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Letters to a Young Poet
By Rainer Maria Rilke, Joan M. Burnham New World Library
Copyright © 2000 New World Library
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-57731-326-7
CHAPTER 1
The First Letter
* * *
"I know of no other advice than this: Go within and scale the depths of your being from which your very life springs forth."
Paris
17 February 1903
My dear sir,
Your letter reached me just a few days ago. I want to thank you for the deep and loving trust it revealed. I can do no more. I cannot comment on the style of your verses; critical intent is too far removed from my nature. There is nothing that manages to influence a work of art less than critical words. They always result in more or less unfortunate misunderstandings. Things are not as easily understood nor as expressible as people usually would like us to believe. Most happenings are beyond expression; they exist where a word has never intruded. Even more inexpressible are works of art; mysterious entities they are, whose lives, compared to our fleeting ones, endure.
Having said these things at the outset, I now dare tell you only this: that your verses do not as yet have an individual style. Yet they possess a quiet and hidden inclination to reveal something personal. I felt that very thing most notably in the last poem, "My Soul." There, something of your inner self wants to rise to expression. And in the beautiful poem "To Leopardi" something akin to greatness and bordering on uniqueness is sprouting out toward fulfillment. However, the poems cannot yet stand on their own merit, are not yet independent, not even the last one to Leopardi, not yet. In your kind letter accompanying them, you do not fail to admit to and to analyze some shortcomings, which I could sense while reading your verses, but could not directly put into words.
You ask whether your poems are good. You send them to publishers; you compare them with other poems; you are disturbed when certain publishers reject your attempts. Well now, since you have given me permission to advise you, I suggest that you give all that up. You are looking outward and, above all else, that you must not do now. No one can advise and help you, no one.
There is only one way: Go within. Search for the cause, find the impetus that bids you write. Put it to this test: Does it stretch out its roots in the deepest place of your heart? Can you avow that you would die if you were forbidden to write? Above all, in the most silent hour of your night, ask yourself this: Must I write? Dig deep into yourself for a true answer. And if it should ring its assent, if you can confidently meet this serious question with a simple, "I must," then build your life upon it. It has become your necessity. Your life, in even the most mundane and least significant hour, must become a sign, a testimony to this urge.
Then draw near to nature. Pretend you are the very first man and then write what you see and experience, what you love and lose. Do not write love poems, at least at first; they present the greatest challenge. It requires great, fully ripened power to produce something personal, something unique, when there are so many good and sometimes even brilliant renditions in great numbers. Beware of general themes. Cling to those that your everyday life offers you. Write about your sorrows, your wishes, your passing thoughts, your belief in anything beautiful. Describe all that with fervent, quiet, and humble sincerity. In order to express yourself, use things in your surroundings, the scenes of your dreams, and the subjects of your memory.
If your everyday life appears to be unworthy subject matter, do not complain to life. Complain to yourself. Lament that you are not poet enough to call up its wealth. For the creative artist there is no poverty — nothing is insignificant or unimportant. Even if you were in a prison whose walls would shut out from your senses the sounds of the outer world, would you not then still have your childhood, this precious wealth, this treasure house of memories? Direct your attention to that. Attempt to resurrect these sunken sensations of a distant past. You will gain assuredness. Your aloneness will expand and will become your home, greeting you like the quiet dawn. Outer tumult will pass it by from afar.
If, as a result of this turning inward, of this sinking into your own world, poetry should emerge, you will not think to ask someone whether it is good poetry. And you will not try to interest publishers of magazines in these works. For you will hear in them your own voice; you will see in them a piece of your life, a natural possession of yours. A piece of art is good if it is born of necessity. This, its source, is its criterion; there is no other.
Therefore, my dear friend, I know of no other advice than this: Go within and scale the depths of your being from which your very life springs forth. At its source you will find the answer to the question, whether you must write. Accept it, however it sounds to you, without analyzing. Perhaps it will become apparent to you that you are indeed called to be a writer. Then accept that fate; bear its burden, and its grandeur, without asking for the reward, which might possibly come from without. For the creative artist must be a world of his own and must find everything within himself and in nature, to which he has betrothed himself.
It is possible that, even after your descent into your inner self and into your secret place of solitude, you might find that you must give up becoming a poet. As I have said, to feel that one could live without writing is enough indication that, in fact, one should not. Even then this process of turning inward, upon which I beg you to embark, will not have been in vain. Your life will no doubt from then on find its own paths. That they will be good ones and rich and expansive — that I wish for you more than I can say.
