Letters to a Young Poet [Paperback]

The ten letters collected here are arguably the most famous and beloved letters of our century. Written when Rainer Maria Rilke was himself still a young man with most of his greatest work before him, they are addressed to a student who had sent Rilke some of his work, asking for advice about becoming a writer. The two never met, but over a period of several years Rilke wrote him these ten letters, which have been enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of readers for what Stephen Mitchell calls the vibrant and deeply felt experience of life that informs them."The common reader will be delighted by Stephen Mitchell’s new translation of that slim and beloved volume by Rilke,Letters to a Young Poet. . . the best yet."
--Los Angeles TimesRainer Marie Rilke, the great Austro-German poet, was the author of many works includingDuino ElegiesandSonnets to Orpheus.

Stephen Mitchell's translations include Ahead ofAll Parting: The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Job,Tao Te Ching, and, most recently,Bhagavad-Gita. He lives in California.Paris
February 17, 1903

Dear Sir,
Your letter arrived just a few days ago. I want to thank you for the great confidence you have placed in me. That is all I can do. I cannot discuss your verses; for any attempt at criticism would be foreign to me. Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism: they always result in more or less fortunate misunderstandings. Things aren't all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsayable than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, who life endures beside our own small, transitory life.

With this note as a preface, may I just tell you that your verses have no style of their own, although they do have silent and hidden beginnings or somethinl³2