Rec | LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET BY RAINER MARIA RILKE

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Letters to a young poet by rainer maria rilke

“You are so young, so much before all beginning, and I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

@arimar

Oct 6, 2024

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@Onyi_Budds

Jan 4, 2025

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ruminating

Something like: I’ll die if I never learn how many girls your mother knew about after the first date, and am I still the only gringa in her mind, and did it feel like something out of another life for you too, or was that just me, and do you ever think about the last bench we sat on, do you think anything about anything at all, and are you even still in this country, and how could Raisinets possibly be someone's favorite candy, and how do I make the good dreams stop, and are you happy, or were you ever, or would I have made you if you just let me, and how do I fill in the blanks for myself, how can I give up caring so deeply, and why should i, for that matter, when these are the only things I care so deeply about, and if I write well enough, would it make you regret it, and if yes, how could I get you to read the words, and how many were there, and what was the moment, and do all the questions cling to you too, or did even one, even just for a minute, and is it wasted time waiting, would I have had you if I had the means, or smarter parents, or one less percentage of body fat, or if I had waited, if I had just waited, and has anyone since made you finish faster, and did they do what you wanted because it’s what they wanted too, or only because you asked, and will I ever listen to Ravel without wanting to cry, or read the word purpose without wondering if you ever managed to figure it out, or look at a mollusk again without thinking of you as a child, small enough to hold, in miniature trousers and wire-rimmed glasses — the only version of you I can ever imagine — lying sunlit on a lily pad inside a castle made of glass, and one day, one day will I learn to stop asking questions that no one, no one who will ever read them, could possibly understand? And how would it feel to have all the answers? I swear I’ll die if I never know ... Anyways y'all should try it.