In his introduction to the original edition, he tells how the correspondence began. The “young poet” of the title was also nineteen, a military student named Franz Xaver Kappus. So, even before I read a line of Rilke’s poetry, I regarded him as a spiritual teacher and came to treat him, in that small, light-green-covered book, with the greatest respect, the way some people keep their copy of the I Ching wrapped in silk. From the very first pages, where solitude is considered as a positive experience (I had thought of it as a kind of disease), my life seemed to acquire a new clarity and sanction. I felt, as many readers have felt, that the letters were written for me. I had never heard a voice speaking out of such deep understanding, with such authority. I remember first opening the small, light-green cover of the French translation, given to me in Paris by a girl I was in love with when I was nineteen: when both love and the German language were more alien to me than the moon. These extraordinary letters were my introduction to Rilke.
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