Letters to a Young Poet

When I was heavily involved in the church, one of the things I caught onto quickly was to never “teach” or mentor from a place of learning. Meaning, if you are in the throes of life, bundle that chaos and shove it deep until you’re on the other side of it. Then and only then, may you speak “from experience.”

Quite frankly, that is bullshit.

Last night, I picked up Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke. When I am in a stage of trying to find my voice or reach a new inner depth, this is usually a go-to. Translated from German, these letters take place from 1903 to 1908 between a 19-year-old student poet and 28-year-old Rilke. Feeling all the feels of a 19-year-old – insecurity, fear of the unknown – he finds comfort in Rainer. This is the stage set as you walk in. Though, what I admire most is the translator’s note to the reader:

Though Rilke expresses himself with a wisdom and a kindess that seem to reflect the calm of self-possession, his spirit may have been speaking out of its own need rather than from the security of ends achieved, so that his words indeed reflect desire rather than fulfillment.

After reading that, I took a moment and a breath. I recognized how often I can become ensnared by my own thinking. Like some superstitious feeling that to talk through my pilgrimage with depression would somehow curse me and keep me there. Instead, I convince myself I should quietly shuffle myself through to the other side. As much as I talk about vulnerability, I can be a mouse in my very own house.

So my promise to you and myself is to remain open throughout the journey. No gore but more of a walk in the woods together, watching and waiting for a clearing.

The translator ends on a descriptive note for Rilke:

… despite all the subjective fret and hindrance because of which some think to see in him a morbidly conditioned fantasy – the legend of the weary poet is dispelled, and in the end we find him always young, always constructive, the eminently positive philosopher of these letters.

I could only hope to hold a small flame to something like that.

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xo b