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The last of Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet evokes a pleasant feeling in me. True, the entire volume is cherished because of the good feelings it brings to the modern reader, but this letter ends on an unexplained and inexplicable up note. It is the day after Christmas and Rilke is responding to something good the young poet had written. Further, Rilke is glad he hasn’t ended up in a profession that denies or attacks the existence of all art. Isolation in a lonely soldier’s outpost is better than a job in journalism, criticism and three quarters of what if called literature. I’m not at all sure I technically agree with this, but I can’t argue with the sentiment. The letter warmed me, that is all.

In this my final post on the topic, I link to an online version of them that I have found. Enjoy. It’s a resource to be read again and again.

Find more brief posts on Rilke here.

In the ninth of Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, he addresses the endless doubting and disharmony of his recipient. It is a short letter because his “hand is tired” because he’s “had to write so many letters” to others, too. But a portion of it resonated with some actorly experiences I’ve had.

And about feelings: All feelings that concentrate you and lift you up are pure; only that feeling is impure which grasps just one side of your being and thus distorts you. Everything you can think of as you face your childhood, is good. Everything that makes more of you than you have ever been, even in your best hours, is right. Every intensification is good, if it is in your entire blood, if it isn’t intoxication or muddiness, but joy which you can see into, clear to the bottom. Do you understand what I mean?

The italicization is mine because I’ve been trying more and more to do good acting work with my entire body. Good acting is often seen as concentrated in the face, or the voice, or the heart. The greater truth is that, more often than not, a truer experience for both actor and audience is achieved when the actor is having a full-body physical experience. That came to mind as I read Rilke speak of one-sided feelings versus something that is in your blood.

Find more brief posts on Rilke here.

The eighth of Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet is long, dense, hard to follow as I read it. Rilke writes about the sadness his recipient has had. (And his own sadness, of course.) One part struck me as lovely, where Rilke writes of the value in not blocking out all the pain we might experience:

Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change.

If you’re hoping for some change in your life, I hope this helps. Find more brief posts on Rilke here.

Another quotation from Letters to a Young Poet, a compilation of letters by Rainer Maria Rilke. From the seventh letter:

Most people have (with the help of conventions) turned their solutions toward what is easy and toward the easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must trust in what is difficult … that something is difficult must be one more reason for us to do it.

If you’re dealing with something difficult, I hope this helps.

Rilke was writing about solitude and love in this letter. Find more posts on Rilke here.

Letters to a Young Poet is a compilation of letters by Rainer Maria Rilke written, um, to a young poet. This Rilke is recommended reading, especially regarding creative endeavors.

From the first letter (italics are my addition):

You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you — no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself.

Very insightful.