Letters to a Young Poet

by Rainer Maria Rilke

  Let me ask you, Mr V., why, if they want to help us, we who are so often helpless, why do they fail us here, at the root of all experience? Whoever stood by us there could be assured that we would demand nothing further of him. For the succour he gave us there would grow of its own accord and would become greater and stronger at the same time as our life. And would never run out. Why are we not set at the heart of the most secret thing we have? Why do we have to creep around outside it and get in eventually like burglars and thieves, into our own beautiful sexuality, where we stray around and stumble and bump into one another and then rush out again, like people caught red-handed, into the shadowy light of Christianity? Why, if it is true that guilt and sin, because of the inner tension of our soul, had to be invented, why were they not fixed to another part of our bodies; why were they dropped in to wait until they dissolved in our pure well, poisoning and muddying it? Why has our sexuality been made homeless, instead of locating in it the celebration of our true abode?

  Yes, I will admit that it is not right that it should belong to us, who are not capable of assuming and administering such an inexhaustible source of benediction. But why do we not belong to God from this point?

  Church people would remind me that there is such a thing as marriage, though they would not be unaware of how matters stand with that institution. And it’s no good moving the will to reproduction into the light of God’s grace, my sexuality is not only directed towards my descendants, it is the mystery of my own life, and only because it cannot, as it seems, occupy a position at the centre of it have so many people pushed it to the edges of themselves and in doing so lost their equilibrium. What’s to be done? The terrible untruth and uncertainty of our times has its cause in the inability to admit the happiness of sex, in this peculiarly misplaced culpability which is increasing all the time and divides us from the whole of the rest of nature and even from the child, although, as I learnt in that unforgettable night, the child’s innocence does not at all consist as it were in being ignorant of sex – ‘But’, so Pierre said in an almost inaudible voice, ‘that incomprehensible happiness which awakes in us in one place in the middle of the fruit-flesh of a close embrace is, in the child, still distributed anonymously over the whole body.’ In order to describe the singular situation of our sensuality, one would have to be able to say: once we were children everywhere, now we only are in one place. – But if there is even a single person among us who is certain of this and capable of providing the evidence to show it, why do we look on while generation after generation comes to its senses and begins to stir under the rubble of Christian prejudices like someone left for dead in the dark, confined on all sides by sheer denial?

  Mr V., I can’t stop writing. I’ve been at it almost the whole night. I must sum up my thoughts. – Did I say that I am employed in a factory? I work in the office; sometimes I’m also needed on the machines. Before that I once studied for a short while. Now, I just want to say what’s on my mind. What I want, you see, is to be usable for God just as I am; what I do here, my work, I want to continue to do in his direction without my ray of light being refracted, if I may put it like that, not even in Christ, who was once the water for many. I cannot for example explain my machine to him, he cannot contain it. I know that you won’t laugh if I put it so simply; it’s best that way. God, on the other hand, I have the feeling that I can bring it to him, my machine and its first products, or even all my work; it goes into him without difficulty. As in the old days it was easy for shepherds to bring the gods of their lives a lamb or the fruits of the earth, the finest grapes.

  You can see, Mr V., I have been able to write this long letter without once needing to use the word ‘faith’. For that I think is an involved and difficult matter, and not for me. I will not let myself be worsened for Christ’s sake, but want to be good for God. I do not want to be called a sinner from the outset, for perhaps I am not. I have mornings of such purity! I could talk with God, I need no one to help me draft letters to him.

  Your poems I only know from that reading the other evening; I possess only a handful of books which mostly have to do with my job. I do have a few about art, and oddments of history, just what I was able to get hold of. – But your poems, you will have to accept this, have brought forth this commotion in me. My friend said once: Give us teachers who praise the Here and Now. You are such a one.

  Notes

  LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET

  This edition presents the Letters as they were originally published in 1929, with Kappus’s Preface. Franz Xaver Kappus, born in 1883 in Timişoara, died in Berlin in 1966. He was thus only eight years younger than Rilke.

