Letters to a Young Poet(1)

 It's a book you'll read countless times and each time will seem like the first time.

Letters To A Young Poet are ten letters written to a young man about to enter the German military. His name was Franz Kappus, he was 19 years old, and he wrote Rilke looking for guidance and a critique of some of his poems. Rilke was himself only 27 when the first letter was written. The resulting five year correspondence is a virtual owner's manual on what it is (and what is required) to be an artist and a person.

Letter One

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 unsay able than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose 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 of something personal. I feel this most clearly in the last poem, "My Soul." There, some thing of your own is trying to become word and melody. And in the lovely poem "To Leopardi" a kind of kinship with that great, solitary figure does perhaps appear. Nevertheless, the poems are not yet anything in themselves, not yet any thing independent, even the last one and the one to Leopardi. Your kind letter, which accompanied them managed to make clear to me various faults that I felt in reading your verses, though I am not able to name them specifically.

     You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you - no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple "I must", then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose. Don't write love poems; avoid those forms that are too facile and ordinary: they are the hardest to work with, and it takes a great, fully ripened power to create something individual where good, even glorious, traditions exist in abundance. So rescue yourself from these general themes and write about what your everyday life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty Describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember. If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no poor, indifferent place. And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world's sound - wouldn't you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories? Turn your attention to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance. And if out of , this turning within, out of this immersion in your own world, poems come, then you will not think of asking anyone whether they are good or not. Nor will you try to interest magazines in these works: for you will see them as your dear natural possession, a piece of your life, a voice from it. A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it. So, dear Sir, I can't give you any advice but this: to go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to, the question of whether you must create. Accept that answer, just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it. Perhaps you will discover that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself, and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what reward might come from outside. For the creator must be a world for himself and must find everything in himself and in Nature, to whom his whole life is devoted.

But after this descent into yourself and into your solitude, perhaps you will have to renounce becoming a poet (if, as I have said, one feels one could live without writing, then one shouldn't write at all). Nevertheless, even then, this self searching that I ask of you will not have been for nothing. Your life will still find its own paths from there, and that they may be good, rich, and wide is what I wish for you, more than I can say.

     What else can I tell you? It seems to me that everything has its proper emphasis; and finally I want to add just one more bit of advice: to keep growing, silently and earnestly, through your whole development; you couldn't disturb it any more violently than by looking outside and waiting for outside answers to questions that only your innermost feeling, in your quietest hour, can perhaps answer.

     It was a pleasure for me to find in your letter the name of Professor Horacek; I have great reverence for that kind, learned man, and a gratitude that has lasted through the years. Will you please tell him how I feel; it is very good of him to still think of me, and I appreciate it.

     The poem that you entrusted me with, I am sending back to you. And I thank you once more for your questions and sincere trust, of which, by answering as honestly as I can, I have tried to make myself a little worthier than I, as a stranger, really am.

Yours very truly,

Rainer Maria Rilke

亲爱的先生：

    您的信在几天前就到了这里。我想说谢谢您对我的极大信任。我所能说的就是这些了。我不能讨论您的诗；任何评论对我来说都是陌生的。那些评论根本不了解艺术作品：它们总是导致或多或少的误解。事情并不象人们试图让我们相信的那样总是可以触摸和说出来的；大多数经验只能意会，不能言传。而且最难以说得清的就是艺术作品，那些神秘的存在，那些在我们渺小而短暂的生活旁边悄悄地滑过的生命。

