Letters to a Young Poet
Categories: Literature & Fiction
Between 1903 and 1908, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote ten letters to Franz Xaver Kappus, a 19-year-old military cadet who had sent him his poems and asked for advice. Kappus published the letters in 1929, three years after Rilke's death. Rilke declines to judge the poems and instead urges the young man to look within himself. He writes about solitude, love, patience and the artist's life, and about surviving as a sensitive observer in a harsh world. This edition adds a chronicle of Rilke's life during those years.