Lettres à une jeune poétesse by Rainer Maria Rilke

 Lettres à une jeune poétesse

by Rainer Maria Rilke, proposed by Chez Bouquins is a fascinating reading. It proposes to the reader in a new light a private segment, maybe little but not less important of the existence of Rilke: Anita Forrer, completely enconnu for a long, long time.

It was a correspondence, this one, kept private, and published in France only in 1982, for then, falling again in the oblivium.

Since now, when Bouquins, with a meticulous work of research and actualization, re-proposes the correspondence.

This epistolary exchanged by Rilke and Anita took place from 1920 to 1926 for circa 60 letters in total. Rilke, in his maturity fell fascinated by the ingenuity and at the same time estemporaneity of this girl: Anita was  from Suisse and was the daughter of an estimated and powerful attorney and politician. Rilke receives her first letter when in Saint-Gall for a conference attended by the same Anita.

If you have read the Cahiers de Malte Laurids Brigge you will understand why Anita will immediately focus on that book in her letter to Rilke.. 

Rilke after few letters starts to tell to Anita that she can considers him as a sort of mentor considering their age-difference adding also that Anita can writes him when she wants because he will always listen what she has to saying.

Rilke opens with these first letters at an encouraging epistolary friendship.

Anita, so, launches herself in the description of a book she had read recently, Le Livre d'Heures, finding it a bit cryptic and explaining sentiments, feelings she proved reading and analyzing the text for later telling to him something about a friend...

The answer of Rilke remarks that she must project herself in the existence, although Anita  explains to Rilke her difficult and troubled existence, and the one of her devoted friend till the years of their childood, remarking the importance of that friendship but also her sensation of culpability.

It's interesting the reply of Rilke, when he adds that young people in general don't tend to have any kind of protection or understanding from the people close to them: not from their mother; that's why it's important to remain confident and imperturbable, starting a wonderful digression about the meaning of friendship and love in particular.

Anita writes in the following letter that Rilke is so unique in the expression of the most profound and intimate level that no one can be like him continuing in another one saying that she has the sensation that Rilke knows her much better than anyone else: Rainer, that "ami incunnu que vous etes" that friend unknown that you are for me, adds Anita.

The next letter by Rilke addressed to Anita was written on Febr. 14. 1920.

The friend of Anita, the tribulation of this friendship, remains a topic largely treated by Rilke although later the letter becomes more intriguing, with Rilke telling to her the joy experienced when he receives her news.

Anita is thrilled by this correspondence; she knows that Rilke is making the history of poetry and literature; he is talented, he is a man with a profound culture. She feels that in comparison she is not too much important. 

Rilke will adds that yes, it is true that he is a man of great culture, but...That there is not just hope; the certainty that this capacity of expression is germinating also in the soul of still little Anita; then the following analyses of "Mal et Bien" the capacity of tranforming a bad energy like the one of Mal in Bien.

Nothing is more unstoppable than Mal but it sufficient to move on and voilà! the problem is resolved. The important is living the existence. 

The episode that tells to Anita is strong: he met along his way, while he was walking a boy who had killed himself: so Rilke thinks that, if this boy would have thought a second more, if he would have waited, he would have taken another decision. He writes: "Dites donc celui-là, s'il a pu encore faire ca, il aureit bien pou faire autre chose."

Life is strong and inestricable, writes Rainer.

Anita is surprised because of long letters and attentions that Rilke reserves her. She writes that his letters are "sont ci belles" asking him at the same time important questions on God and the other life remaining obsessed by Malte Laurids Brigge. 

To him the most important moment of the existence is our death, but the church is trying in every possible way of "conducting" the existence of believers, so that they can't taste the essence of a life lived for later experiencing that moment.

Anita is stressed by her existence, and she tells this to Rilke. Rilke listens; he would want to meet her, but for what known in this phase Anita didn't have the consent of the family because the writer was a person living all alone. Rilke presses the girl for an answer and Anita is back; once in England in fact, she didn't write him a lot, and later Rilke confessed her that he found the letters sent him pretty distracted, but that now she is back.

Back for good.

