My dear sir, your letter reached me just a few days ago. I want to thank you for the deep and loving trust it revealed. I can do no more. I cannot comment on the style of your verses; critical intent is too far removed from my nature. There is nothing that manages to influence a work of art less than critical words. They always result in more or less unfortunate misunderstandings. Things are not as easily understood nor as expressible as people usually would like us to believe. Most happenings are beyond expression; they exist where a word has never intruded. Even more inexpressible are works of art; mysterious entities they are, whose lives, compared to our fleeting ones, endure.

Rilke, While Still a Young Poet Himself

So begin the Letters to a Young Poet, written from the great Austro-Bohemian author Rainer Maria Rilke to his young admirer Franz Xaver Kappus between the years of 1903 and 1908. These are not love letters in the usual sense, but they contain such a deep show of friendship in dealing with life’s trials that they stand as an encouragement to us all. Their celebration of love and loneliness should make them suitable for both the contented and the lonely hearts on this Valentine’s day.

At the outset, Kappus is a student in a military academy struggling to find his poetic voice. Rilke is a published poet, if not yet famous, and an alumnus of the same academy. The correspondence begins with Kappus’ request for advice about some poems he has written. Rilke responds with kindness, but is hesitant to comment too specifically about the poems, telling Mr. Kappus to look within himself rather than heed advice from the world of men.

Rilke explains that “In order for a person to advise, even to help another, a great deal must happen. Many different elements must coincide harmoniously; a whole constellation of things must come about for that to happen even once.” Yet despite Rilke’s doubts, it seems that just such a constellation did take place between these young men. Instead of literary criticism, however, Kappus receives advice about the artistic life and the difficulties faced by those who are independent.

It is clear from Rilke’s writing that Kappus was not a happy man. He must have confessed a deep loneliness, for solitude is a theme that recurs again and again in the letters. Rather than advising Mr. Kappus how to avoid the pain of being alone, the poet declares that aloneness is part of our very nature, and that we must turn towards it if we wish to live deeply. “To be lonely as one was lonely as a child… that must be the goal… look at the world as a child would see it — out of the depths of your own world”. To have one’s own world that one may look from, this is what it means to be an individual.

Though Kappus is undoubtedly experiencing a very real, literal loneliness, the solitude which Rilke glorifies is of a spiritualized form–more an existential condition than a passing state. Our ultimate individuality need not prohibit us from being together in a sense that is both meaningful and real, though far from easy.

For one human being to love another is perhaps the most difficult task of all, the epitome, the ultimate test. It is that striving for which all other striving is merely preparation.

To love in the highest way, we must have already braved the pains of loneliness. Life presents many challenges, which one may either shirk from or embrace. Most do not have the courage for the difficult path. “People have, with the help of so many conventions, resolved everything the easy way … But it is clear that we must embrace struggle… It is good to be lonely, for being alone is not easy”. To the extent that we can be alone, our relationships will be more profound for it.

This love, as pure as it is, is not merely contemplative. Rilke is no ascetic. He finds that physical love, too, is a blessing.

They who meet in the night to be entwined and sway in passionate lust are performing a serious work. They are gathering “sweets” and depth and power for the song of some future poet, who shall arise and speak of unspeakable bliss.

But during those long months when bliss of any kind seems furthest away, Rilke councils trust in life–trust in what is. “We have no reason to mistrust our world,” he says, “for it is not against us.” He speaks reassuring words during times of doubt, seeks in fact to transform doubt into devout unknowning and contemplation of mystery.

When we read receptively, Rilke’s words startle our thinking. They allow us to see our emotions as the product of our choices, rather than natural reactions to the way things are.

If your everyday life appears to be unworthy subject matter, do not complain to life. Complain to yourself. Lament that you are not poet enough to call up its wealth.

Sometimes life may seem harsh and dessicated, but if so, that is our own failure, for life itself is rich beyond imagining.

In times of difficulty, conventional understandings mar the view of our manifold possibilities, making things appear more barren, more fixed, and more hopeless than they really are. It is up to us, he says, to be patient, to be humble, and to restrengthen ourselves for the trials ahead. Thus he asks us:

How could we be capable of forgetting the old myths that stand at the threshold of all mankind, myths of dragons transforming into princesses?

Perhaps all dragons in our lives are really princesses just waiting to see us just once being beautiful and courageous.

We would be better to think so.

I hope I have offered you, dear reader, a sense of the breadth, beauty, and wisdom of these letters. They contain more than I can possibly convey, and these brief excerpts do not do justice to the prolonged and intrincate developments that occur within them. Yet if I have awoken some curiosity or longing in you, suggested but a hint of the love that I feel as I hold these pages, then I am grateful for that privilege.

Quotes are furnished from the eloquent translation of Joan M. Burnham.