Letters
to a young poet
By Rainer Maria Rilke
a clear understanding of Rilke’s poetry.
Rilke’s first
letter
(out of the ten he wrote to the young poet) deals with the request for
comments on the latter’s poems.
The letter begins stating how difficult it is to say things
in art without their resulting in misunderstandings. He states his own
abhorrence to criticism. Things are so unsayable as they happen in a
space that exists beyond words, those mysterious existences that endure beyond
the transience of life.
Rilke then says rather bluntly that the young poet does not
have a style of his own. Most of the things have already been said and it is
difficult to rise above the banality of human expression unless one rescues
oneself from the general themes and draws images from the life around even if
there is poverty in it.
Ask yourself in the most silent hour of the night: “Must
I write?” …….A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity.
This, in fact, is the essence of Rilke’s poetry.
Quietly the poet debunks the accepted theories of poetry
prevailing then which placed a lot of reliance on the technique and craft of
poetry and the so called purity of the subject. The subjects for poetry were ,
for Rilke, more to be drawn from within than from external sources A very
important component of the poetical
experience is , in the case of Rilke, the
imagery which at times assumes the central place in the scheme of things leaving
the intended theme in the background . The
reader’s own experience gets mixed
up in the “atmosphere” created through the use of familiar images invested with
uncommon significance. This way the reader comes closer to the Rilke experience.-