What do you feel in "your quietest hour"...
For Beth, who's searching within for the truth of why she must write....
Rainer Maria Rilke
"There is only one way: Go within. Search for the cause, find the impetus that bids you write. Put it to this test: Does it stretch out its roots in the deepest place of your heart? Can you avow that you would die if you were forbidden to write? After all, in the most silent hour of your night, ask yourself this: Must I write? Dig deep into yourself for a true answer. And if it should ring its assent, if you can confidently meet this serious question with a simple, "I must," then build your life upon it. It has become your necessity. Your life, in even the most mundane and least significant hour, must become a sign, a testimony to this urge.
Then draw near to nature. Pretend you are the very first man and then write what you see and experience, what you love and lose. ... Write about your sorrows, your wishes, your passing thoughts, your belief in anything beautiful. Describe all that with fervent, quiet, and humble sincerity. In order to express yourself, use things in your surroundings, the scenes of your dreams, and the subjects of your memory.
...For the creative artist there is no poverty--nothing is insignificant or unimportant. Even if you were in a prison whose walls would shut out from your senses the sounds of the outer world, would you not then have your childhood, this precious wealth, this treasure house of memories? Direct your attention to that. Attempt to resurrect these sunken sensations of a distant past. You will gain assuredness. Your aloneness will expand and will become your home, greeting you like the quiet dawn. ...
Therefore, my dear friend, I know of no other advice than this: Go within and scale the depths of your being from which your very life springs forth. At its source you will find the answer to the question, whether you must write. Accept it, however it sounds to you, without analyzing. Perhaps it will become apparent to you that you are indeed called to be a writer. Then accept that fate; bear its burden, and its grandeur, without asking for the reward, which might possibly come from without. For the creative artist must be a world of his own and must find everything within himself and in nature, to which he has betrothed himself. ..."
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)
Letter to a Young Poet
7 comments:
That is simply incredible, and it's something that every would be writer needs to read.
"I long to embrace, to include in my own short life, all that is accessible to man. I long to speak, to read, to wield a hammer in a great factory, to keep watch at sea, to plow. I want to be walking along the Nevsky Prospect, or in the open fields, or on the ocean — wherever my imagination ranges." — Anton Chekhov
Wonderful to read the Rilke piece again-
ggw07@aol.com
Thank you for printing this.
Theresa, thank you for posting this on your blog and dedicating it to me. I am honored. I love Rilke. I have so much to think about. --Beth
I have always loved this...... judi
AH...............
And indeed we are all young poets.
Wonderful. It reminds me of Victor Frankl. The numbing experience of being separated from all you love, living in a Nazi concentration camp, surviving!
That moment when he understood how to survive. That the monsters could not take his attitude towards them. In his mind, he was free to visit those he loved.
{By the way, I had the pleasure of driving Frankl & his wife when he was invited to our university when I was in Grad school.}
V
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