In the Third Letter in Letters to a Young Poet Rilke Compares Art to

Rainer Maria Rilke (source)

"When a truly great and unique spirit speaks, the lesser ones must be silent," Franz Xaver Kappus wrote near Rainer Marie Rilke. Over a period of about six years Kappus and Rilke exchanged letters. Kappus began the correspondence seeking Rilke's judgment and critique of his poetry. Rilke offered wisdom rather than answers, a way rather than a destination. Rilke's letters were published posthumously as Letters to a Young Poet. Despite the title, Rilke's words are not express to the young or would-exist poets. Rilke's words touch the human soul and invite change.

(The subtitles are my own and the numbers refer to the pages in the hyperlinked book.)

1. On Looking Inward (from The Starting time Letter, 10, 12)

Y'all ask whether your poems are skilful. You send them to publishers; yous compare them with other poems; yous are disturbed when sure publishers reject your attempts. Well now, since you have given me permission to advise you, I suggest that you give all that up. You're looking outward and, above all else, that you must not exercise now. No one tin suggest and help y'all, no ane.

In that location is but ane style: Go within….

Therefore, my dear friend, I know of no other advice than this: Get within and scale the depths of your being from which your very life springs forth. At its source you volition find the answer to the question….

2. On Living 1's Fine art (from the Third Letter, 26)

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 solitary is to live one's fine art, in the realm of understanding as in that of creativity.

iii. On Loving and Living the Questions (from The Fourth Letter, 35)

I would like to beg of you, dear friend, equally well as I can, to have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your center. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now expect for the answers. They cannot now be given to y'all considering you lot could non live them. Information technology is a question of experiencing everything. At present yous need to alive the question. Perchance you volition gradually, without fifty-fifty noticing it, find yourself experiencing the reply, some distant solar day. Perhaps y'all are indeed carrying within yourself the potential to visualize, to design, and to create for yourself an utterly satisfying, joyful, and pure lifestyle. Discipline yourself to attain it, but accept that which comes to you lot with deep trust, and equally long every bit it comes from your own volition, from your own inner need, have it, and do not hate anything.

4. On the Globe Within (from The 6th Alphabetic character, 52-53)

Think, dear friend, reflect on the world that y'all conduct within yourself. And name this thinking what yous wish. It might exist recollections of your childhood or yearning for your ain futurity. Just be sure that yous detect carefully what wells upward within you and place that above everything that you notice effectually you. Your innermost happening is worth all your love. You must somehow work on that.

v. On Struggle (from The Seventh Alphabetic character, 62-63)

People have, with the help of and so many conventions, resolved everything the like shooting fish in a barrel way, on the easiest side of easy. But information technology is clear that we must embrace struggle. Every living affair conforms to it. Everything in nature grows and struggles in its ain way, establishing its own identity, insisting on it at all costs, against all resistance. We can be sure of very little, but the need to court struggle is a surety that will not exit united states of america.

half-dozen. On Love (from The 7th Letter, 63)

To love is too good, for love is hard. For one human being being to honey another is perhaps the most hard task of all, the epitome, the ultimate examination. Information technology is that striving for which all other striving is simply preparation.

7. On Incertitude (from the Ninth Letter, 88-89)

It is always my wish that you lot might find plenty patience within yourself to endure, and enough innocence to have religion. It is my wish that you might gain more and more trust in whatever is difficult for you…. Allow life to happen to you lot. Believe me, life is right in all cases.

…

Your doubt can become a expert aspect if you discipline it. It must become a knowing; it must become the critic. Inquire it, as oft equally it wishes to spoil something, why something is ugly. Demand proof of it, test information technology, and you lot will find it perhaps perplexed and dislocated, perhaps also in protest. Don't requite in; demand arguments. Act with alertness and responsibility, each and every fourth dimension, and the twenty-four hours will come up when doubt will change from the destroyer to become ane of your best boyfriend-workers, perchance the wisest of all that accept a part in building your life.

These and many other words from Rilke'south Lettersclaiming and resonate within me. They are words of spiritual guidance, nurture, and encouragement. In many means it seems every bit if he is writing to me. Perhaps it feels that manner for yous also. What does he teach you? What take you learned? I suspect he is besides writing to himself.

Kappus' struggles, my struggles, your struggles, are not merely individual struggles but the homo struggles. Rilke surely knew this equally he closes his eighth alphabetic character with this: "Do not believe that the one who seeks to comfort you lives without difficulty the simple and humble words that sometimes help you lot. His life contains much grief and sadness and he remains far backside you. Were information technology not so, he would not accept plant those words." (83)

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Source: https://interruptingthesilence.com/2013/07/10/7-teachings-from-rilkes-letters-to-a-young-poet/

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