letters to a young poet, a review

Title: Letters to a young poet
Author: Rainer Maria Rilke.
Translation: Yes, by Leo Hallerstam.
Pages: 64 (Swedish version).
Rating: 4,5 out of 5 hangovers.

”A must read for people with literary and/or artistic ambitions.”
Who ever said that, was so fucking right.

A short book with only 64 pages but oh my did it make an impact on me.
It contains ten letters between mr. Rilke and mr. Kappus. The latter, an aspiring writer and poet, exchanged letters with thee Rainer Maria Wilke, an already established German poet. Letters filled with questions such as how to become a writer and poet. The book is only filled with the letters that mr. Kappus received from mr. Rilke and they’re so insightful and vulnerable. They sure opened my eyes about pursuing my career and made me secure in my decision to do so.

It’s filled with memorable quotes and good advice. My absolute favourite is this one:

You are so young, all still lies ahead of you, and I should like to ask you, as best I can, dear Sir, to be patient towards all that is unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms, like books written in foreign tongue. Do not now strive to uncover answers: they cannot be given to you because you have not yet been able to live them. And what matters is to live everything. Live the questions for now. Perhaps then you will gradually, without noticing it, live your way into the answer, one distant day in the future.

This quote stuck with me since I was at a place where I was questioning my way of living life.
It spooked me a bit thanks to me actually telling myself, the day before I started reading this book, to mentally go back to how I used to be, where I used to genuinely live in the questions and deal with the answers afterwards. It always worked out for me, maybe because of my 6th house Sagittarius sun. But unfortunately somehow along the way I had forgotten about that, so this was a beautiful reminder and confirmation to just go with it. The Universe sure works in mysterious ways.