Letters to a Young Poet

Letters to a Young Poet collects 10 different letters written by Rainer Maria Rilke over the course of four years, from 1903 to 1908. Though addressed and directly responding to the younger aspiring poet Franz Xaver Kappus, the letters express Rilke’s sentiments on a wide range of subjects, from poetry to love and religion. Thus, while on the surface offering advice to Kappus, the letters offer invaluable insight into Rilke’s general worldview as a poet.

 Kappus’s initial letter sought advice from Rilke on how to be a poet, and also asked Rilke for his opinion on Kappus’s poetry. As a result, the first few letters are largely confined to discussing ideas on aesthetics and poetry. Though Rilke offers Kappus a few remarks on his poetry, mostly informing him that he still must develop his “individual style,” Rilke largely eschews making any direct declarations of the worth of the poetry (15). In these initial letters, His contention is that works of art are beyond mere judgments of good or bad, and he advises Kappus to avoid reading any academic journals or literary reviews if he wants to develop as a poet: “[R]ead as little as possible of aesthetic criticism—such things are either partisan views, petrified and grown senseless in their lifeless induration, or they are clever quibblings in which today one view wins and tomorrow the opposite” (23). Any form of aesthetic judgment is ultimately a purely subjective one, regardless of the reviewer’s stature or credentials. One cannot, Rilke writes, learn about what is good poetry from reading other people’s views, and such works of aesthetic criticism ultimately reveal only the predominant view of the day.

Rilke argues that poetry, despite consisting of language, presents an experience that cannot be fully verbalized. In his first letter, Rilke tells Kappus that experiences are not as “comprehensible and expressible as one would mostly have us believe”;

[M]ost events are inexpressible, taking place in a realm which no word has ever entered, and more inexpressible than all else are works of art, mysterious existences, the life of which, while ours passes away, endures (15).

Rilke here outlines poetry’s core and principal feature as something that cannot be easily translated into words. In such a view, poetry is not about transmitting an intellectual concept, but rather about the whole, irreducible psychic experience evoked by the words. This inexpressibility is a defining feature of works of art, and what gives them resonance long after the period of their creation. Rilke sees this aesthetic characteristic as the epitome of all of life, and ultimately suggests that human experience always contains an element that is beyond the purvey of language.

Rilke does not, therefore, believe that one can learn to write poetry through reading a critic’s evaluation of poetry. Instead, Kappus must look inward for his poetic development: “You are looking outward, and that above all you should not do now. Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody” (16). One can only develop as a poet by foregrounding their own subjective experience of the world. By looking at one’s everyday life—in particular, one’s childhood and memories—one develops their own unique outlook. Rather than trying to directly tackle broad themes (such as love), Rilke suggests that it is only through a close attention to the particular that one reaches the universal: “If you will cling to Nature, to the simple in Nature, to the little things that hardly anyone sees, and that can so unexpectedly become big and beyond measuring […] then everything will become easier, more coherent, and somehow more conciliatory for you […]” (27). It is only through fully developing one’s inner sense of the world that one can capably select poetic voice or tool (such as irony).

Over the course of Rilke’s and Kappus’s correspondence, their exchange becomes more intimate, shifting from discussions of how to be a poet to Rilke advising Kappus on life. Though Kappus’s letters to Rilke are not included in the book, one can infer from Rilke’s responses that Kappus was expressing general dissatisfaction with his life as a military officer. In particular, Kappus seems to have struggled with feeling intensely lonely and alienated from his peers, as Rilke frequently offers Kappus advice on how to deal with loneliness.

Rilke’s later letters echo the sentiments expressed earlier about finding one’s poetic voice; questions about one’s life are only answerable by oneself: “[N]o human being anywhere can answer for you those questions and feelings that deep within them have a life of their own” (26). It is only through allowing one’s self to develop to its fullest, discovering one’s own authentic views about the world, that an individual can discover how it is they should live. Life is a slow and steady gestation, in which all experience contributes towards one’s personal growth.

To that end, Rilke sees solitude as difficult but necessary to endure. He notes that loneliness, especially prolonged loneliness, is amongst the most emotionally trying experiences that an individual must undergo. Yet, these moments of solitude are invaluable, as they offer the chance for newfound perspective: “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 because one comprehended nothing of their doings” (35). The solitude of adulthood allows one to return to an experience of childhood, when one was frequently lonely and had to create their own world to content themselves. Through the “child’s wise incomprehension,” one is able to see through and question the received structures of society and adulthood, gaining one’s own unique outlook (38).

If one can embrace such periods of solitude and sadness, Rilke believes that the individual will gain a fuller sense of self, and ultimately become more capable of communing with the rest of the world. His seventh letter discusses love at length, telling Kappus that loving another human being may be “the most difficult of all our tasks” (41). Most individuals are unable to accept the tremendous challenge of love, and often prematurely throw themselves into romantic relationships to avoid solitude. By trying to love before they have a full sense of self, such individuals cannot be truly relational. Instead, these individuals fall back upon societal “convention” (such as marriage), which ultimately limits their personal growth.