Reading & the Good Life
Join the conversation! Every Friday at Noon EST, Perennial Meditations readers are welcome to gather for Reading & the Good Life (Register here), a casual space for connection, contemplation, and conversations on the art of living.
Who is Rainer Maria Rilke?
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875—1926) was an Austro-German poet who became internationally famous with his lyric poems and works such as Duino Elegies (1923) and Sonnets to Orpheus (1923). Since his death in 1926, he has grown in reputation as one of the greatest German-language poets, widely admired for the posthumously published works. …
The three years after Rilke’s death saw the publication of a series of letters that he had written between 1903 and 1908 to Franz Xaver Kappus, a young military cadet and aspiring poet. Letters to a Young Poet arguably became Rilke’s most widely read work, admired by many readers for the advice that Rilke offers to Kappus on writing, creativity, sadness, love, sex, solitude, and spiritual belief. […]
Source: Britannica
Dear Readers,
This Friday, we begin our study of Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. If you’re available at Noon EST, please join us (Register here). As you read the passages below, consider reflecting on the following questions:
(1) How can I embody these lessons in daily life?
(2) What might stand in the way of implementing these ideas?
(3) How can the following insights help me live the “good” life?
***Next month’s book (May) is Happiness: A Philosopher’s Guide by Frédéric Lenoir.
You ask if your verses are good. You ask me. You have asked others before. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you worry when certain editors reject your attempts. Now (since you have allowed me to advise you) I beg you to give up all of that. You are looking outward, which, now above all, you should not do. No one can advise and assist you, no one. There is only one way: go into yourself. Seek out the reason that commands you to write; discover if it has stretched out its roots into the deepest part of your heart, admit to yourself whether you would have to die if it were forbidden you to write.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet (Letter 1)
