Scan barcode
marathonreader's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
slow-paced
4.5
An illuminating anthology of letters from the later years of Rilke's life, as he continues to reflect on the internal vs. external forces, on solitude, on nature... It was interesting to see him, at least as represented in these letters lean slightly more towards LAS than Clara towards the end, at least in terms of the depth of matters discussed. But again, that could be a reflection of source material used.
marathonreader's review
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
"I saw once again that most people hold things in their hands to do something with them... instead of looking carefully at each thing and asking about the beauty it possesses. So it comes to pass that most people don't know at all how beautiful the world is and how much splendour is revealed in the smallest things, in some lower, a stone, the bark of a tree, or a birch leaf" (to Helmuth Westoff, 11.12.1901)
This is so biased I should not even be rating this. It is biased because this anthology contains some letters I also loved from Ranier Maria Rilke and Lou Andreas-Salome: The Correspondences. It is biased because it informed by reading of Rilke's essay "Auguste Rodin." It is biased because I got super excited when he wrote to Clara to thank her for forwarding something from Kappus.
But okay. Primary themes that surface multiple times in this anthology of letters:
This is so biased I should not even be rating this. It is biased because this anthology contains some letters I also loved from Ranier Maria Rilke and Lou Andreas-Salome: The Correspondences. It is biased because it informed by reading of Rilke's essay "Auguste Rodin." It is biased because I got super excited when he wrote to Clara to thank her for forwarding something from Kappus.
But okay. Primary themes that surface multiple times in this anthology of letters:
- the innocence of the child, and the adult's endeavours to return to a similar state
- outside vs. inside (by which we mean external/ internal, but he calls out and in)
- need for solitude
- creation/ writing as the bridge between memory and feeling; between past, present and future
- marriage
- art, writing, etc.
- Rodin and attention to detail
- nature
He also addresses his public identity as a writer, at one point saying that he knows his "pen will be strong enough to carry me: only I may not misuse it too early" (06.25.1902). But then he also said at one point he got 150 marks for one book, and nothing for a bunch of other publications. Then he asks Ellen Key not to publish her essay on his works, because he says that he needs to be unknown and in solitude, lest his ideas change as a result of any attention.
(Of Rodin:) "His insight comes from that, his sensitivity to every beauty, his conviction that in the big and small there can be the same immeasurable greatness that lives in Nature in millions of metamorphoses" (9.20.1905)
"Oh, how I believe in it, in life. Not that which makes up our time, but that other, the life of little things, the life of animals and the Great Plains. That life which endures through the millenniums, apparently without interest, and yet in the balance of its powers full of motion and growth and warmth. That is why the city weight son me so. That is why I live on vegetables, where possible, to be close to what is simple, to an awareness of life intensified by nothing foreign; that is why no wine goes into me... And that is why I also want to put all pride far from me, not to raise myself above the very least animal and not to hold myself grander than a stone" (to Ellen Key, 04.03.1903)
(Of Rodin:) "His insight comes from that, his sensitivity to every beauty, his conviction that in the big and small there can be the same immeasurable greatness that lives in Nature in millions of metamorphoses" (9.20.1905)
"Oh, how I believe in it, in life. Not that which makes up our time, but that other, the life of little things, the life of animals and the Great Plains. That life which endures through the millenniums, apparently without interest, and yet in the balance of its powers full of motion and growth and warmth. That is why the city weight son me so. That is why I live on vegetables, where possible, to be close to what is simple, to an awareness of life intensified by nothing foreign; that is why no wine goes into me... And that is why I also want to put all pride far from me, not to raise myself above the very least animal and not to hold myself grander than a stone" (to Ellen Key, 04.03.1903)
More...