    以此做前言，或许我可以告诉您，您的诗歌没有自身的风格，虽然有些沉默和隐晦的开头的确有些意思。在最后一首诗里我的感觉得到了证实："我的灵魂"。在您的诗里，您试图用文字和韵律来表达自己。在一首做"致里奥帕迪"的可爱的诗里，一种和那伟大而寂寞的人物相连的关系的确产生了。但是，诗本身却什么都不是，也不是独立的任何东西，包括最后一首和那首"致里奥帕迪"。您的信设法让我澄清了自己在读您的诗时产生的各种误解，尽管我无法说出那是什么。 您在问您的诗如何？您问我。您已经问过别人了。您送它们到杂志社。您把它们和别人的诗相比较。当某些编辑拒绝了您的作品时您感到沮丧。现在（因为您说过您想要我的意见）我请求您停止做所有这类事情。您在往外部世界看，而这正是您应该马上停止做的事情。没有人能够给您建议或帮助您--没有人。只有一件事情您可以做，深入自己的内在世界，找找促使您写作的动因，看看它是否深植在您的心灵里；问自己，如果您被禁止写作您是否会死去。就是这些。在静默的时候问您自己：我必须写吗？让您的灵魂给您深刻的回答吧。如果答案是肯定的，如果您给这个神圣的问题的答案是，"是的，我必须"，那么就把您的生活建立在这种必要上吧；您整个的生活，即使最自卑和淡漠的时光，都必须成为这一本能的记号和见证，然后您就接近了本性。然后，就象前无古人那样，试着去说您见到的、感觉到的、您爱的和您失去的。不要写爱情诗；避免那些太轻而易举和普通的格式；它们是最难写的，需要一种伟大的足够成熟的力量才能创造出那些个性化的东西，然而在我们之前已经有太多好的甚至是绝妙的作品在那里了。所以，把自己从这些通常的主题中救赎出来，写日常生活赋予您的；描写您的悲哀和希望，那些流过您头脑的思想和您对某种美的信念--描写所有这些心灵能够触摸到的、沉默的、谦卑的、忠诚的东西，还有当您在表达自己时，使用身旁的东西，用您梦里的意象和您记得的事物。如果您的日常生活很贫乏，不要埋怨生活，怨您自己吧；承认自己不够做一个诗人来唤醒生活的贫乏；因为对创作者来说没有贫穷，没有贫穷和冷漠的环境。甚至当您发现自己是在监狱里，墙壁挡住了外部世界的声音--您不是还有自己的童年时代吗？那是无价之宝，那是记忆之门。把您的注意力转向它。试着将沉睡的往日之感觉拉起来，您的个性将不断成长，您的孤独将扩张成为一个您可以在午夜停留的地方，那时，所有的噪噪音都消失、远去了。--如果您掉转身--在您的内在世界，在您自己的世界的洗礼中，诗就出现了。但您将不会想到去问它们是好还是不好，也将不会想到用它们去吸引杂志：因为您只看到它们是您的本性的一部分，您的生活片段和生活之声。如果艺术作品是发自必要，那就是好的。这是我们判断它的唯一方法。所以，亲爱的先生，除此之外我不能给您任何建议：走进自己的心里，看一看您的生活之流流过的地方有多深；在它的源泉处您定将找到是否需要创作这个问题的答案。接受这个答案，当它是白给您的，不要试图打断它。或许，您将发现，您的答案要您做个艺术家。那么接受这个使命，忍受它，它的负担和伟大，不要问随之而来的外部奖励。因为创作者必须是自己的世界，必须找到自己的全部和本性，对他来说整个的生命就是奉献。 之后您要让自己沉静下来，深入自己的孤独，或许您将不得不再次声明要成为一个诗人（如果，如我所说的，一个人感觉自己没有写作也可以照样生活，那么不要再写了吧）。而且，即便如此，这种我跟您说的自我探察也并不是说再无意义了。您的生活将仍旧循着自己的道路往前走，它们或许会是美好的、丰富的、广阔的，就如我对您的希望一样。

    我还能对您说些什么呢？对我来说似乎每件事情都有自己的侧重点；最后我想要加上一条建议：保持成长、沉默和渴望的状态，经其一生；您不能用通过往外看和等待外部的答案等任何粗暴的形式打断它，只有在您的内心深处，在您沉默的时光里答案或能出现。

    在您的信里看到侯拉塞克教授的名字真让我感到高兴；我从这位慈祥的饱学之士身上获益非浅，多年以来我一直保持着对他的尊敬。请您转告他，谢谢他还记得我，我很感激。

    您托于我的诗我将寄回给您。再次感谢您提出的问题和您对我的信任，对此，我也尽可能诚实地做了回答，我试着使自己比本来的我，那个陌生人，更有价值一点，真是这样。

 您诚挚的，

 瑞那.玛里亚.李尔克于巴黎

 1903年2月17日

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