Book Review: Rainer Maria Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet"

Rainer Maria Rilke, Translation by M. D. Herter Norton, Letters To A Young Poet, (W.W. Norton, 2004) 90 pages, poetry/letters, $9.95 U.S,/$14.99 Canada.

This classic contains ten letters written by Rainer Maria Rilke to a much younger Franz Xavier Kappus between the years of 1903 to 1908. It also contains a bit of biographical information in the second half that allows a placing of each letter in its context in Rilke's life.

The German poet was well read and well traveled, which can be quickly garnered from a surface skimming of the letters. But that is not to say his life was easy. His wife, Clara Westoff, was a sculptor. Since they both were artists, and subsequently traveled extensively, Clara's parents raised their daughter. He missed the child a great deal. He was also of a weak constitution since birth and spent several years in a military school where he was sorely abused by the other students. Eventually, he left the school with his parents' blessing due to completely shattered health. He never completed any kind of formal schooling, but never stopped reading and learning. In fact, he always felt a bit inferior to others when it came to education which created in him a most intense drive to even that score in any way he could.

He turned to poetry while still in the military school to cope with the indignities he suffered there. Throughout the letters, he speaks constantly of suffering and its molding affect on the human psyche, and especially on the individual level. He promoted the idea of one's accepting suffering and funneling it into one's deepest self, integrating it entirely into that which makes a person who they are. He also believed that a poet requires much solitude, much travel, silence, and peace. He recommended visits to the ocean. He appeared to favor winter over other seasons and was more productive at that time.

He firmly did not recommend reading literary criticism. This, he believed, would warp one's view of poetry. He said that a person should rely on his personal conclusions regarding poetry and life and regard criticism as merely the opinion of others. If one drew the wrong conclusion about a piece then time and the individual growth time facilitates would correct it.

Many a young poet has turned to this little volume of letters for insights on how to grow into a poet. But if one really ascribed to Rilke's way of thinking on the matter, they would not expect such miracle and phenomena from this book. One would not look to another to learn how to be a poet. Is that something that can truly be learned? Technique can, and must, certainly be learned, by which I mean form, rhyme, meter- the mathematics of language. But being a poet seems to me to be more of a way of looking at the world, an ability to see what others cannot. At the very least, it would require a certain amount of uninhibitedness of character. These cannot be learned.

If a young poet wishes to know how to grow into a poet, the best answer I could think of is to learn to love the uniqueness in yourself and others. And, as Rilke brings out in his first letter, ask yourself: "Must I write?" If the true answer to that question within yourself is yes, that you would die if you couldn't write, then you are already a poet. Growth will come naturally.