Letters to a Young Poet

In 1903, Rilke replied in a series of 10 letters to a student who had submitted some verses to the well-known Austrian poet for an assessment. Written during an important stage in Rilke's artistic development, these letters contain many of the themes that later appeared in his best works. Essential reading for scholars, poetry lovers.

Born in 1875, the great German lyric poet Rainer Maria Rilke published his first collection of poems in 1898 and went on to become renowned for his delicate depiction of the workings of the human heart. These translations by M. D. Herter Norton were the first to open Rilke's work to the English-speaking world in accurate, sensitive, modern versions free from both embroidery and slavish adherence to rhyme. The poems appear in German and English on facing pages.