What else shall I tell you? It seems to me everything has been said, with just the right emphasis. I wanted only to advise you to progress quietly and seriously in your evolvement. You could greatly interfere with that process if you look outward and expect to obtain answers from the outside — answers which only your innermost feeling in your quietest hour can perhaps give you.
I was very happy to find in your writing the name of Professor Horacek. I harbor the highest regard for this kindest of scholars and owe him lasting gratitude. Would you please pass my sentiments on to him. It is very kind of him to think of me still, and I appreciate it.
I am returning the verses with which you entrusted me. I thank you again for your unconditional and sincere trust. I am overwhelmed with it, and therefore have tried, to the best of my ability, to make myself a little more worthy than I, as a stranger to you, really am.
With my sincerest interest and devotion,
Yours,
Rainer Maria Rilke
CHAPTER 2
The Second Letter
* * *
"We are unutterably alone, essentially, especially in the things most intimate and most important to us."
Viareggio, near Pisa, Italy
5 April 1903
You must forgive, my dear sir, that not until today could I gratefully turn my thoughts to your letter of February 24th. Until now I was not well, not exactly ill, but depressed by an influenza-type of fatigue. I was incapable of doing anything. Finally, when my situation did not seem to improve, I came to this southern seashore where I had been coaxed into well-being once before. But I am not well yet. Writing is difficult for me; therefore you must take these few lines to be more than they are.
Of course, you must know that you shall always bring me joy with each of your letters. But please have forbearance with the answers, which may well often leave you empty-handed. We are unutterably alone, essentially, especially in the things most intimate and most important to us. In order for a person to advise, even to help another, a great deal must happen. Many different elements must coincide harmoniously; a whole constellation of things must come about for that to happen even once.
I wanted to tell you about two things today:
One is about irony: Do not allow it to control you, especially during uncreative moments. In creative moments allow it to serve you as another means to better understand life. If you use it with pure intent, then it is pure. One need not be ashamed of it. But beware of a viewpoint that is too consistently ironic; turn your attention to lofty and serious issues instead. In their presence irony will pale and become helpless. Scale the depths of things; irony will never descend there. And when you are exploring thus, and arrive at the brink of greatness, ask yourself whether this ironic attitude springs from a truly deep need of your being. For due to the impact of serious things, it will either fall away from you, if it is something merely incidental, or if it truly innately belongs to you, it will be strengthened to become an important tool, and take its place with all the other instruments with which you must build your own art.
The second thing that I wanted to tell you today is this:
Of all my books there are only a few that are indispensable to me. Two of them are constantly at my fingertips wherever I may be. They are here with me now: the Bible and the books of the great Danish writer, Jens Peter Jacobsen. I wonder whether you know his works. You can obtain them easily, for some of them are published in excellent translation. Do avail yourself of the small book Six Stories by J. P. Jacobsen and his novel Niels Lyhne, and begin with the first story in the first set, called "Mogens." A whole world will envelop you — the joy, the wealth, the incomprehensible greatness of a world! Live awhile within these books. Learn of them, whatever seems worth the learning, but above all, love them. For this love you shall be requited a thousand and a thousand times over, no matter what turn your life will take. This love, I am sure of it, will weave itself through the tapestry of your evolving being as one of the most important threads of your experiences, your disappointments, and your joys.
If I were obliged to tell you who taught me to experience something of the essence of creativity, the depth of it and its enduring quality, there are only two names that I can name: that of Jacobsen, the very greatest of writers, and Auguste Rodin, the sculptor. No one among all artists living today compares with them.
Success in all your ways!
Yours,
Rainer Maria Rilke
CHAPTER 3
The Third Letter
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"Destiny itself is like a wonderful wide tapestry in which every thread is guided by an unspeakably tender hand, placed beside another thread, and held and carried by a hundred others."
Viareggio, near Pisa, Italy
23 April 1903
You have brought me much joy, my dear sir, with your Easter letter, for it told me much good about you. The way in which you expressed yourself about Jacobsen's great and loving art showed me that I did not err in leading your life, with its many questions, to this treasure house.
