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 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 whole 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.
From
Letters to a Young to Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen
Mitchell (1986)
Despite Rilke’s hyperbole and scorn for literary criticism, the first letter
of the collection, from which I excerpt the above passage, is possibly the best in
the book, fit to be copied whole, handed out, and discussed on day one of an
introductory writing course I’d never teach. But whether the reader agrees
about its merits and moves on to the next may depend on one’s tolerance for tautological
language. An article in The Guardian written using AI offers an objectively
egregious example, with the abuse of the sentence beginning: “Believe me.” The
phrase serves no purpose and it’s absurd to recycle. (The future is here.) Recently
though, reading Christopher Hitchens’s piece on a new translation of Proust,
“The Acutest Ear in Paris,” I encountered a murkier debate on the subject.
Lydia Davis faults an earlier Proust translator for his redundancies. Hitchens responds
with evidence of Davis committing the same error—except it doesn’t count, I
think, because it’s functional, repetition for the sake of rhythm, rhetorical
effect. Hitchens himself, an otherwise vigilant stylist, could be accused of
the occasional redundancy, one of the banes of the journalist with a deadline
to meet. We descend into ceaseless caviling. No one who’s misspelled a word or
forgotten a comma knows how to write. And in this short missive of nine double-spaced
pages, Rilke (or his translator) uses the word “silent” four times. There are
those who would consider this disqualifying. I’m one of those who deem such
readers oversensitive.
But
I wouldn’t assign Letters in its entirety and, while it provides the
form to one of the secondary inspirations behind this very column, I hesitate
to recommend it now. The more letters Rilke sends, the more his limitations show,
and the less keen I am to defend him. Aside from common blemishes, eccentric stylistic
choices abound and distract:
Sex is difficult; yes.
…learning-time is always
a long, secluded time, and therefore loving, for a long time ahead and far on into
life is—: solitude, a heightened and deepened kind of aloneness for the person
who loves.
It is true that many
young people who love falsely, i.e., simply surrendering themselves and giving
up their solitude (the average person will of course always go on doing that—),
feel oppressed by their failure and want to make the situation they have landed
in livable and fruitful in their own, personal way—.
They’re
impersonal, too. Rilke has hardly anything to say about his surroundings or what’s
going on in his life, doesn’t exactly invite the reader into his confidence,
doesn’t allow him to conceive much of an idea of who the writer is. Without
additional layers of language and color, the book’s lone draw is advice, some
of which is no draw at all. In one letter, for instance, he discourages the use
of irony in favor of an examination of “serious Things” (which I took as a
reminder not to neglect irony). And in every one he adopts the same tone:
avuncular, humorless, preachy. Midway through the book I started squirming as
if I were really sitting through a long, tedious sermon with just enough pith
to keep me from dozing off.
The
writer doesn’t want to dash off a letter (or most likely an email, these days) only
to agonize over mistakes and paltriness. But taking your time risks causing
offense, or adding the work of an apologetic preamble, or dampening the
exchange. Based on their lack of polish, it would seem Rilke never intended
these letters to be read by anyone but his correspondent, a stranger. Either
that or sapience developed before skill in translating it to the page and
judgment about what to expand upon or excise. Quality can be further reduced by
the quantity of messages one is compelled to send. However, a writer planning
on assembling a book out of letters or emails and crafting them toward that end
would, I suspect, be trading self-consciousness for true candor and playfulness,
two of the chief pleasures of writing (and reading) them.
