Book of the Week: Letters to a Young Poet

On the way to Hanoi (see previous post), I finally read this collection of letters in its entirety. Years ago, I came across a single brief quote from one of the letters and resonated so deeply with its sentiment that I bought the book (see http://www.sfgoth.com/~immanis/rilke/letter1.html). But I never did read the full collection -- until just now. Here is what led me to buy the book, then:

"You are so young, so much before all beginning, and I would like to beg you, ... to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Do not search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."

At that time, what I most needed to do was give up searching for answers and instead...live the questions.

Coming back to re-read the collection on the long plane trip to Hanoi, I find much wisdom still. Rilke's belief in pursuing that which is difficult is encouraging, if not always practical. His conviction that we are all essentially alone and his view that the space afforded by solitude is a kind of creative treasure are ones that I resonate with deeply, for some reason, but do not find to be widely held. So, I have always had a great fondness for this collection of letters that challenge me to be more true to my nature in the absence of outward support or recognition.

Now, having read the collection in its entirety, along with a bit about the poet's life, I find a new favorite - these are the words immediately preceding the excerpt above:

"If you trust in Nature, in the small Things that hardly anyone sees and that can so suddenly become huge, immeasurable; if you have this love for what is humble and try very simply, as someone who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier for you, more coherent and somehow more reconciling, not in your conscious mind perhaps, which stays behind, astonished, but in your innermost awareness, awakeness, and knowledge."

There are gems like this throughout the collection. I have said far too little about this book, but I hope that it is enough to encourage you to give it a chance.