  Wiener Neustadt: A small town south of Vienna. Its Military Academy was the first of its kind in the world, founded in 1752 by Empress Maria Theresa.

  Horaček: Rilke was taught by him from 1886 to 1890. As Kappus explains, Horaček was at that time chaplain in Sankt Pölten.

  Sankt Pölten: The main city in Lower Austria.

  Mährisch-Weisskirchen: The German name for the town of Hranice, in Moravia in the Czech Republic. It was then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Rilke was at the Military Academy there in 1890–91.

  To Celebrate Myself: Mir zur Feier, a volume of poems, appeared in December 1899. It was Rilke’s fifth published collection.

  Paris, 17 February 1903

  Rilke had been in Paris since the previous autumn. He had gone there to write a short book on the sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840–1917), which he did very quickly (Auguste Rodin, finished in December 1902 and published in March 1903). Influenced by Rodin’s working methods and personality, he had probably written ‘The Panther’, the earliest of the poems in the Neue Gedichte (New Poems), in November. There is not much trace of this new schooling in the sentiments of the letter.

  Leopardi: The Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi (1798–1837).

  Professor Horaček: See Kappus’s Preface and the note.

  Viareggio near Pisa (Italy), 5 April 1903

  Rilke came to Viareggio to recover, not just physically, but artistically, from the demands laid on him by Rodin’s example. He wanted both to find some response to the overwhelming experience of Paris and to return to the kind of inspiration-dependent writing that had served him well before. In a way he succeeded, writing the third and final part of the Stunden-Buch (Book of Hours), ‘Das Buch von der Armut und vom Tode’ (‘The Book of Poverty and Death’) from 13 to 20 April.

  in the past: In spring 1898, when he began his lyrical drama Die weisse Fürstin (The White Princess).

  Jens Peter Jacobsen: Jacobsen (1847–85) was an important influence on Rilke, as he always acknowledged, particularly on his novel, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. The novel Niels Lyhne was published in 1880, ‘Mogens’ in 1872.

  Auguste Rodin: See headnote to the letter from Paris, 17 February 1903. Rodin was the first really accomplished artist Rilke got to know well, and both work and person were of enduring importance to him, especially for the New Poems (1907/8), the second volume of which is dedicated ‘A mon grand Ami Auguste Rodin’.

  Viareggio near Pisa (Italy), 23 April 1903

  Marie Grubbe: Fru Marie Grubbe, novel published in 1876.

  even if the translations are only moderate: Rilke later translated a few Jacobsen poems himself.

  collected edition of Jacobsen’s works: This appeared in 1898–9; the translator was Marie Herzfeld.

  ‘Here roses should stand … ’: A German translation of this novella by Jacobsen appeared in a Berlin weekly in 1899, preceded by an essay by Gustav Gugitz to which Rilke is possibly referring.

  patience is all!: The great lesson Rilke learnt from Rodin, as conveyed in a letter to Clara Rilke, his wife, on 5 September 1902: ‘Il faut travailler, rien que travailler. Et il faut avoir patience’ (‘You have to work, just work. And you have to be patient’).

  Richard Dehmel: (1863–1920) Prominent poet at the time and quite important to Rilke a few years earlier. Kappus had asked what Rilke thought
of him.

  my … books: The estimate of ‘12 or 13’ seems slightly generous. None of them contains the work for which Rilke is most admired today.

  at present in Worpswede near Bremen, 16 July 1903

  Worpswede is a small village in the plains of northern Germany which at the end of the nineteenth century became an artists’ colony centred round Heinrich Vogeler, Otto Modersohn and Fritz Mackensen, but including more importantly Paula (Modersohn-) Becker. Rilke was there in 1900–1902 and met and married Clara Westhoff, a sculptor. They had a daughter on 12 December 1901. Rilke’s book on four of the Worpswede artists had been published in February, just when the correspondence with Kappus began.

  ‘The desire to be a creator … give form’: Presumably, as a bit further on, a quotation from Kappus’s letter.

  a profession: Upon leaving the military academy, Kappus became a lieutenant.

