#letters of rainer maria rilke

[digitalgrimoire]

[...] producing art is a most simple and most stern calling, but at the same time a destiny, and, as such, greater than any of us, more powerful and to the very end immeasurable.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, Vol II

#letters of rainer maria rilke #rainer maria rilke

[luthienne]

Most experiences are unsayable; they become real to us in a space no word has entered.

Rainer Maria Rilke, from Letters to a Young Poet (tr. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)

#rainer maria rilke #letters to a young poet #words #letters #unsayable #on language

[mournfulroses]

Rainer Maria Rilke, from a letter featured in Letters to Merline, 1919-1922

#lit #rainer maria rilke #letters #words #quotes #letters to merline #fragment #quote #love #p

[asoftepiloguemylove]

Rainer Maria Rilke Letters to a Young Poet / @dungeonsanddragonsfifthedition / Mary Oliver Wild Geese / @berecovered / pinterest / pinterest / K.C Cramm tender is not a bad word

#on love #on healing #on life #on self #web weave #web weaving #poetry compilation #poetry parallels #rainer maria rilke #letters to a young poet #mary oliver #wild geese #kc cramm #tender is not a bad word #poetry #poem #spilled poetry #spilled thoughts #spilled ink #dark academia quote #dark academia #words #dark academia poetry #writing #spilled words #spilled feelings

[metamorphesque]

— Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

#rainer maria rilke #quotes #letters to a young poet #literature #translated literature #classic literature #rilke

[austentatious]

...your solitude will be a support and a home for you, even in the midst of very unfamiliar circumstances, and from it you will find all your paths.

Letters to a Young Poet | Rainer Maria Rilke

#letters to a young poet #rainer maria rilke #quotes #quote #quotebook #books #book #read #reading #literature #litblr #quoteblr #booklr #book quotes #rilke

[randomglory]

Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away... and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast.... be happy about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn't necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.... and don't expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.

--- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

#quotes #books #philosophy #prose #rainer maria rilke #letters to a young poet

[rainreads]

"letters to a young poet" by rainer maria rilke.

#books and literature #english literature #dark academia literature #dark academia quotes #dark academia #tumblr aesthetic #literature #art aesthetic #books & libraries #booksbooksbooks #letters to a young poet #rainer maria rilke #upstream mary oliver #mary oliver #dark academia moodboard #dark academia vibes #dark academia aesthetic #dark acadamia aesthetic #dark acadamia quotes #bookish #bookish quotes #literature quotes #book quotes aesthetic

[quietlotus]

“Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke

#quotes #rainer maria rilke #letters to a young poet #kindness #love #inspiration #dailyinspiration

[elizabethanism]

"When anxious, uneasy and bad thoughts come, I go to the sea, and the sea drowns them out with its great wide sounds, cleanses me with its noise and imposes a rhythm upon everything in me that is bewildered and confused."

- Rilke letter to wife Clara, 1903

#r. m. rilke #rainer maria rilke #Sea #letters

[digitalgrimoire]

But now already I direct you further, out beyond me, to the figure I am building for myself, outside, more validly and more lastingly. Hold on to that, if it seems big and significant to you. Who knows who I am? I change and change. But it is the boundary of my transformation, its pure rim: if it radiates love to you, deeply, good: then let us both believe in it.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, Vol II

#rainer maria rilke #letters of rainer maria rilke

[luthienne]

How could we forget the myths about dragons who at the last moment transform into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses waiting to see us act just once with courage.

Rainer Maria Rilke, from Letters to a Young Poet (tr. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)

#rainer maria rilke #letters to a young poet #words #letters #to be human

[mournfulroses]

Rainer Maria Rilke, from a letter to Marina Tsvetaeva featured in Selected Letters

#lit #rainer maria rilke #letters #quote #words #selected letters #fragments #typography #p

[greenerteacups]

Hi! I am an ardent fan of your writing, and I hope to be as sorted and planned as you some day in my own writing journey.

