An Empowering Message From a Poet on Living an Authentic and Creative Life
Inside the pages of a small book are musings on life, love, relationships, feminism, God, and through it all, the nature of being a creative person and a writer. Letters to a Young Poet may be pocket-sized but it is beautiful.
The book contains 10 letters from Rainer Maria Rilke to Frank Kappus over the period of five years from Feb 1903 to December 1908. In these letters Rainer takes the role of a mentor to the poet, trying his best to inspire and encourage the young man while sharing his thoughts on every aspect of life. And wise is the advice!
As writers we all experience self-doubt, it is inescapable, but Rainer asks, what if instead of being suffocated by it and left wordless, we could use those insecurities to our advantage?
Your doubts can become a good quality if you school them. They must grow to be knowledgeable, they must learn to be critical. As soon as they begin to spoil something for you ask them why a thing is ugly, demand hard evidence, test them, and you will perhaps find them at a loss and short of an answer, or perhaps mutinous. But do not give in, request arguments, and act with this kind of attentiveness and consistency every single time, and the day will come when instead of being demolishers they will be among your best workers.
The idea of befriending our inner critic and allowing it to do its job of editing and refining our work. Translating a voice that can often be harsher than anything we would dare to voice out loud, to a voice we can trust, not only banishes the destructive element of insecurity but offers us a powerful ally. After all…
Even the best of us get the words wrong when we want them to express such intangible and almost unsayable things.
As for the criticisms of others. Rilke repeatedly tries to turn the young poet away from the external seeking of validation and towards a stronger connection with himself.
Read as little as possible in the way of aesthetics and criticism — it will either be partisan views, fossilised and made meaningless in its lifeless rigidity, or it will be neat wordplay, where one opinion will triumph one day and the opposite the next.
I think we’ve all experienced this to be true. Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so is the pleasure of the reader.
There are as many writing styles, as there are writers, and aren’t we all urged time and time again to ‘find our unique voice’. Some readers will love your work, others won’t, but you had better love it always. Not in the sense of arrogance that yours is better than anyone else’s. More in the sense that you have done the best you can, you have written with authenticity, and are proud of what you have put out into the world.
As Rilke goes on to say, if we are writers by nature then for better or worse this is our path. It will always be a part of our lives whether we strive to publish and share with others, or we keep our words solely for the trusted few. If this is the case, then the only person we need to please is ourselves. The validation we seek externally can be given one day and withheld the next. We will begin creating work based on what we learn others respond well to and in adapting ourselves to the demands of others, slowly lose the authenticity we began with. I like to think that in every piece I write the reader will be able to hear ‘me’, and then all I need to do is find it, the piece it's proper home, even if it takes a few ‘rejections’ to get there.
You ask whether your verses are good. You ask me that. You have asked others, before. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you worry when certain editors turn your efforts down. Now (since you have allowed me to offer you advice) let me ask you to give up all that. You are looking to the outside, and that above all you should not be doing now. Nobody can advise you and help you, nobody. There is only one way. Go into yourself. Examine the reason that bids you to write; check whether it reaches its roots into the deepest regions of your heart, admit to yourself whether you would die if it should be denied you to write? This above all; ask yourself in your night’s quietest hour; must I write?
So, if the answer is yes and you find you have no choice. Then delve deep and come to the surface often to share your treasures. Let the doubts turn into an ally, and the questions guide you on your exploration.
You are so young, all still lies ahead of you, and I should like to ask you, as best I can, dear Sir, to be patient towards all that is unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms, like books written in a foreign tongue. Do not now strive to uncover answers: they cannot be given you because you have not been able to live them. And what matters is to live everything. Live the questions for now. Perhaps then you will gradually, without noticing it, live your way into the answer, one distant day in the future.