Anita is a troubled girl; she suffers for the absence of her father, and his many works, as attorney, as politicians and in other different roles, she writes of her sister and husband...She doesn't find sometimes life attractive, living it heavily. 

Differently, Rilke is like a good cup of champagne or prosecco; he sees the best of this world and suggests to Anita of living her life at the fullest sending also an edition autographed by him of Les Fleurs du Mal by Baudelaire when is the birthday of the girl, who, of course, is pleasantly happy of having received the book.

Anita helps the writer in the development of his theory on the geometrie du Coeur, with their correspondence, while replying to a letter of Anita, Rilke remarks that she sees love too much under a lense of destruction and positivity; there is the possibiity also of loving the object of our interest staying distantly from him, reality is everyday more big than the idea that we have of it. 

The answer of Anita is impregnanted of pessimism again regarding love, relationship and marriages; she is terrorized by the possibility of meeting someone different for tastes, habits.

She would want to become a real woman, speaking with lightness, without mental complexities, that admits, she hasm but, she affirms that "cette femme me porte", she is driven by the first kind of girl. A tormented one.

When in Berlin Anita buys another book written by Rilke, at the same time she notices,the new rich that are populating the city; people she didn't like at all, and the habits they have are considered "grotesque" by the girl.

Rilke is cold regarding Berlin. He didn't like that city at all, while Anita replies that they go to theathers, they visit close locations, and that she would be delighted if Rilke would join her. At that time Anita was living with the sister, and her husband. Once returned home, her contrasts with her parents return to be alive but Rilke that months remain silent putting down the girl, who doesn't know what it is going in Rilke's existence and why these silences; he was such a prolific correspondent! 

As Anita asked to Rilke to afford to Berlin for a visit while in that city, hated so badly by the beloved writer, now she asks this again, once returned home remarking her unhappiness for not receiving anymore letters from him. But Rilke will write again. He spent in Spain and the French Riviera, Provence some time and he was busy with his writings and social life.The new letter of Rilke put in a great mood Anita, who, anyway would have always looked at the negative side of the existence. 

She is always in trouble but she spent beauty seasons, after all, and she started to understand that being a decent person, helping others, staying close to others means something to someone, and to herself. After a misunderstanding because of an invitation, Anita will write to Rainer: "...M'a vie  n'a toujours été qu'une long exception, depuis que se suis enfant, et je voudrai pur une fois apprendre a renoncer" - my life has been a long exception, since I was a child, and I understood the art of renouncing -

Anita is reading some books by Oscar Wilde, asking for an opinion to Rilke; Rilke is enthusiastic that the girl is happy and joyous and sends her Happy Christmas's Greetings. The two exchanges also   some gifts received via mail.

In the following letter after the feasts, Anita returns to be plenty of insecurities and uncertainties, regarding her character; men are another question pretty important to the girl;  she writes in the letter that Rilke is "an extraordinary man." Someone in grade of listening to her, although he hasn't never met her.

Rilke understands the bad mood of Anita, suggesting her, considering her perennial contrasts with her parents, to present another different hypothesis to the one proposed by her parents; something agreeable to her parents.A good plan B.

After all, concludes Rilke, this one is not what it means an inter-generational exchanges of visions? Also when he was little, parents represented the authority. 

Once in the new school, Anita continues to read. Her reading is Tristan and Isolde, her few friends are all in England, so she doesn't have anyone with which to speak with.

She admits that she is never happy of her condition. She is still under the wings of her parents and to her is a sufferance. She describes herself as an infant fragile, in a bizarre state, a sort of "nullité"; she complains because of her parents; thematic pretty common in the letters of this fragile creature.

After three months, the answer of Rilke: he didn't write before, because he didn't have, after all,  new advice more inspiring for her state.

In her answer, Anita thinks problems are absorbing her completely, and that she is still too little for understand completely the whole picture of the situation.

There are novelties, in the existence of Anita. She has a fiancé. It's a pretty brief love-story, ended when she sends a second letter to Rilke. Edd is over. Anita writes that she is udnerstanding that she can't escape at her own path and her way of being. Rilke returns to write to Anite on February 14  in 1923. In the while a friend of Rilke meets Anita when in London. Rilke is happy for this meeting and writes to Anita that life is just at the beginning to her. The reply of Anita is pretty sad, as she is most of the time, adding that her existence, unfortunately has always been a continuous new beginning. Rilke at the end will meet the girl that year. 

