Letters to a young poet

The title of this article is ambiguous. The article describes Rainer Maria Rilke's collection of letters. For the work of the same name by Christoph Martin Wieland from 1782/84 and for the letter to a young poet by Virginia Woolf from 1932, see the respective articles on these authors. A work with a similar title is the novel Letters to a Young Writer (1997) by Mario Vargas Llosa .

The author of the letters: Rainer Maria Rilke

Letters to a Young Poet is a collection of letters from Rainer Maria Rilke that was published in 1929 by Insel Verlag as number 406 in the Insel-Bücherei .

history

The collection includes the correspondence between Franz Xaver Kappus and Rainer Maria Rilke from 1903 to 1908.

Three years after Rilke's death in 1929, Kappus had turned to his daughter Ruth and sent her the letters. They were then published by Ruth together with Rilke's widow Clara Westhoff with a foreword by Kappus. The letters to a young poet were removed from the publication of the other letters and placed in front of them because the editors hoped to gain more attention in this way for Rilke's modern attitude to orientation in life, while both Communism and National Socialism were on the ground won. The texts distinguish themselves from political ideologies as well as from religion . This should especially address young people. The letters to a young poet actually became Rilke's most widely read book.

This 1929 edition has become classic; it has been translated into many languages. In 2019, Wallstein Verlag published the first edition, which reproduces both Kappus' writing and Rilke's replies in chronological order, thus making it possible to read the complete correspondence, edited and commented by Erich Unglaub .

content

The total of ten letters are written as answers to Franz Xaver Kappus. He had turned to Rilke for help regarding his first literary attempts. The letters were written in different parts of Europe between 1903 and 1908.

Rilke refrains from criticizing Kappus' works. Rather, he gives him personal advice and shows him what a wide range of topics life has in store.

The individual letters

letter	Written in	date	source
1.	Paris	February 17, 1903	text
2.	Viareggio	April 5, 1903	text
3.	Viareggio	April 23, 1903	text
4th	Worpswede	July 16, 1903	text
5.	Rome	October 29, 1903	text
6th	Rome	December 23, 1903	text
7th	Rome	May 14, 1904	text
8th.	Borgeby gård ( Flädie , Sweden)	August 12, 1904	text
9.	Furuborg ( Jonsered , Sweden)	4th November 1904	text
10.	Paris	December 26, 1908	text

expenditure

• Rainer Maria Rilke: Letters to a young poet . In: Insel-Bücherei . No. 406 . Insel, Leipzig 1929 (introduction by Franz Xaver Kappus).
• Rainer Maria Rilke: Letters to a young poet . In: Ulrich Baer (Ed.): Insel-Taschenbuch . No. 4682 . Insel, Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-458-36382-8 .
• Rainer Maria Rilke: Letters to a young poet. With the letters from Franz Xaver Kappus . Ed .: Erich Unglaub . Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2019, ISBN 978-3-8353-3425-0 .

literature

• Maria Endreva: The conception of art in Rilke's art-critical writings . Peter Lang: PL Academic Research, Frankfurt am Main 2014, ISBN 978-3-631-65762-1 (Zugl .: Sofia, Univ., Diss., 2011).
• Jean-Michel Maulpoix: Commentary on letters to a young poet by Rainer Maria Rilke . Leipziger Literaturverlag, Leipzig 2010, ISBN 978-3-86660-091-1 .

Web links

• Detailed article on the biography and Rilke correspondence of Franz Xaver Kappus after Titanic, March 2005

Individual evidence

1. ^ Rainer Maria Rilke: Letters to a young poet . In: Ulrich Baer (Ed.): Insel-Taschenbuch . No. 4682 . Insel, Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-458-36382-8 , pp. 9–11 (preface).
2. ^ Rainer Maria Rilke: Letters to a young poet. With the letters from Franz Xaver Kappus . Ed .: Erich Unglaub. Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2019, ISBN 978-3-8353-3425-0 .