給一位青年詩人的信（1）Letters to a Young Poet(1)

It's a book you'll read countless times and each time will seem like the first time.

Letters To A Young Poet are ten letters written to a young man about to enter the German military. His name was Franz Kappus, he was 19 years old, and he wrote Rilke looking for guidance and a critique of some of his poems. Rilke was himself only 27 when the first letter was written. The resulting five year correspondence is a virtual owner's manual on what it is (and what is required) to be an artist and a person.

Letter One

Paris

February 17, 1903

Dear Sir,

Your letter arrived just a few days ago. I want to thank you for the great confidence you have placed in me. That is all I can do. I cannot discuss your verses; for any attempt at criticism would be foreign to me. Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism: they always result in more or less fortunate misunderstandings. Things aren't all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsay able than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life.

With this note as a preface, may I just tell you that your verses have no style of their own, although they do have silent and hidden beginnings of something personal. I feel this most clearly in the last poem, "My Soul." There, some thing of your own is trying to become word and melody. And in the lovely poem "To Leopardi" a kind of kinship with that great, solitary figure does perhaps appear. Nevertheless, the poems are not yet anything in themselves, not yet any thing independent, even the last one and the one to Leopardi. Your kind letter, which accompanied them managed to make clear to me various faults that I felt in reading your verses, though I am not able to name them specifically.

You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you - no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple "I must", then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life,even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose. Don't write love poems; avoid those forms that are too facile and ordinary: they are the hardest to work with, and it takes a great, fully ripened power to create something individual where good, even glorious, traditions exist in abundance. So rescue yourself from these general themes and write about what your everyday life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty Describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember. If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no poor, indifferent place. And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world's sound - wouldn't you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories? Turn your attention to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance. And if out of , this turning within, out of this immersion in your own world, poems come, then you will not think of asking anyone whether they are good or not. Nor will you try to interest magazines in these works: for you will see them as your dear natural possession, a piece of your life, a voice from it. A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it. So, dear Sir, I can't give you any advice but this: to go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to, the question of whether you must create. Accept that answer, just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it. Perhaps you will discover that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself, and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what reward might come from outside. For the creator must be a world for himself and must find everything in himself and in Nature, to whom his whole life is devoted.

But after this descent into yourself and into your solitude, perhaps you will have to renounce becoming a poet (if, as I have said, one feels one could live without writing, then one shouldn't write at all). Nevertheless, even then, this self searching that I ask of you will not have been for nothing. Your life will still find its own paths from there, and that they may be good, rich, and wide is what I wish for you, more than I can say.

What else can I tell you? It seems to me that everything has its proper emphasis; and finally I want to add just one more bit of advice: to keep growing, silently and earnestly, through your whole development; you couldn't disturb it any more violently than by looking outside and waiting for outside answers to questions that only your innermost feeling, in your quietest hour, can perhaps answer.

It was a pleasure for me to find in your letter the name of Professor Horacek; I have great reverence for that kind, learned man, and a gratitude that has lasted through the years. Will you please tell him how I feel; it is very good of him to still think of me, and I appreciate it.

The poem that you entrusted me with, I am sending back to you. And I thank you once more for your questions and sincere trust, of which, by answering as honestly as I can, I have tried to make myself a little worthier than I, as a stranger, really am.

Yours very truly,

Rainer Maria Rilke

親愛的先生：

您的信在幾天前就到了這里。我想說謝謝您對我的極大信任。我所能說的就是這些了。我不能討論您的詩;任何評論對我來說都是陌生的。那些評論根本不了解藝術(shù)作品：它們總是導(dǎo)致或多或少的誤解。事情并不象人們試圖讓我們相信的那樣總是可以觸摸和說出來的;大多數(shù)經(jīng)驗只能意會，不能言傳。而且最難以說得清的就是藝術(shù)作品，那些神秘的存在，那些在我們渺小而短暫的生活旁邊悄悄地滑過的生命。