Anita who had imagined the big poet, the man of letters as a sort of God, when she meets him can't speak at all; she just remains sat, admiring her God of Letters and that's it. Rilke, visibly embarassed asks her if it's so difficult after all to tell him something; the girl returns incredibly logorroic via letter. Rilke won't answer back and Anita sends just few letters since at 1926; Anita at the end will return to be the old one, plenty of existential doubts. She discovers that years in Paris, Proust and La Recherche, she is absorbed by this reading and at the same time she doubts of herself, she can't understand how the world rules, considering the existence horribly difficult. In this year, 1926 there is the second meeting: again a sort of disaster with the girl because Anita strongly upset for not having received any letters from him is a fury: a Rilke, profoundly embarassed will answer her just: "You misunderstood" for later knowing the rest of Anita's family, that family portrayed constantly as a horrible one by the girl.

The Géometrie du Coeur is gone, broken forever; Anita will address another final and acrimonious letter to the poet.

It's strange: a strange correspondence this one; Anita was maybe searching for an escapism; the poet for a young, and enthusiastic girl, maybe he imagined plenty of life! 

Both of them at a certain point meet a sort of delusion in this correspondence: maybe Rainer Maria Rilke found Anita too complicated, sad, someone constantly unhappy for her age, and so to his eyes, she became boring; at the same time, Anita founds, yes this escapism with Rilke; the poet reassured her that her letters were more than welcomed; but after a while their correspondence where possible, put her constantly more down; if you follow the letters of Anita, at the beginning and what it will become rapidly, you will notice it; she also built in her mind a dangerous mental construction and an idealization of a person that would have brought her in a profound state of depression, biggest than not the one developed before the fatal meeting with the poet, I am sure.

Very interesting book. I love Rilke and I love to reading every book on him! or every writing by him.

Highly recommended to everyone.

I thank Editions Bouquins for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Lettres à une jeune poétesse by Rainer Maria Rilke, proposed by Chez Bouquins is a fascinating reading. It proposes to the reader in a new light a private segment, maybe little but not less important of the existence of Rilke: Anita Forrer, completely enconnu for a long, long time.

It was a correspondence, this one, kept private, and published in France only in 1982, for then, falling again in the oblivium.

Since now, when Bouquins, with a meticulous work of research and actualization, re-proposes the correspondence.

This epistolary exchanged by Rilke and Anita took place from 1920 to 1926 for circa 60 letters in total. Rilke, in his maturity fell fascinated by the ingenuity and at the same time estemporaneity of this girl: Anita was  from Suisse and was the daughter of an estimated and powerful attorney and politician. Rilke receives her first letter when in Saint-Gall for a conference attended by the same Anita.

If you have read the Cahiers de Malte Laurids Brigge you will understand why Anita will immediately focus on that book in her letter to Rilke.. 

Rilke after few letters starts to tell to Anita that she can considers him as a sort of mentor considering their age-difference adding also that Anita can writes him when she wants because he will always listen what she has to saying.

Rilke opens with these first letters at an encouraging epistolary friendship.

Anita, so, launches herself in the description of a book she had read recently, Le Livre d'Heures, finding it a bit cryptic and explaining sentiments, feelings she proved reading and analyzing the text for later telling to him something about a friend...

The answer of Rilke remarks that she must project herself in the existence, although Anita  explains to Rilke her difficult and troubled existence, and the one of her devoted friend till the years of their childood, remarking the importance of that friendship but also her sensation of culpability.

It's interesting the reply of Rilke, when he adds that young people in general don't tend to have any kind of protection or understanding from the people close to them: not from their mother; that's why it's important to remain confident and imperturbable, starting a wonderful digression about the meaning of friendship and love in particular.

Anita writes in the following letter that Rilke is so unique in the expression of the most profound and intimate level that no one can be like him continuing in another one saying that she has the sensation that Rilke knows her much better than anyone else: Rainer, that "ami incunnu que vous etes" that friend unknown that you are for me, adds Anita.

