During one of our casual talks over lunch, a friend of mine tossed an interesting thought my way: " We all should listen more to poets, not pros".
I think it’s a variation of this quote:

In the very end civilizations perish because they listen to their politicians and not to their poets.

Jonas Mekas

Something about it really hit home, you know? Maybe because I’ve always been a bit of a mystic, always had a soft spot for the spiritual stuff. It was like bumping into a tune you’ve never heard, but somehow it knows exactly how to play your heartstrings.

I kind of bumped into Letters to a Young Poet by total fluke. I had caught Rilke’s name here and there when I was reading works of Sartre and Heidegger on Existentialism, but never read his works directly.

Perhaps all the dragons of our life are princesses who are only waiting to see us Once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrifying is at bottom the helplessness that seeks our help.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Letters to a Young Poet

Letters to a Young Poet is firework show of WOW-inducing moments.
Each letter is brimming with wisdom deep as the night sky. With every letter, I felt as if Rilke was having a heart-to-heart with me, speaking directly to my personal predicaments, my own tug-of-war with life. It was as if his words were the war cry for my personal battles.

I’m not going to write a lengthy review for two reasons. First off, Rilke’s letters really cover a lot of ground, touching on everything from life’s struggles to the hunt for validation, all the way to the big-ticket items like love and solitude. Second, I genuinely feel everyone should experience his words without having another person’s experience and interpretations anchor and frame their mind.

I have one more thing to praise before I leave you with a few quotes from the book.

Translating this kind of intricate, profound literature can often feel like attempting to capture a raging wave in a teapot. The very essence of the author’s cultural heritage and personal experiences seep into every single word, giving them meaning and weight.To transport that colossal layer of meaning from one cultural context to another is an incredibly challenging feat. Yet, Snell navigates this uncharted terrain with the agility and finesse of a seasoned ballerina.

But fear of the inexplicable has not only impoverished the existence of the solitary man it has also circumscribed the relationships between human beings as it were lifted them up from the river bed of infinite possibilities to a fallow spot on the bank to which nothing happens. For it is not only indolence which causes human relationships to repeat themselves with such unspeakable monotony unre-newed from one occasion to another it is the shyness of any new incalculable experience which we do not feel ourselves equal to facing.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Letters to a Young Poet

For if we think of this existence of the individual as a larger or smaller room it becomes clear that most people get to know only one corner of their room a window seat a strip of floor which they pace up and down.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Letters to a Young Poet

We have no cause to be mistrustful of our world for it is not against us. If it has terrors they are our terrors; if it has abysses those abysses belong to us if dangers are there we must strive to love them. And if only we regulate our life according to that principle which advises us always to hold to the difficult what even now appears most alien to us will become most familiar and loyal.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Letters to a Young Poet

I would finally just like to advise you to grow through your development quietly and seriously; you can interrupt it in no more violent manner than by looking outwards and expecting answer from outside to questions which perhaps only your innermost feeling in your most silent hour can answer

Rainer Maria Rilke

Letters to a Young Poet

And one of my top favourites :

Have patience with everything that is unsolved in your heart and to try to cherish the questions themselves like closed rooms and like books written in a very strange tongue. Do not search now for the answers which cannot be given you because you could not live them. It is a matter of living everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually without noticing it one distant day live right into the answer.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Letters to a Young Poet

Should I Read It?

Yes. You should.

Read it one letter at a time, maybe one letter a day or so. Enjoy it the way you enjoy a fine vintage.

10 out 10 - Will definitely refer to it again in the future