LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET

entirely mature and unmixed sex world, but one which is not
human enough, merely masculine, which is heat, intoxication
and restlessness, and loaded with the old prejudicesand arrogances
with which men have disfigured and burdened love. Because he
loves only as man, not as human being, there is in his sexual
feelings something narrow, seemingly wild, malicious, temporal,
finite, which weakens his art and makes it equivocal and dubious.
It is not without blemish, it bears the imprint of time and of
passion, and little of it will endure and persist. (But most art
is like that!) But nevertheless we can deeply enjoy what is great
in it, only we must not get lost over it and become adherents
of that Dehmel world which is so infinitely frightening, full of
adultery and confusion, far from the real destinies which make
us suffer more than these temporal glooms, but also give us
more opportunity for greatness and more courage for eternity.

Finally, as far as my books are concerned, I should like best
to send you all that could give you any pleasure. But I am very
poor, and my books, as soon as they have once appeared, belong
no more to me. I cannot buy them myself—and, as I should so
often like, give them to those who would be good to them.

Therefore I am writing out for you on a slip of paper the
titles (and publishers) of my most recent books (the latest, I
have published some twelve or thirteen in all), and must leave
it to you, dear Sir, to procure some of them for yourself at your
leisure.

I am glad to know that my books are in your hands.

Goodbye

Yours:
RAINER MARIA RILKE.

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