  Rome, 29 October 1903

  From September 1903 to June 1904 Rilke was in Rome with his wife Clara.

  equestrian statue … of Marcus Aurelius: At the centre of the Capitol square. Marcus Aurelius’s dates are 121–80. His is the only ancient equestrian statue to have survived.

  an old summer-house: The Studio al Ponte in the park of the Strohl-Fern villa where Clara Rilke had already found a studio. Rilke moved in on 1 December.

  the book you announced in your letter: Im mohrengrauen Rock: Heiteres aus dem Leben der Zukünftigen, by F. X. Kappus and E. von Torstenau (Vienna, 1903).

  Rome, 23 December 1903

  Rilke is now living in the grounds of the villa Strohl-Fern.

  Rome, 14 May 1904

  By this time, Rilke had written among other things the poem ‘Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes’ and, in February, begun The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge.

  we must hold fast to what is difficult: Compare Yeats, ‘the fascination of what’s difficult’.

  ‘to hearken and to hammer day and night’: Rilke uses almost this phrase near the beginning of his book on Rodin. Kappus had probably quoted it in his letter.

  especially in the northern countries: Rilke is probably thinking, among other things, of women writers like Edith Nebelong and Karin Michaelis (both Danish), and Ellen Key and Selma Lagerlöf (who were Swedish). Rilke knew Key and Nebelong.

  Borgeby gård, Flãdie, Sweden, 12 August 1904

  Rilke left Rome at the end of June and was in Sweden until the beginning of December, a journey made under the auspices of Ellen Key.

  the prisoners in Poe’s tales: Edgar Allan Poe (1809–49). Rilke is probably thinking of ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’ (first published 1842), in which a (single) prisoner attempts to discover the dimensions of the dungeon he is in by feeling his way along the walls.

  Furuborg, Jonsered, Sweden, 4 November 1904

  a little work: Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke (The Lay of the Love and Death of the Cornet Christoph Rilke) in its first published version. This text of lyrical prose, concentrated as it is on a military character, might have appealed to Kappus. Rilke wrote the first version in 1899 and reworked it in August 1904 in Borgeby gård.

  Paris, on the second day of Christmas 1908

  More than four years separate this final letter from the last. In the interim Rilke had travelled widely in Germany, Austria, Flanders and Italy, but was mostly in Paris. The two volumes of the New Poems appeared in 1907 and 1908.

  your solitary fort: Kappus was stationed in Dalmatia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

  the noise of the sea: The Adriatic.

  THE LETTER FROM THE YOUNG WORKER

  This fictional letter was unpublished in Rilke’s lifetime. It seems that it was written between 12 and 15 February 1922, in an interval between the completion of the tenth of the Duino Elegies and the composition of the fifth. Rilke had by then also written the first half of the Sonnets to Orpheus (at the beginning of the month) and would shortly write the second. The Letter was first published in 1933, together with a real letter addressed to Lotte Hepner, as Über Gott: Zwei Briefe (On God: Two Letters).

  Mr V.: Some notes out of which the Letter seems to grow bear the title Erinnerung an Verhaeren (Memories of Verhaeren). Emile Verhaeren (1855–1916), the Belgian poet, had been an acquaintance of Rilke’s since 1905 and was much admired by him.

  the way of the cross: Rilke is punning here (and later) on the word ‘Kreuzweg’ whose usual sense is ‘cross-roads’ but which can also mean the Way of the Cross or the Stations of the Cross – the series of images representing the fourteen stages of Christ’s Passion, or the events leading to the Crucifixion. Like the Latin Via Crucis, ‘Kreuzweg’ can also mean ‘an extremely painful experience that has to be borne with fortitude’ (Oxford English Dictionary), a sense Rilke also plays on.

  no room in him, not even for his mother: See John 2:4.

  Mary Magdalene: See Mark 16:9–11 and Luke 8:2. In Rilke’s early, unpublished work Christ: Eleven Visions he has Jesus regret not having fathered a child with her.

  métier … sur place: ‘Trade … on the spot/fixed’ (in French in the original).

  the Here and Now: In German ‘das Hiesige’, an adjectival noun deriving from hier, here. Another possible translation would be ‘the earthly’ or ‘the things of the earth’.

  a Jerusalem: For the idea of a new Jerusalem, see Revelation 3:12 and Hebrews 12:22.

