Letters to a young poet

These letters are Rilke’s responses to a 19-year old military cadet who was writing poetry, needed advice on writing, and struggled with career choices, relationships and loneliness (and published this correspondence after Rilke’s death). Rilke’s responses are gentle and comforting and, except for the first couple of letters, don’t have much to do with writing. He talks about the importance of solitude for developing introspection and confidence. He tells him things about sex and relationships that I wish every 19-year old was told. It’s really mostly a bunch of beautifully written thoughts on living life with attention, compassion and patience, something that Rilke, he acknowledges, struggles with as well, which is why, he says, he is able to talk about it the way he does. What I find so funny is the fact that people have been analysing and discussing and criticising these letters for decades, which would actually be an equivalent to doing the same to someone’s personal text messages today. How do you rate someone’s text messages? No idea.