Letters to a Young Poet

When a young student at a military school mails some of his poetry to the great poet Rainer Maria Rilke, seeking advice, he begins a series of correspondence in which Rilke expresses his deepest insights into the artist’s relationship with life, and the inner needs of the individual person growing towards maturity.

Written in Rilke’s early, struggling years, Letters to a Young Poet is a work of beauty and urgency. Its discussion of the young poet’s difficulties in finding his identity and vocation, mirrored in Rilke’s own life, have resonated with generations of readers for over a century, and it stands as one of the most beloved and widely read sets of letters in the world.

This new translation by Søren Filipski is both accurate and fluid, capturing the intense, rhapsodic energy of Rilke’s writing as well as the precision of his ideas.