  Saint Francis of Assisi: St Francis (1181–1226), whom Rilke had read about in a book by Paul Sabatier (Vie de Saint François d’Assise, 1894), appears at the end of the Book of Hours. He founded the Franciscan order (‘a few simple monks’) in 1209. His Cantico del frate sole was written two years before his death.

  certain popes: Rilke is probably thinking of Renaissance popes like Sixtus IV or Innocent VIII whose reigns were famously corrupt and extravagant. Almost by accident, the worker is arguing, they were closer to God because closer to the exuberance of life than the ‘renovators of the Gospels’.

  this dwelling that the popes built for themselves: The Palais des Papes at Avignon. From 1309 to 1377 the popes were ‘exiled’ to Avignon, which became the papal seat.

  a Heracles statue: The portal of the cathedral attached to the Palais des Papes is thought to be the remains of a temple to Heracles.

  tisane: An infusion, often medicinal (in French in the original).

  in that age: The time when the great Gothic cathedrals were built, roughly the twelfth to fifteenth centuries.

  a patron: A boss (in French in the original).

  St Eustache: A church in Paris on the rue Montmartre, still reputed for its music.

  the May devotions: In honour of Mary.

  Maux: Presumably Meaux, a cathedral town not far from Paris.

  Marthe … has a wonderfully receptive nature: Rilke seems in this paragraph to be drawing on his own life. In 1911 he met Marthe Hennebert, a seventeen-year-old seamstress in difficult circumstances. In a letter of 14 January 1912 he wrote of her: ‘everything flourishes in her into pure life, finds endless receptivity in her nature – it is a wonder’.

  Here is the angel, who does not exist: Within a few days Rilke wrote a poem on the unicorn (one of the Sonnets to Orpheus) which begins ‘O this is the beast that does not exist.’

  Ile de la Barthelasse: An island on the Rhône near Avignon.

  Give us teachers who praise the Here and Now: This was how Rilke now conceived of his own role, especially in the ninth Duino Elegy and in the Sonnets to Orpheus, all written at this time.

  Chronology

  1875 4 December Rilke born prematurely in Prague and christened René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria. His parents belong to the German-speaking minority in Bohemia, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

  1882 Rilke’s education begins at a school run by Piarists.

  1884 His parents, Josef and Sophie (Phia), move into separate flats.

  1886 Enters the Military Lower School at St Pölten in Lower Austria.

  1890 Moves up to the Military Academy in
Mährisch-Weisskirchen (present-day Hranice), a school also attended a few years later by the novelist Robert Musil. By now Rilke is writing poems.

  1891 Poorly and unhappy in Mährisch-Weisskirchen, Rilke quits and moves to the Academy for Trade and Commerce in Linz. September Publishes his first poem. Reading Tolstoy.

  1892 Leaves the Linz Academy without qualification and returns to Prague to study privately for his Matura (school-leaving certificate). Reading Goethe.

  1894 November Publication of his first collection of poems, Leben und Lieder (Lives and Songs), which he later disowned.

  1895 Having gained his Matura in July (with distinction), matriculates at the University of Prague, attending lectures on art history, literature and philosophy. Busy in the literary world, and writing plays and prose as well as poems. Larenopfer (Offerings to the Lares) appears just before Christmas.

  1896 September Quits Prague for Munich, where he studies art history. December Publishes Traumgekrönt (Crowned with Dreams).

  1897 May Meets and pursues Lou Andreas-Salomé, and in June withdraws with her to a country retreat outside Munich. Transforms his handwriting, and at her suggestion adopts the name Rainer. Over the next year writes a collection of poems to her, Dir zur Feier (To Celebrate You), which is never published. October Moves to Berlin and takes lodgings near Andreas-Salomé and her husband. Attends a reading by Stefan George in November and publishes Advent in time for Christmas.