These ten letters were written by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) to a young poet when he was about thirty years old.In addition to his vocation as a poet, Rilke was an indefatigable letter writer; in his life he wrote countless letters more gracious and beautiful than these ten.But these ten letters are completely natural, and they have their own beginning and end invisibly; they speak the most to the young people.In it, he talks about poetry and art, about sexual love, seriousness and sarcasm, sorrow and doubt, about the difficulties of life and career-these are all problems that are constantly rising and falling in the hearts of young people.

People like to compare youth to spring, and this metaphor is correct.But the similarity between them is not so much that the sunshine of young people is as bright and beautiful as the sun in spring, but from another perspective, the sorrow and growth of young people are more like those in the cloudy wind, rain, and cold. The evolving spring.Because the latter is longer, heavier and more meaningful than the former.I often think of a painting by the Dutch painter Van Gogh in front of any young man: the background of the painting is a few small, narrow houses, and a peach tree or apricot tree stands in the center. A tree with a few pink flowers blooming lonely on the branches of the fork.I think this tree has gone through a long period of wind and rain, and is still enduring the cold spring, surrounded by a poor world, but the juice of life flows in the branches.This is a real, no-frills spring!Why is this not the case for young people, life needs to grow all the time, but the outside is not always full of eyes and warm wind.They have to bear a lot of coldness and ruthlessness, indifference and misunderstanding.

Everything about them is full of freshness and vitality, while the customs of the society are rotten, as rotten as clothes that have been washed and dyed many times.They feel that they cannot coordinate with the outside world and are restricted everywhere. At the same time, they cannot be silent like plants. They have to tell others——they are looking for someone who can listen to them, and they are looking for someone who can learn from their lack of expressiveness. Those who have experienced their original intentions in their words and answered them.Almost a hundred youths out of a hundred are disappointed in such a search.But there was one person who, originally on a whim, wrote a letter expressing his inner state and sent it to an unknown poet. After reading the letter, the poet had a better understanding, thinking of his youth, as if he was stroking him. For the scars on the body in the past, there will be a letter and an answer, and an incisive answer and analysis will be given to each question. ——At the same time, he has repeatedly stated that everyone has to take care of themselves, and it is difficult for others to give some help.

But he told us that entering the world is difficult and lonely.Individuals are like trees in a garden standing side by side in the world.The branches, branches and leaves may echo, but their roots, which are entangled in the ground to absorb nutrients, are independent, quiet and lonely.People often forget the root of life for the sake of unnecessary hustle and bustle, and cannot experience the meaning of life in loneliness and in the observation of plants, trees, birds and animals (they are creatures like us), and only slide down forever on the surface of life past.In this way, naturally there is no difficulty or loneliness, it is just concealment and deception.The instruments of deceit and concealment, Rilke tells us, are the customs of society.When people encounter difficulties, fears, and serious things that they cannot cope with, they will hide under the custom and seek its shelter.It became a refuge for people, but not a place to live. ——If anyone wants to live a real life, he must break away from the ready-made customs and become an independent survivor, taking on all kinds of problems in life, just like our ancestors took on, and there is no room for some substitutions.

In these letters, this kind of meaning is revealed everywhere, which moves the readers the most.When I read this booklet of letters for the first time in the spring of 1931, I felt that every word seemed to flow out of my heart and flow back into my heart. I felt a kind of satisfaction and excitement, and couldn’t help reading After finishing one, I translated one to send to distant friends who cannot read German.It has been six years now, and the original book has been reprinted many times, while my translation has been sleeping in a suitcase for several years, and it has never been printed.Now I have taken it out, slightly modified it and printed it, and I still dedicate it to friends who cannot read the original German.An appendix of Rilke's essay "On Landscape" is appended later.The content of this essay is rich, in my opinion, it is worth a monograph of an art scholar.I especially like the last paragraph in that article, because readers will naturally read it, so I won’t quote it here.

Nothing can be said about Rilke's life and his works in this short preface.On the 10th anniversary of his death last year, Shanghai's "New Poetry" monthly magazine published a special feature on him in the third issue of the first volume. Readers can refer to it. Some of his works have been translated into Chinese by Bian Zhilin, Liang Zongdai, and Feng Zhi, and they can be seen in the semi-monthly "Shen Zhong", "Huaxu Society Papers Collection", "New Poetry" monthly, Ta Kung Pao's "Wenyi" and "Art Weekly". As for the life experience of the recipient, I know very little, and most of it is just like what he said in his "Introduction", and later life "drives him into the poet's warm, kind and affectionate care" for him. protected situation".

May 1, 1937