rainer maria rilke letter to a young poet

It has been a joy to me to read, again and again, this sonnet and your letter. Read the verses as if they were someone else’s, and you will feel in your innermost being how utterly they are your own. And now I give you that copy, because I know that it is important and makes for new experience to find one’s own work again in someone else’s hand-writing. It is the best of your verses that I have been permitted to read. You see, I have copied out your sonnet, because I considered it to be beautiful and simple and born in the form in which it runs with so much quiet grace. here, too, I was affected by the beginning of spring with its evil, ill-humoured transitions-and now I manage, dear Herr Kappus, to greet you, as I am so heartily glad to do, and to tell you to the best of my ability one or two things concerning your letter. First work, then troubles and finally ill-health, have been keeping me from this answer, which, as I wished it, was to come to you from good peaceful days.

Image: Rainer Maria Rilke in Westerwede, 1901 (detail).It is a long time since I received your last letter, but do not hold that against me.

With an introduction by Rachel Corbett, author of You Must Change Your Life: The Story of Rainer Maria Rilke and Auguste Rodin (2016), this book is a must-have for Rilke’s admirers, young and old, and all aspiring artists. Writing during his aged years, this volume paints a picture of the venerable poet as he faced his mortality, through the perspective of hindsight, and continued to embrace his openness towards other creative individuals. Rilke’s constant warmth, his ability to sense in advance his correspondent’s difficulties and propose solutions to them, and his sensitivity as a person and an artist come across in these charming and honest letters. In these eight intimate letters written to a teenage Balthus-who would go on to become one of the leading artists of his generation-Rilke describes the challenges he faced, while opening the door for the young painter to take himself and his work seriously. While the latter has become a global phenomenon, with millions of copies sold in many different languages, the present volume has been largely overlooked. Never before translated into English, Rainer Maria Rilke’s fascinating Letters to a Young Painter, written toward the end of his life between 19, is a surprising companion to his infamous Letters to a Young Poet, featuring earlier correspondence from 1902 to 1908.

Rainer maria rilke letter to a young poet