My question is: you have a keen eye when it comes to planning character personality, dynamics, and such. I've also been wading through your ask replies, and your insights into how you write people and how you make them play off of each other is so wonderful to read. If it's not too personal a q, how did you learn how to write like this? Did you go to school for writing, does it come from years of observing people, do you have reading list recs for "how to write real people and real interactions"?

Thanks! This is a really flattering question. I'll try to answer it honestly, because I wish someone had been brutally honest about this with me when I was a young writer.

I didn't go to school for writing. I started doing it when I was about nine years old. It sucked very badly. I kept writing throughout high school, and it still mostly sucked, but some of it was occasionally interesting. ("Interesting" here does not mean "good," by the way.) I took a break in college, and then came back. I've been writing ever since. Sometimes, I feel good about it. A lot of the time, I don't!

I hate giving this advice, because I remember how it feels to get it, and it's the most uninspiring, boring-ass, dog shit advice you can get, but it's also the only advice that is 100% unequivocally true: you have to write, and specifically, you have to write things that suck.

I do not mean that you should make things that suck on purpose. I mean that you have to sit down and try your absolute hardest to make something good. You have to put in the hours, the elbow grease, the blood, sweat, and tears, and then you have to read it over and accept that it just totally sucks. There is no way around this, and you should be wary of people who tell you there is. There is no trick, no rule, no book you can buy or article you can read, that will make your writing not suck. The best someone else can do is tell you what good writing looks like, and chances are, you knew that anyway — after all, you love to read. You wouldn't be trying to do this if you didn't. And anyone who says they can teach you to write so good it doesn't suck at first is either lying to you, or they have forgotten how they learned to write in the first place.

So the trick is to sit there in the miserable doldrums of Suck, write a ton, and learn to like it. Because this is the phase of your path as an artist when you find what it is you love about writing, and it cannot be the chance to make "good writing." This will be the thing that bears you through and compels you to keep going when your writing is shit, i.e., the very thing that makes you a writer in the first place. So find that, and you've got a good start.

Some people know this, but assume that perseverance as a writer is about trying to get to the point where you don't suck anymore. This is not true, and it is an actively dangerous lie to tell young writers. You are not aiming to feel like your writing doesn't suck. You are aiming to write. You are aiming to have written. Everything else is dust and rust. And of course, you'll find things you like about your pieces, you'll find things you're proud of, you'll learn to love the things you've made. But that little itch of self-criticism, in the back of your brain — the one that cringes when you read a clunky line, or thinks of a better character beat right after it's far too late to change — that's never going away. That's the Writer part of you. Read Kafka, read Dickens, read Tolstoy, you will find diary entries where they lament how absolutely fucking atrocious their writing was, and how angry they are that they can't do better. A good writer hates their sentences because they can always imagine better ones. And the ability to imagine a better sentence is what's going to make you pick up the pen again tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that.

Which is what I mean, and probably what all those other annoying, preachy advice-givers mean, when we say: a good writer is just someone who writes every day. It's that easy, and that hard.

#by the way a lot of this draws on ideas inspired by 'letters to a young poet' by rainer maria rilke if you're interested #that's a formative text for me as an artist #it won't teach you how to write but it will teach you how to think perhaps #and once you know how to think. well. life is just pretty good #and i can't say the writing gets easier but when life is pretty good i find myself enjoying it a lot more #this word vomit was prompted by the question 'how do you write real people and real interactions' #because that's like — i'm not trying to be pedantic but— #that's kind of just 'how do you write literature'? #because that's all literature is. what are human beings? how do you write a person? how do they interact with each other? #like shoutout to the void if you know for sure how to write real interactions then please for the love of god tell the rest of us #because i think most of all authors in history have just been giving it our best stab #'this is how the world looks for me. is it how the world looks for you?' #so my advice on that score is: try to see how the world looks for you #and then try to share it with me #don't worry about whether it looks the same for me. it won't

[metamorphesque]

— Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

#rainer maria rilke #letters to a young poet #quotes #literature #solitude #translated literature #classic literature #rilke #selfhood

[petaltexturedskies]

It's getting towards the end of July, and I'm not with you.

letters of Rainer Maria Rilke: 1910-1926

#rainer maria rilke #letters #july