Oliver’s Reviews > Letters to a Young Poet > Status Update

I just realized I hate this so much because it reminds me of Walden. I need to stop reading works by white men who thought of themselves as profound

I don’t understand how this guy can put art above all else but completely shit on the value of history

Not a fan of this guys ideas about solitude and his sense of moral superiority. Seems like he’s just trying to cope with his own lonely life. Also, his ideas about sex made me deeply uncomfortable

It makes me sad that he was too poor to buy his own books or gift them them to anyone. I can’t imagine having a dozen books published and not even owning one of them ☹️

Rilke says Auguste Rodin (the guy who sculpted The Thinker) “has not his equal among all artists living today.” Now I’m no art expert, but his sculptures are kinda ass. Rilke might just have bad taste

I find it odd that Rilke recommends Niels Lyhne, a story about a man who renounces Christianity, when he said in the same paragraph that he carries a bible with him.

I’m actually reading a translation by M. D. Herter Norton

If I hadn’t read the translator’s note, I would have thought that Rilke telling Kappus to just drop everything and become a poet if he feels the need to write was such a rich person way of thinking. Knowing that he was going through hell as a poet when he wrote the letter makes it a lot more meaningful

“A work of art is good if it has sprung from necessity”

Rilke poetically says I’m not going to critique you and then immediately critiques him in the next paragraph lmao