Letters to a Young Poet

Letters to a Young Poet is a collection of 10 letters written by the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke to Franz Xaver Kappus, from February 1903 to December 1908. In an introduction to the book, Kappus describes how he came to begin his correspondence with Rilke. At the time, Kappus was a 19-year-old student at an Austrian military school. Though Kappus was set to become a military officer, he held aspirations of instead becoming a poet. After discovering that Rilke, then 27-years-old and already renowned as a poet, had also attended the military school, Kappus began a correspondence with Rilke that lasted several years. Kappus kept the 10 letters and published the collection in 1929, several years after Rilke’s death, as he felt the letters gave insight into Rilke’s worldview. This guide follows the Norton paperback edition, published in 2004.

In Kappus’s initial letter to Rilke, he sent Rilke examples of his own poetry, hoping that Rilke would provide feedback on the poems and advise Kappus on whether he should pursue a career as a poet. Rilke’s response begins that “critical intention is too far from me,” and that he feels that critical discussion of poetry is ultimately impossible (15).