I have always believed that there’s goodness that comes with learning to be in solitude; to be in your own company, observe your thoughts and handle the uncomfortable silence that comes with it. But I have never put as much emphasis on it as Rainer Maria Rilke does in Letters to a Young Poet, published in 1929.
Rilke wrote the letters to Franz Kappus, a young poet struggling with loneliness and unsure about his writing. He wonders if he should be a poet and whether he could be good at it, so he writes to Rilke for advice.
Kappus asks whether his verses are good. As a writer myself, I was curious to read Rilke’s response.
His advice is that nobody can help the young poet decide whether he is good or not. He argues that it is only by going within that he can find an answer. He also tells him what he should write about, which resonated with me.
He says: ‘Flee general subjects and take refuge in those offered by your own day-to-day life; depict your sadness and desires, passing thoughts and faith in some kind of beauty – depict all this with intense, quiet humble sincerity.’
I am a discovery writer. I observe and write as I think about my observations. Even with books I read and review, I have the same process, which is why my reviews are connected to my real life.
I have always been a person who wants to know what comes next. I find my footing by being certain about things. About people. This keeps me stuck at the same point for longer than I should. When are we meeting? What time? What will happen if I do so and so? What will happen if I don’t? I have so many questions about life, and so did the young poet.
To this, Rilke offers: ‘Try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms, like books written in a foreign tongue. Do not now strive to uncover answers: they cannot be given to you because you have not been able to live them, and what matters is to live everything. Live the questions now.’
Reading this made me pause, and I went back to read that part again. We need to live with the questions. You need to take action even when you do not know what comes next. You gather answers through living instead of requiring knowledge about living without doing the actual living.
Love is another subject that I found interesting because I love love. For Rilke, love is hard. But that is all the more reason to do it. He argues that one has to be in solitude first before getting themselves into the business of love. It is only when two individuals can operate as separate people that they can learn to be in love without losing themselves.
Rilke also dives into the changes happening between men and women and the roles assigned to them. He predicts that these changes would eventually transform the experience of love.
‘One day there will be girls and women whose names will no longer just signify the opposite of male but something in their own right, something which doesn’t make one think of any supplement or limit but only of life and existence: the female human being.’
You can go back and read that again. These letters were written in the 1900s. Rilke saw that this step forward, ‘at first right against the will of the men who are left behind, will transform the experience of love.’
It is 2026, and I fear that we are still catching up with changes that started in the 1900s. Gender roles have changed, but perhaps not so much for the men who are still left behind. Maybe it is time to rethink how these two humans relate to each other, towards what Rilke called ‘the love that consists in two solitudes protecting, defining and welcoming one another.’
Perhaps Letters to a Young Poet places too much emphasis on solitude, but it is for good reason. Through solitude, one is able to form better relationships with themselves, other people and God. The letters do not include what Rilke is responding to, but they still manage to make sense to the reader.
Maybe, just maybe, I should aim to spend more time in solitude. Just kidding. I am already doing much of it. But perhaps the challenge for me is not learning how to be alone. It is making sure I do not get so comfortable with solitude and certainty that I fail to invite people who matter in, or avoid experiences simply because I do not know what comes next. Perhaps some questions really can only be answered by living them.