mom how are things," especially since the author is a demigod such as Rilke). If you don't read German of French, you'll not miss it here. It is the idea, not the language, that one is after in Rilke's Letters.

In this book, Rilke reminds us that God cannot be lost like a stone that one puts in one's pocket. This book will tell you how to live, will show you, through the power of one man's love and honesty in the face of the life he had chosen to live, how to live the life you have chosen. I have had more than one friend find answers to plaguing questions between the covers of this book. It is no self-help pablum. It is Rilke, a genius of the human mind, and you owe it to yourself to introduce yourself to his work.

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Summary: Letter I wrote my friend upon sending this book:
Review: Erin, I'm sitting in my corner room which is a horrendous mess currently. But if I look out of the windows a certain way, I feel as though I'm looking over the iron balconies of Paris in the twenties. Which is rather nice. I've been reading voraciously the past few days, and I want to send you a book. It expresses things about religion, about solitude, about sex, about life, which strike a chord inside me, creating a real harmony. The writer has a way of causing in me that feeling when I can't remember a word, but it's on the tip of my tongue. I understand the essence of the word, but I can't place the actual thing. It escapes me. Then someone relieves me by coming up with precisely that word. (Perhaps after days of torture.) It's a jubilant occurance when I pronunce it. The comfort of matching name with thing. This writer brings me this relief about all the lost musings of my life. He puts perfectly into words a combination of philosophies, and his writing resonates with that absolute truth which transcends the individual. I think you'll like. Auf wiedersehen. Love, Lauren