![]() ![]() Echoing Nietzsche’s famous assertion that “no one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life,” Rilke offers: In the very first installment from their now-iconic correspondence, the young poet shares some of his writing with his mentor and extends the simple, enormously difficult question of how one knows one is a writer. ![]() 1902 portrait of Rainer Maria Rilke by Helmuth Westhoff, Rilke’s brother-in-law But the finest, richest, truest answer of all comes from Rainer Maria Rilke (December 4, 1875–December 29, 1926) in Letters to a Young Poet ( public library) - those invaluable packets of wisdom on writing and life, which Rilke bequeathed to a 19-year-old cadet and budding poet named Franz Xaver Kappus. ![]() Auden, Jennifer Egan, Pablo Neruda, Joan Didion, David Foster Wallace, Italo Calvino, and William Faulkner. Even more complex and nuanced than the question of how to be a good writer, which has elicited answers from some of humanity’s most beloved authors, is the question of why be a writer at all - why, that is, do great writers write?Īmong the most memorable and invigorating answers are those sprung forth by W.H. ![]()
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