Letters to a Young Poet (Penguin Classics) Cover
Podcast Mentions

Letters to a Young Poet (Penguin Classics)

Rainer Maria Maria Rilke

At the start of the twentieth century, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a series of letters to a young officer cadet, advising him on writing, love, sex, suffering and the nature of advice itself; these profound and lyrical letters have since become hugely influential for writers and artists of all kinds. T...

Podcasts 1
Quotes 5
On Being with Krista Tippett

A new translation was released; the podcast discussed the letters' enduring relevance and explored themes of solitude, relationships, and gender. Many quotes from the letters were shared, emphasizing Rilke's wisdom and insights on living with uncertainty and the challenges of love.

"

I ask you, dear sir, to have patience with all that is unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like closed rooms, like books written in a foreign language. Don't try to fi...

— Episode: Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows — ‘What a...

Episode: Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows — ‘What a world you’...

A new translation was released; the podcast discussed the letters' enduring relevance and explored themes of solitude, relationships, and gender. Many quotes from the letters were shared, emphasizing Rilke's wisdom and insights on living with uncertainty and the challenges of love.

"

I ask you, dear sir, to have patience with all that is unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like closed rooms, like books written in a foreign language. Don't try to find the answers now.

One day the girl and the woman who don't define themselves in masculine terms, but as something in themselves, female humans, will require no other completion.

This enormous shift will transform the character of love, which is hampered today by the resistance of men, and generate a relationship from human to human, not from man to woman.

Do you think that anyone who really has him, God, could lose it like a little stone? Don't you think that one who holds him, God, could only be lost by him? Why not think rather that he is the one who is coming, moving toward us from all eternity?

Earth, isn't this what you want? To arise in us invisible? Is it not your dream to enter us so wholly there's nothing left outside us to see? What if not transformation is your deepest purpose?

Note: The book recommendations on this page are discovered automatically from podcast transcripts, and may be incorrect or incomplete.