emily’s Reviews > Conversations with Rilke > Status Update

‘This foreign language—he claimed to make use of—to spare his own—possessed its privileged words—its singular turns of phrase—unrivalled beauties. Already, in a letter from 1907, Rilke confessed to—Norlind—to beware of the temptation to write in a foreign language, that sometimes he used—to say certain things that would have been simply impossible to express in another language—some shortcomings of the native tongue’