The Poet's Guide to Life: The Wisdom of Rilke

€œYou have to live life to the limit, not according to each day but by plumbing its depth.€
€“RAINER MARIA RILKE

In this treasury of uncommon wisdom and spiritual insight, the best writings and personal philosophies of one of the twentieth century€s greatest poets, Rainer Maria Rilke, are gleaned by Ulrich Baer from thousands of pages of never-before translated correspondence.

The result is a profound vision of how the human drive to create and understand can guide us in every facet of life. Arranged by theme€“from everyday existence with others to the exhilarations of love and the experience of loss, from dealing with adversity to the nature of inspiration, here are Rilke€s thoughts on how to live life in a meaningful way:

Life and Living: €œHow good life is. How fair, how incorruptible, how impossible to deceive: not even by strength, not even by willpower, and not even by courage. How everything remains what it is and has only this choice: to come true, or to exaggerate and push too far.€

Art: €œThe work of art is adjustment, balance, reassurance. It can be neither gloomy nor full of rosy hopes, for its essence consists of justice.€

Faith: €œI personally feel a greater affinity to all those religions in which the middleman is less essential or almost entirely suppressed.€

Love: €œTo be loved means to be ablaze. To love is: to shine with inexhaustible oil. To be loved is to pass away; to love is to last.€

Intimate, stylistically masterful, brilliantly translated, and brimming with the wonder and passion of Rilke, The Poet€s Guide to Life is comparable to the best works of wisdom in all of literature and a perfect book for all occasions.