![]() ![]() Rilke’s first letter to his young correspondent had laid out his core ideas about what it takes to be an artist. 1902 portrait of Rainer Maria Rilke by Helmuth Westhoff, Rilke’s brother-in-law ![]() That is what Rainer Maria Rilke (December 4, 1875–December 29, 1926), another great poet with a philosophical bent and uncommon existential insight, explored a century earlier in the third letter collected in his indispensable Letters to a Young Poet ( public library) - the wellspring of wisdom on art and life, which Rilke bequeathed to the 19-year-old cadet and budding poet Franz Xaver Kappus. “The most regretful people on earth,” the poet Mary Oliver wrote in contemplating the artist’s task and the central commitment of the creative life, “are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.” ![]()
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