Letters to a Young Poet

Synopsis

The young Franz Xaver Kappus wrote to the German-language poet Rainer Maria Rilke for advice on whether to keep writing. Rilke's replies, collected after his death, address vocation, solitude, the patience required by art, and the necessity of asking better questions rather than chasing answers.

Editorial review

Ten letters Rilke wrote between 1903 and 1908 to a young military cadet uncertain whether to pursue poetry. They have outlived their occasion to become one of the most quoted texts in the literature on vocation. Read once a year.

Key takeaways

• 1

  Live the questions now; the answers come later if at all.

• 2

  Solitude is not a sentence; it is a workshop.

• 3

  Do not write love poems; learn to see, and let love teach you to write.

• 4

  Art is born from necessity, not from ambition.