“There is only one way: Go within. Search for the cause, find the impetus that bids you write. Put it to this test: Does it stretch out its roots in the deepest place of your heart? Can you avow that you would die if you were forbidden to write? Above all, in the most silent hour of your night, ask yourself this: Must I write? Dig deep into yourself for a true answer. And if it should ring its assent, if you can confidently meet this serious question with a simple, “I must,” then build your life upon it. It has become your necessity. Your life, in even the most mundane and least significant hour, must become a sign, a testimony to this urge.”

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About Rainer Maria Rilke

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.

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Books by Rainer Maria Rilke

Letters to a young poet

2011

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Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge

2017

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Neue Gedichte

1998

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Stundenbuch

2009

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