My margin notes on Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters To A Young Poet(Letters 1-3)
“Who better to lay your heart out to than a poet”
“Does anyone listen to the silence of the small man and wonder if they are a great unique man who doubts themselves”
“Life’s event are so often impossible to capture in words, so wonderful, so painful words do not do it justice”
“Do not write a love poem. Be sincere, poetry without sincerity is bullshit, use the things that you know best”
“If you had nothing, no stimulation, what would you be left with? Use that to write, use what you have when you have nothing”
“When it is just you and your words, your deepest feelings, you find confidence in your own work”
“Create for yourself, not for the praise of others”
“The response of a man entrusted with a soul”
“Are we alone? We have out memories, our childhoods, our inspirations. Are we ever truly alone when we have our past”
“Or we could try and listen [to] and believe in each other, speak from the heart in the most sincerest of ways. isn’t that when advice become most effective”
“The joy of hearing someone speak well of themselves”
“To live in everlasting sound means what exactly? To have it ring like an symphony that rings in your head from the day you read it onward”
“When it comes to your art, you are in the right forever and always”
“Art doesn’t have to be based on loneliness, it is based on the world”
“Life is the impregnation of art, it is the constant creating and birthing of ideas”
“One must always let ones thoughts blossom in darkness, unperturbed by outside influence, one must always allow themselves to exist without the burdens of the ever limiting outside world”
“When something is so beautiful, so perfect, that you don’t want to ruin it, not even with the next page”
“A strong natural gift of the poetic nature is what one must have”
“One must remain untouched[from outside influence] but what is art if not repeated imitation”
“Man has tainted love, it has become much more complex, much more dramatic. Love without prejudice or arrogance, society has marred and mauled love in the dramatic rose petal romance sense”
“I will think of me as being in your heart”
