Rilke's timeless letters about poetry, sensitive observation, and
the complicated workings of the human heart.
Born in 1875, the great German lyric poet Rainer Maria Rilke
published his first collection of poems in 1898 and went on to become
renowned for his delicate depiction of the workings of the human
heart. Drawn by some sympathetic note in his poems, young people
often wrote to Rilke with their problems and hopes. From 1903 to 1908
Rilke wrote a series of remarkable responses to a young, would-be
poet on poetry and on surviving as a sensitive observer in a harsh
world. Those letters, still a fresh source of inspiration and
insight, are accompanied here by a chronicle of Rilke's life that
shows what he was experiencing in his own relationship to life and
work when he wrote them.