Letters To A Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke Review

Over the course of ten letters from February 1903 to December 1908, Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke gave artistic advice to a younger chap from a similar background who was aspiring to follow in his (only slightly older) footsteps. After Rilke died in 1926, Franz Xaver Kappus, the young poet of the title, collected and published them to share the good advice and insight into Rilke’s life with everyone.

I’ve never read Rilke before so I didn’t know what to expect but was pleasantly surprised with his clear and still very relevant words on how to approach creative writing (although his advice could be applied to any artistic discipline). The first letter in particular is powerful, citing the importance of solitude in writing in order to look deep inside yourself and question the creative urge as well as draw out the individuality that will mark your artistic voice. Other good advice he mentions is not to compare your work to others or seek acceptance of it from anyone but yourself, and to look beyond the superficial to find the beauty in the everyday.

Rilke’s very encouraging and kind to Kappus, taking the time to give feedback on his poetry and suggesting books to read to inform and develop his work. The letters show a strong character - Rilke had no idea these letters would be published or read by more than the intended recipient and yet he puts so much effort and thought into them. (Kappus himself would go on to become a more commercially successful author than Rilke in his lifetime, though his books today are largely forgotten and he’s primarily known now as Rilke’s correspondent in these letters.)

Not all of Rilke’s advice is as compelling as the first letter and he often circles back to the importance of solitude so that it feels a little repetitive at times. But there’s a lot of great stuff in here that’ll help anyone struggling with creative writing - uplifting words on making discomfort an asset, avoiding irony, and how art is a way of living.

Most classic books come loaded with extras like introductions, notes, chronology, etc. and normally I would suggest skipping these and jumping straight into the reason you picked up the classic in the first place. But all that extra stuff is worth reading before you get to the letters themselves as they provide valuable context and insight into why the locations of nearly each letter is different - Rilke moved around Europe a LOT, usually for health reasons - and the background to the other work collected here: The Letter from a Young Worker.

The Letter from a Young Worker is a fictional piece that’s a criticism of Christianity (but not religion). I wasn’t that taken with this one. I agree with a lot of his critiques but found much of it banal, not least as I’ve heard a lot of the same arguments before. Charlie Louth’s afterword mentions that this was a first draft that Rilke never revised and it reads like it.

Letters to a Young Poet is really only going to appeal to people looking to pursue art either as a hobby or profession. It’s not all gold but there’s enough interesting and inspiring stuff in a few of the letters to make it worth reading over contemporary creative writing manuals, which say a lot of the same things but in a more bland way.