RAINER MARIA RILKE

only two names that I can mention : Jacobsen, that great, great
writer, and Auguste Rodin,® who has not his peer among all
the artists who are alive today.
And may all success attend your ways !
Yours:
RAINER MARIA RILKE.

I1I

VIAREGGIO 7 near P1sa (ITary), April 23rd 1903.

You have given me much pleasure, my dear and honoured
Sir, with your Easter letter ; for it said much that was good of
yourself, and the way in which you spoke of Jacobsen’s great
and beloved art shewed me that I was not mistaken when I led
your life and its many questions to that abundant source.

Now Niels Lyhne will reveal itself to you, a book of splendours
and of depths ; the oftener one reads it : everything seems to be
in it, from the gentlest possible scents of life to the full, large
taste of its heaviest fruits. Nothing is there that had not been
understood, conceived, experienced and recognized in the
vibrating echo of memory ; no experience has been too slight,
and the smallest happening unfolds like a destinyj and the destiny
itself is like a wonderful broad tapestry where every thread is
inwoven by an infinitely delicate hand, laid next to its fellow,
and held and supported by a hundred others. You will experience
the great happiness of reading this book for the first time, and
will go through its innumerable surprises as in a new dream.
But I can tell you that later too one goes again and again through
these books, marvelling in the same way, and that they lose
nothing of the wonderful power, and surrender nothing of the

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