Artistic works are endlessly lonely and cannot be grasped by anything, not even criticism. Only love can recognize them, support them, and be fair to them.
In order to find answers, we must first question. In order to develop in anything, we must try. In order to truly learn from these experiences, we often need a teacher. A book, advice, a friend, a letter – all of these are teachers who can give us encouragement and guidance to come to certain realizations. But we are the ones who take the first step, we are the ones who make the final decision, we are the ones who participate in life.
The book Letters to a Young Poet is a beautiful example of a friendly relationship between someone who teaches from their life experience and someone in whom the desire for growth and understanding is awakening. It consists of ten letters in which Rilke, a renowned poet, writer, and philosopher, responds to the young applicant Franz Xaver Kappus who, at a crossroads in life, seeks advice and insight from him regarding his poetry.
Insignificant attempts.
A good teacher rarely answers questions directly, their role is to open the mind, to place us in the right position so that we can arrive at deeper and clearer knowledge that has always existed within us. Rilke advises in that direction: Enter within yourself. Explore the reason that drives you to write… First and foremost, ask yourself in the quietest hour of your night: do I need to write? Look for the answer in your depths… Our beginner’s success or failure, as well as what others think about it, is secondary. What matters is the voice inside us that guides us, it is important to dedicate ourselves to what truly inspires us, through which we can grow and improve. Rilke encourages his protege to learn from nature, from everyday life, to remember childhood as a rich treasure trove of images and experiences, to delve into one’s own inner self in order to gain strength and certainty in one’s voice: And when, from this turning inward, from this diving into one’s own world, verses emerge, then you won’t even consider asking someone whether or not they Is it good verses.
Through his letters, Rilke generously shares personal insights, not as a professor or critic, but naturally, like a river flowing and flooding its banks, supporting the growth and vitality of everything it touches. He advises him to learn from great poets and artists in order to expand the inner space of his life through contemplation of their works. He suggests Jens Peter Jacobsen, whom he himself found as a model, and his books in which he discovered and recognized the mysterious paths of different destinies intertwining miraculously before our eyes… and even the smallest occurrence blossoms like a destiny; the destiny itself resembles a wonderful, vast weaving in which every thread is woven by an infinitely delicate hand, placing it next to another thread that supports it and carries hundreds of others.
The maturity of a creator is not achieved all at once, but slowly, through persistent work and gradual development, which is why great patience is needed, which we should regularly remind ourselves of, especially in moments of discouragement and doubt. enchanted. In everything, there are natural cycles of maturation that need to be recognized and learned to respect. Allow your judgments their own, silent, undisturbed development which – like any progress – must come deeply from within and nothing can stimulate or accelerate it. Everything must ripen and only then can it be born. Being an artist means… maturing like a tree…
He emphasizes that there are certain questions that no one can truly answer because many life values cannot be fully explained in words. We should learn from simple, small things that we often overlook, in which entire processes take place if we know how to notice and connect them. Do not let the surface confuse you; in depth, everything becomes a law. That is why we constantly need to ask questions, to love the questions themselves as closed chambers, and live them so that perhaps one day we will live the answers.
In that questioning and searching, living in given circumstances and doing what does not fully satisfy him, a person is a constant He is lonely and feels misunderstood. Rilke recognizes the loneliness of his young friend and dedicates a lot of space to it. He believes that a poet should embrace the solitude in which their inner breadth grows, delve into themselves and go hours without meeting anyone – this must be achievable… Your internal experiences are worthy of your entire love, and you must somehow work on them… Loneliness can lead us to unique peaks that we couldn’t even dream of.
But he also calls for connection and closeness with the people around us, those who know less, with the elderly, with parents, because the secrets of their hearts are often unclear and hidden to us. Love for others is something he considers difficult, something that humans still need to learn and not take lightly. Love between humans: that is perhaps the most challenging of all that is given to us, the ultimate, final test and trial, the work for which every other work is merely preparation. Through love, we have the opportunity to better understand ourselves, transcend and mature so that we can become more independent. to become more conscious and enlightened. Only a mature individual can achieve a quality coexistence with other people. And when it seems like we don’t have anyone close to us, there are always things that are with us and we can get closer to them… there are still nights and winds passing through trees and over many countries; there are still many events happening among things and animals, in which you are allowed to participate…
He views pain, sadness, anxiety, and doubt as natural parts of life that are presented to us as challenges, in order to open our awareness to something new that needs to be born, so that something new can emerge within it. After all, all feelings, fears, and upheavals are not only caused by external circumstances, they spring from within ourselves, so that we can get to know them, so that we can fight them and conquer a new part of infinity within ourselves… so we will have to slowly learn to understand that what we call destiny comes out of people, and does not enter them from the outside.
What we consider valuable is usually difficult, but that is the only way to And those things that are important to us become a part of us. So if we organize our life according to the principle that advises us to always stick to the difficult, then what currently seems completely foreign to us will become the most intimate and faithful to us.
The divine and spiritual indirectly permeate the entire correspondence, as they are inseparably connected to everything – but man still cannot fully comprehend the meaning, beauty, and perfection of the vision of the whole. Therefore, it is necessary to allow the truth to gradually unravel and open through external and internal life so that man, when ready, can encounter and recognize it. He repeatedly calls for bold searching, questioning, but also for the patience that accompanies trust. We must imagine our existence as vast as possible; everything, even the unheard of, must be possible in it. That is actually the only courage required of us: to have the courage for the most unusual, marvelous, inexplicable things that can happen to us.
From his writings Despite the awareness of difficulties and the darker sides of life, hope, compassion, and the wisdom of a visionary emerge, who in their magnificent Solitude may have managed to unveil the curtain behind the expanse of the starry sky, which flickers more clearly in Silence to those who have managed to tame their silence.
Therefore, these letters are more than a literary work, from them everyone can read and preserve something for themselves.