Letters to a Young Poet (Rediscovered Books) by Rainer Maria Rilke

Author:Rainer Maria Rilke [Rilke, Rainer Maria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-63384-229-8
Publisher: Sublime Books
Published: 2014-12-02T05:00:00+00:00

IX

FURUBORG,22 Jonsered, Sweden November 4th 1904.

MY DEAR HERR KAPPUS

During the time which has passed without a letter I have been partly on the move, partly so busy that I could not write. And even today I find writing difficult, because I have already had to write a number of letters, so that my hand is tired. If I could dictate, I would say much to you, but as it is you must accept only a few words in answer to your long letter.

I think of you often, dear Herr Kappus, and with such concentrated wishes that it really must help you in some way. Whether my letters could be truly a help, I often doubt. Do not say: yes, they are. Accept them quietly and without many thanks, and let us wait to see what will come.

It is perhaps no use now to reply to your actual words; for what I could say about your disposition to doubt or about your inability to bring your outer and inner life into harmony, or about anything else that oppresses you—: it is always what I have said before: always the wish that you might be able to find patience enough in yourself to endure, and single-heartedness enough to believe ; that you might win increasing trust in what is difficult, and in your solitude among other people. And for the rest, let life happen to you. Believe me: life is right, at all events.

And about feelings: all feelings are pure which gather you and lift you up; a feeling is impure which takes hold of only one side of your being and so distorts you. Everything that you could think in the light of your childhood is good. Everything which makes more of you than you have previously been in your best hours, is right. Every exaltation is good if it is in your whole blood, if it is not intoxication or turbidness, but joy into whose depths you can see. Do you understand what I mean?

And your doubt can become a good quality if you train it. It must become aware, it must become criticism. Ask it, whenever it wants to spoil something for you, why something is ugly, demand proofs from it, test it, and you will perhaps find it helpless and nonplussed, perhaps also aggressive. But do not give way, demand arguments and conduct yourself thus carefully and consistently every single time, and the day will dawn when it will become, instead of a subverter, one of your best workmen,—perhaps the cleverest of all who are building at your life.

That is all, dear Herr Kappus, that I am able to say to you today. But I am sending you by the same post the off-print of a little composition 23 which has just appeared in the Prague Deutsche Arbeit. There I speak to you further of life and of death, and of the greatness and splendour of both.

Yours:

RAINER MARIA RILKE.

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