”All is gestation, and then birthing. To allow every impression and every germ of a feeling, all in itself, in the darkness, in what is unsavable. unconscious, unattainable by one's own understanding, to complete itself, and to await with deep humility and patience the moment of birth of a new clarity: that alone is the artist's life, in understanding as in creating.”

In this compilation of ten letters across four years of correspondence between Rilke and the young poet Kappus, rilke's evasion of the initial request for criticism in favor of addressing fundamental principles of life and art provides his past and present audience with a greater sense of direction than what was had going into this first letter.

”Do not seek out the answers now, which cannot be given to you because you cannot live them. And what matters is to live everything. Live the questions for now.”

To appreciate solitude for what it can reconcile within us and inform us about ourselves, to be patient during the gestation and eventual birthing of our judgments and beliefs, to learn to love questions without needing their answers, to see love as a method of order and opportunity to grow into who we are destined to be, to trust life to be right and the world to not be our enemy, to subscribe to the difficult, for within difficulty is where we can find the truest parts of ourselves unshaken by the external.

”Perhaps everything terrifying is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants help from us.”

While reading these letters, I felt as if there was an invisible string connecting me and Rilke together because of how he mirrors my own thoughts and beliefs as I have never seen before, though much more eloquently. His words have given me a peace I did not know I lacked, reaffirming to me that I am right to walk this path. Everyone should read this, especially if you are a creative!

”You must not let yourself be misled in your solitude because there is something in you that wants out of it.”