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Letter 9
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Letters to a Young Poet, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Solitude and Difficulty
Art, Life, and Uncertainty
Patience and Self-Assurance
Mentorship and Guidance
Summary
Analysis
Rilke expresses how happy he was to receive a letter from Kappus. He has been thinking about the young poet as the days march toward Christmas, imagining how peaceful and quiet it must be where Kappus has been stationed as an officer amongst hills in the country. In the end, he’s glad that Kappus found his way into the existence he currently leads, in which he wears a uniform and lives a life that makes room for solitude and reflection.
Rilke’s final letter to Kappus is dated four years after their last correspondence. Based on his comments about Kappus wearing a uniform, it appears that the young poet has continued on his trajectory as a military officer. But Rilke doesn’t see this profession as something that has held Kappus back or kept him from leading a thoughtful, artistic life. To the contrary, Rilke is happy that being an officer has given Kappus the space to embrace his own solitude, ultimately implying that leading a meaningful life doesn’t necessarily have to mean finding a job that perfectly aligns with a person’s primary passion, as long as it creates conditions that make it possible for that person to continue cultivating that passion.
Themes
Art, Rilke says, is just a way of life. Many people go into professions that are adjacent to art, assuming that such a lifestyle will enrich their artistic sensibilities. But Rilke thinks such existences often detract from a person’s ability to live a truly artistic life. It is better, then, that Kappus has found a way to be “serious and courageous” while living in a “rough reality.” Rilke ends by expressing his hope that the approaching year will help the young poet continue to live in this manner.
For Rilke, there is very little—if any—distinction between life and art. He sees Kappus’s ability to live in a “serious and courageous” way as something that will feed into the young poet’s artistic endeavors. After all, Rilke believes that leading an enriching life fuels artistic creation, so it doesn’t matter that Kappus’s profession as a military officer technically has nothing to do with art. In fact, Rilke thinks it’s better for artists to go into unrelated fields, since jobs that hover around art—like, for instance, literary criticism—can deplete an artist’s ability to actually create. As such, Rilke is glad that Kappus has stuck with his military career and seems to think that it will benefit the young poet in the long term.
Themes