The next letter by Rilke addressed to Anita was written on Febr. 14. 1920.

The friend of Anita, the tribulation of this friendship, remains a topic largely treated by Rilke and  although later the letter becomes more intriguing, with Rilke telling to her the joy when he receives her news.

Anita is thrilled by this correspondence; she knows that Rilke will make the history of poetry and literature; he is talented, he is a man with a profound culture. She feels that in comparison she is not too much important. 

Rilke will adds that yes, it is true that he is a man of great culture, but...That there is not just hope; the certainty that this capacity of expression is germinating also in the soul of still little Anita; then the following analyses of "Mal et Bien" the capacity of tranforming a bad energy like the one of Mal in Bien.

Nothing is more unstoppable than Mal but it sufficient to move on and voilà! the problem is resolved. The important is living the existence. 

The episode that tells to Anita is strong: he met along his way, while he was walking a boy who had killed himself: so Rilke thinks that, if this boy would have thought a second more, if he would have waited, he would have taken another decision. He writes: "Dites donc celui-là, s'il a pu encore faire ca, il aureit bien pou faire autre chose."

Life is strong and inestricable, writes Rainer.

Anita is surprised because of long letters and attentions that Rilke reserves her. She writes that his letters are "sont ci belles" asking him at the same time important questions on God and the other life remaining obsessed by Malte Laurids Brigge. 

To him the most important moment of the existence is our death, but the church is trying in every possible way of "conducting" the existence of believers, so that they can't taste the essence of a life lived for later experiencing that moment.

Anita is stressed by her existence, and she tells this to Rilke. Rilke listens; he would want to meet her, but for what known in this phase Anita didn't have the consent of the family because the writer was a person living all alone. Rilke presses the girl for an answer and Anita is back; once in England in fact, she didn't write him a lot, and later Rilke confessed her that he found the letters sent him pretty distracted, but that now she is back.

Back for good.

Anita is a troubled girl; she suffers for the absence of her father, and his many works, as attorney, as politicians and in other different roles, she writes of her sister and husband...She doesn't find sometimes life attractive, living it heavily. 

Differently, Rilke is like a good cup of champagne or prosecco; he sees the best of this world and suggests to Anita of living her life at the fullest sending also an edition autographed by him of Les Fleurs du Mal by Baudelaire when is the birthday of the girl, who, of course, is pleasantly happy of having received the book.

Anita helps the writer in the development of his theory on the geometrie du Coeur, with their correspondence, while replying to a letter of Anita, Rilke remarks that she sees love too much under a lense of destruction and positivity; there is the possibiity also of loving the object of our interest staying distantly from him, reality is everyday more big than the idea that we have of it. 

The answer of Anita is impregnanted of pessimism again regarding love, relationship and marriages; she is terrorized by the possibility of meeting someone different for tastes, habits.

She would want to become a real woman, speaking with lightness, without mental complexities, that admits, she hasm but, she affirms that "cette femme me porte", she is driven by the first kind of girl. A tormented one.

When in Berlin Anita buys another book written by Rilke, at the same time she notices,the new rich that are populating the city; people she didn't like at all, and the habits they have are considered "grotesque" by the girl.

Rilke is cold regarding Berlin. He didn't like that city at all, while Anita replies that they go to theathers, they visit close locations, and that she would be delighted if Rilke would join her. At that time Anita was living with the sister, and her husband. Once returned home, her contrasts with her parents return to be alive but Rilke that months remain silent putting down the girl, who doesn't know what it is going in Rilke's existence and why these silences; he was such a prolific correspondent! 

As Anita asked to Rilke to afford to Berlin for a visit while in that city, hated so badly by the beloved writer, now she asks this again, once returned home remarking her unhappiness for not receiving anymore letters from him. But Rilke will write again. He spent in Spain and the French Riviera, Provence some time and he was busy with his writings and social life.The new letter of Rilke put in a great mood Anita, who, anyway would have always looked at the negative side of the existence. 

