Saturday, February 1, 2014

Rainer Maria Rilke: Letters to a Young Poet (Briefe an einen jungen Dichter)

I am reading a book called "Letters to a Young Poet" now. It consists of 10 letters written by Rainer Maria Rilke to a young man, aspiring poet that time, who contacted him to ask his opinion about his poems, and Rilke started to answer to him. The book contains these letters what they exchanged. 
It is pretty awesome to think that such a famous talent took the time and energy to give advice to someone totally anonymous writing to him.





A quote from the book:

"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 unsayable than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life."

in German (original text):
"Die Dinge sind alle nicht so faßbar und sagbar, als man uns meistens glauben machen möchte; 
die meisten Ereignisse sind unsagbar, vollziehen sich in einem Raume, den nie ein Wort 

betreten hat, und unsagbarer als alle sind die Kunst-Werke, geheimnisvolle Existenzen, deren Leben neben dem unseren, das vergeht, dauert. "

Paris
February 17, 1903

Rainer Maria Rilke: Briefe an einen jungen Dichter (Letters to a Young Poet)

Pdf in German: http://www.alphavillle.com/avillle/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Rilke-Briefe-an-einen-jungen-Dichter.pdf
Pdf in English: http://www.carrothers.com/rilke_main.htm

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