TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION

Since Rilke’s death in 1926 the publication of his letters has
proceeded steadily, in a somewhat haphazard way (the number
of letters to a volume varying between two and two hundred),

until well over a thousand in all have been given, mainly by his
publisher Kippenberg and his son-in-law Carl Sieber, to the
world. The central collection contains varied correspondence
covering the years 1899-1926 (the time of his first Russian
visit to his last days at Muzot) ; there are the letters to his pub-
lisher, covering twenty years’ friendly business association ;

there are the numerous letters quoted, wholly or in part, in
various memoirs; and finally, two small collections, the ten
carly Letters to a young poet here translated, and the nine later
Letters to a young woman. These last two volumes are examples
of the care and solicitude which he always shewed to unknown
correspondents ; Rilke was the postal confessor, for at least a
quarter of a century, of a large number of young people. The
recipients of the letters in the main series number more than
two hundred, and there are many private bundles of letters—
beautifully phrased, beautifully penned, intimate talks to people
he had never seen—that will in all probability never be published.
The poet himself stated, at the end of his life, that he had put
into his letters a part of his creative genius; and certainly he is
with the great poet letter-writers of European literature, with
Goethe and Shelley—almost with Keats. The Letters to a young
poet illustrate perfectly the kindliness, the complexity, and at
the same time the impersonality and remoteness of Rilke’s
manner with unknown correspondents He talks repeatedly of
his “dear Herr Kappus”, but he is really speaking at, not to,
the young man; he is thmkmg aloud, meditating his own
problem, spinning—as always, and as he counsels his young poet

3