She is always in trouble but she spent beauty seasons, after all, and she started to understand that being a decent person, helping others, staying close to others means something to someone, and to herself. After a misunderstanding because of an invitation, Anita will write to Rainer: "...M'a vie  n'a toujours été qu'une long exception, depuis que se suis enfant, et je voudrai pur une fois apprendre a renoncer" - my life has been a long exception, since I was a child, and I understood the art of renouncing -

Anita is reading some books by Oscar Wilde, asking for an opinion to Rilke; Rilke is enthusiastic that the girl is happy and joyous and sends her Happy Christmas's Greetings. The two exchanges also   some gifts received via mail.

In the following letter after the feasts, Anita returns to be plenty of insecurities and uncertainties, regarding her character; men are another question pretty important to the girl;  she writes in the letter that Rilke is "an extraordinary man." Someone in grade of listening to her, although he hasn't never met her.

Rilke understands the bad mood of Anita, suggesting her, considering her perennial contrasts with her parents, to present another different hypothesis to the one proposed by her parents; something agreeable to her parents.A good plan B.

After all, concludes Rilke, this one is not what it means an inter-generational exchanges of visions? Also when he was little, parents represented the authority. 

Once in the new school, Anita continues to read. Her reading is Tristan and Isolde, her few friends are all in England, so she doesn't have anyone with which to speak with.

She admits that she is never happy of her condition. She is still under the wings of her parents and to her is a sufferance. She describes herself as an infant fragile, in a bizarre state, a sort of "nullité"; she complains because of her parents; thematic pretty common in the letters of this fragile creature.

After three months, the answer of Rilke: he didn't write before, because he didn't have, after all,  new advice more inspiring for her state.

In her answer, Anita thinks problems are absorbing her completely, and that she is still too little for understand completely the whole picture of the situation.

There are novelties, in the existence of Anita. She has a fiancé. It's a pretty brief love-story, ended when she sends a second letter to Rilke. Edd is over. Anita writes that she is udnerstanding that she can't escape at her own path and her way of being. Rilke returns to write to Anite on February 14  in 1923. In the while a friend of Rilke meets Anita when in London. Rilke is happy for this meeting and writes to Anita that life is just at the beginning to her. The reply of Anita is pretty sad, as she is most of the time, adding that her existence, unfortunately has always been a continuous new beginning. Rilke at the end will meet the girl that year. 

Anita who had imagined the big poet, the man of letters as a sort of God, when she meets him can't speak at all; she just remains sat, admiring her God of Letters and that's it. Rilke, visibly embarassed asks her if it's so difficult after all to tell him something; the girl returns incredibly logorroic via letter. Rilke won't answer back and Anita sends just few letters since at 1926; Anita at the end will return to be the old one, plenty of existential doubts. She discovers that years in Paris, Proust and La Recherche, she is absorbed by this reading and at the same time she doubts of herself, she can't understand how the world rules, considering the existence horribly difficult. In this year, 1926 there is the second meeting: again a sort of disaster with the girl because Anita strongly upset for not having received any letters from him is a fury: a Rilke, profoundly embarassed will answer her just: "You misunderstood" for later knowing the rest of Anita's family, that family portrayed constantly as a horrible one by the girl.

The Géometrie du Coeur is gone, broken forever; Anita will address another final and acrimonious letter to the poet.

It's strange: a strange correspondence this one; Anita was maybe searching for an escapism; the poet for a young, and enthusiastic girl, maybe he imagined plenty of life! 

Both of them at a certain point meet a sort of delusion in this correspondence: maybe Rainer Maria Rilke found Anita too complicated, sad, someone constantly unhappy for her age, and so to his eyes, she became boring; at the same time, Anita founds, yes this escapism with Rilke; the poet reassured her that her letters were more than welcomed; but after a while their correspondence where possible, put her constantly more down; if you follow the letters of Anita, at the beginning and what it will become rapidly, you will notice it; she also built in her mind a dangerous mental construction and an idealization of a person that would have brought her in a profound state of depression, biggest than not the one developed before the fatal meeting with the poet, I am sure.

Very interesting book. I love Rilke and I love to reading every book on him! or every writing by him.

Highly recommended to everyone.

I thank Editions Bouquins for the physical copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori