FOREWORD
These extraordinary letters were my introduction to Rilke. 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. The book was a revelation. I had never heard a voice speaking out of such deep understanding, with such authority. I felt, as many readers have felt, that the letters were written for me. 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. 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.
