rainer maria rilke letter to a young poet

He’d been writing poetry for a long time, but the early 1900s saw a turning point of sorts for his craft. The attention was partly due to the fact that The Book of Hours showed a new level of seriousness and skill in his work. However, Rilke wrote the letters at a somewhat transitional period in his own life as an artist, since his three-part collection, The Book of Hours, had, by 1902 (when he wrote his first letter to Franz Xaver Kappus), attracted more attention to him than his previous books had. For the majority of his life, Rilke faced illness and was often unwell, eventually dying of leukemia in 1926.įor the most part, Letters to a Young Poet is a timeless collection of Rilke’s writing, since the advice he gives the young poet isn’t tied to any specific historical events. However, his novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge is one of his best-known pieces of writing and explores themes he constantly struggled with in both his poetry and his life-themes having to do with God, solitude, and life’s incomprehensibility. He also wrote several plays and short stories, though none of them are considered his finest work. He published a number of poetry collections in the ensuing years, including The Book of Hours, a three-part book that he worked on between 18. He spent a brief period attending the Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague, but he soon left school and moved to Munich, where he became acquainted with other writers and started working seriously on his own writing.

It was during this period that he wrote his first collection of poetry, Life and Songs, which was published in 1894. He lasted for five years at the school before leaving to attend trade school, from which he was expelled in 1892. In fact, he had such a hard time at military school that he later suggested that it was necessary for him to completely block out the memory of his experience there in order to make anything of himself as an artist. He detested his time there, as he was brutally bullied for his sensitivity. In 1886, at the age of 11, Rilke attended a military academy in the Austrian city of Sankt Pölten. As a result, she often treated Rilke as if he were the little girl she’d lost.

Rilke had a somewhat strained relationship with his mother, who was in mourning during his childhood because her daughter had died in infancy before Rilke was born. His father worked for the railroad after a failed stint in the military. Rainer Maria Rilke was born in Prague in 1875.

Rainer maria rilke letter to a young poet