以此做前言，或許我可以告訴您，您的詩歌沒有自身的風(fēng)格，雖然有些沉默和隱晦的開頭的確有些意思。在最后一首詩里我的感覺得到了證實(shí)："我的靈魂"。在您的詩里，您試圖用文字和韻律來表達(dá)自己。在一首做"致里奧帕迪"的可愛的詩里，一種和那偉大而寂寞的人物相連的關(guān)系的確產(chǎn)生了。但是，詩本身卻什么都不是，也不是獨(dú)立的任何東西，包括最后一首和那首"致里奧帕迪"。您的信設(shè)法讓我澄清了自己在讀您的詩時產(chǎn)生的各種誤解，盡管我無法說出那是什么。 您在問您的詩如何?您問我。您已經(jīng)問過別人了。您送它們到雜志社。您把它們和別人的詩相比較。當(dāng)某些編輯拒絕了您的作品時您感到沮喪?，F(xiàn)在(因為您說過您想要我的意見)我請求您停止做所有這類事情。您在往外部世界看，而這正是您應(yīng)該馬上停止做的事情。沒有人能夠給您建議或幫助您--沒有人。只有一件事情您可以做，深入自己的內(nèi)在世界，找找促使您寫作的動因，看看它是否深植在您的心靈里;問自己，如果您被禁止寫作您是否會死去。就是這些。在靜默的時候問您自己：我必須寫嗎?讓您的靈魂給您深刻的回答吧。如果答案是肯定的，如果您給這個神圣的問題的答案是，"是的，我必須"，那么就把您的生活建立在這種必要上吧;您整個的生活，即使最自卑和淡漠的時光，都必須成為這一本能的記號和見證，然后您就接近了本性。然后，就象前無古人那樣，試著去說您見到的、感覺到的、您愛的和您失去的。不要寫愛情詩;避免那些太輕而易舉和普通的格式;它們是最難寫的，需要一種偉大的足夠成熟的力量才能創(chuàng)造出那些個性化的東西，然而在我們之前已經(jīng)有太多好的甚至是絕妙的作品在那里了。所以，把自己從這些通常的主題中救贖出來，寫日常生活賦予您的;描寫您的悲哀和希望，那些流過您頭腦的思想和您對某種美的信念--描寫所有這些心靈能夠觸摸到的、沉默的、謙卑的、忠誠的東西，還有當(dāng)您在表達(dá)自己時，使用身旁的東西，用您夢里的意象和您記得的事物。如果您的日常生活很貧乏，不要埋怨生活，怨您自己吧;承認(rèn)自己不夠做一個詩人來喚醒生活的貧乏;因為對創(chuàng)作者來說沒有貧窮，沒有貧窮和冷漠的環(huán)境。甚至當(dāng)您發(fā)現(xiàn)自己是在監(jiān)獄里，墻壁擋住了外部世界的聲音--您不是還有自己的童年時代嗎?那是無價之寶，那是記憶之門。把您的注意力轉(zhuǎn)向它。試著將沉睡的往日之感覺拉起來，您的個性將不斷成長，您的孤獨(dú)將擴(kuò)張成為一個您可以在午夜停留的地方，那時，所有的噪噪音都消失、遠(yuǎn)去了。--如果您掉轉(zhuǎn)身--在您的內(nèi)在世界，在您自己的世界的洗禮中，詩就出現(xiàn)了。但您將不會想到去問它們是好還是不好，也將不會想到用它們?nèi)ノs志：因為您只看到它們是您的本性的一部分，您的生活片段和生活之聲。如果藝術(shù)作品是發(fā)自必要，那就是好的。這是我們判斷它的唯一方法。所以，親愛的先生，除此之外我不能給您任何建議：走進(jìn)自己的心里，看一看您的生活之流流過的地方有多深;在它的源泉處您定將找到是否需要創(chuàng)作這個問題的答案。接受這個答案，當(dāng)它是白給您的，不要試圖打斷它?；蛟S，您將發(fā)現(xiàn)，您的答案要您做個藝術(shù)家。那么接受這個使命，忍受它，它的負(fù)擔(dān)和偉大，不要問隨之而來的外部獎勵。因為創(chuàng)作者必須是自己的世界，必須找到自己的全部和本性，對他來說整個的生命就是奉獻(xiàn)。 之后您要讓自己沉靜下來，深入自己的孤獨(dú)，或許您將不得不再次聲明要成為一個詩人(如果，如我所說的，一個人感覺自己沒有寫作也可以照樣生活，那么不要再寫了吧)。而且，即便如此，這種我跟您說的自我探察也并不是說再無意義了。您的生活將仍舊循著自己的道路往前走，它們或許會是美好的、豐富的、廣闊的，就如我對您的希望一樣。

我還能對您說些什么呢?對我來說似乎每件事情都有自己的側(cè)重點(diǎn);最后我想要加上一條建議：保持成長、沉默和渴望的狀態(tài)，經(jīng)其一生;您不能用通過往外看和等待外部的答案等任何粗暴的形式打斷它，只有在您的內(nèi)心深處，在您沉默的時光里答案或能出現(xiàn)。

在您的信里看到侯拉塞克教授的名字真讓我感到高興;我從這位慈祥的飽學(xué)之士身上獲益非淺，多年以來我一直保持著對他的尊敬。請您轉(zhuǎn)告他，謝謝他還記得我，我很感激。

您托于我的詩我將寄回給您。再次感謝您提出的問題和您對我的信任，對此，我也盡可能誠實(shí)地做了回答，我試著使自己比本來的我，那個陌生人，更有價值一點(diǎn)，真是這樣。

您誠摯的，

瑞那.瑪里亞.李爾克于巴黎

1903年2月17日