While the latter has become a global phenomenon, with millions of copies sold in many different languages, the present volume has been largely overlooked. To be lonely as one was lonely as a child, while adults were moving about, entangled with things that seemed big and important, because the grownups looked so busy and because one could not understand any of their doings - that must be the goal.Never before translated into English, Rainer Maria Rilke’s fascinating Letters to a Young Painter, written toward the end of his life between 19, is a surprising companion to his infamous Letters to a Young Poet, earlier correspondence from 1902 to 1908. To go within and for hours not to meet anyone - that is what one needs to attain. “What you really need is simply this - aloneness, great inner solitude. On the importance of aloneness for creativity At present you need to live the question.” 4. It is a question of experiencing everything. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. “Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. I learn it daily, learn it with many pains, for which I am grateful: Patience is all!” 3. But it comes only to those who live as though eternity stretches before them, carefree, silent and endless.

Rilke writes: “To be an artist means not to compute or count it means to ripen as the tree, which does not force its sap, but stands unshaken in the storms of spring with no fear that summer might no follow. How do you measure your progress and creativity? Put it to this test: Does it stretch out its roots in the deepest place of your heart? Can you avow that you would die if you were forbidden to write? 2.

Put it to this test: Does it stretch out its roots in the deepest place of your heart? Can you avow that you would die if you were forbidden to write?” Search for the cause, find the impetus that bids you write. You are looking outward and, above all else, that you must do now. Well now, since you have given me permission to advice you, I suggest that you give all that up. You send them to publishers you compare them with other poems you are disturbed when certain publishers reject your attempts. Rilke responds, “You ask whether your poems are good. Favorite Quotes from the Book Franz asks Rilke, “Are my poems good?” In the letters Rilke beautifully articulates advice on topics of creativity, dealing with criticism, inspiration, love, life, and loneliness. The book is a collection of Rilke’s replies over a series of 10 letters. In 1903 Franz Kappus (a 17 years old student) wrote the poet Rainer Maria Rilke (27 years old) asking his advice on becoming a writer. It’s some of the best advice on creativity. Imagine sending a letter to a friend using one letter at a time.

Rilke letters