Now Niels Lyhne, a book of grandeur and great depth, will reveal itself to you little by little, the more often you read it. It seems to contain everything, from life's most delicate fragrance to the most full-bodied flavor of its ripest and heaviest fruits. There is nothing in it that would not be understandable, comprehensible, or that would not ring true to experience. There is nothing in it that would not summon a familiar resonance echoing from the memory. No experience was too insignificant — the smallest happening unfolds like destiny. Destiny itself is like a wonderful wide tapestry in which every thread is guided by an unspeakably tender hand, placed beside another thread, and held and carried by a hundred others.
You will experience the greatest happiness reading this book for the first time and will move through its countless surprises as in a new dream. And as one goes through these books later, awestruck still, they lose nothing of their wonderful power nor relinquish any of their fairy tale quality with which they overwhelmed the reader the first time.
Only one becomes more and more delighted, more grateful, somehow clearer and simpler in one's perceptions. One has a deeper faith in life, is more content, and has somehow gained in self worth.
And later you must read the wonderful book about the fate and longing of Marie Grubbe and Jacobsen's letters and journals and fragments, and finally, his poems. His poems live on, resounding in one's mind endlessly — even though they are only moderately well translated. In addition, I would advise you, when you have time, to buy the beautiful edition of the whole of Jacobsen's works. It contains all of these.
Concerning "Roses Should Be Standing Here ..." — this work of incomparable eloquence and form — your negative opinion of the writer of the introduction is entirely and incontestably right. Let me ask you right here to read as little as possible of aesthetic critiques. They are either prejudiced views that have become petrified and senseless in their hardened lifeless state, or they are clever word games. Their views gain approval today but not tomorrow. Works of art can be described as having an essence of eternal solitude and an understanding is attainable least of all by critique. Only love can grasp and hold them and can judge them fairly. When considering analysis, discussion, or presentation, listen to your inner self and to your feelings every time. Should you be mistaken, after all, the natural growth of your inner life will guide you slowly and in good time to other conclusions. Allow your judgments their own quiet, undisturbed development, which, as with all progress, must come from deep within and can in no way be forced or hastened. All things consist of carrying to term and then giving birth. To allow the completion of every impression, every germ of a feeling deep within, in darkness, beyond words, in the realm of instinct unattainable by logic, to await humbly and patiently the hour of the descent of a new clarity: that alone is to live one's art, in the realm of understanding as in that of creativity.
In this there is no measuring with time. A year doesn't matter; ten years are nothing. To be an artist means not to compute or count; it means to ripen as the tree, which does not force its sap, but stands unshaken in the storms of spring with no fear that summer might not follow. It will come regardless. But it comes only to those who live as though eternity stretches before them, carefree, silent, and endless. I learn it daily, learn it with many pains, for which I am grateful: Patience is all!
* * *
My reaction to the books of Richard Dehmel — the same, by the way, as to the person, whom I do know slightly — is this: When I have found one of his well-written beautiful pages, I am then already afraid of the next ones, which destroy everything again and can turn that which is worthy of love into something unworthy. You have characterized him very well with the words, "lustful in his life and writing." Actually the creative experience lies so unbelievably close to the sexual, close to its pain and its pleasure, that both phenomena are only different forms of the same longing and bliss. If one could say "sexuality" instead of "lust" — sexuality in a large sense, in a wide pure sense, not one suspect by the church — then his art would be great and infinitely important. His poetic talent is great and as strong as the primeval urge; it has an impetuous rhythm that breaks forth out of him as water out of the rocks.
But it seems that this power of his is not always entirely genuine and not without assuming a pose. (After all, this is indeed one of the most difficult tests for the true artist: he must always remain innocently unaware of his best virtues if he does not wish to rob them of their spontaneity and their unaffectedness.) And when Dehmel's creative power, rushing through his being, meets the sexual, then it finds the man not quite so pure as he needs to be. For him there exists no totally mature and pure world of sex, none that is simply human and not masculine only. For him there exist lust, intoxication, and restlessness, beleaguered with the old prejudices and pride, with which the male has disfigured and burdened love. He loves only as male, not simply as a human being. Consequently there is in his perception something confining, something spiteful, seemingly wild, something temporal, not eternal. There is something that detracts from his art, and makes it suggestive and questionable. His art is not without blemish; it has been imprinted with passion and transience. Little of it will continue and endure. (But this is true of most art.)
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, Joan M. Burnham. Copyright © 2000 New World Library. Excerpted by permission of New World Library.
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