![]() ![]() They begin with a description of Rilke’s current setting (various cities across Europe) and continue into the subject of how to live and how to create. Rilke saw himself in Kappus, and so they’re written from Rilke to Rilke-both to his past and his present. ![]() The letters aren’t really letters, they’re diaries. And so o began a ten-letter correspondence lasting from 1902–1908. Rilke got lots of letters from aspiring artists, but Kappus’s touched him: Rilke had spent the worst five years of his young life forced by his parents into the same military school. Kappus sent Rilke some poems and asked him for advice about becoming a writer. Rilke was twenty-seven-still a young artist with his best work ahead of him-when he got a letter from a nineteen-year-old military school student named Franz Kappus. ![]() Because I’m totally unqualified and ill-equipped to deliver them such words, I’m reading The Master: Rainer Maria Rilke and his Letters To A Young Poet. I’ve received a few e-mails from young(er) writers in the past couple of months, many of them trying very hard to figure things out and looking for words of advice and encouragement. ![]()
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