“Being an artist means, not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confidence in the storms of spring without fear that after them may come no summer.”

Austrian poet

Rainer Maria Rilke was an Austrian poet and major German-language writer. He is remembered for writing with a distinctive, highly expressive voice, and for work that critics have often read as marked by mysticism. His writing explores subjective experience and doubt, and it spans poetry, one novel, several volumes of correspondence, and a few early novellas. These pieces helped establish his reputation as a writer whose language is intimate, reflective, and inward-looking.