Writing and Spirituality? Rainer Maria Rilke

I have been re-reading Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. I must confess that the first time I read it it was all a bit of a blur. Something I always knew I should read. The first time I remember hearing of it, for my sins, was when Whoopi Goldberg mentions it to Lauren Hill in Sister Act Two. Not the most auspicious or intellectual of sources but it stayed with me none-the-less.
As I was reading in bed last night it amazed me the comparisons that the book draws with many philosophical thinkers. I have mentioned before that my friends and I are desperate to find some deeper meaning and enlightenment in our lives and as a result over the years I have read numerous tomes of self help and enlightenment.
It started with The Celestine Prophecy and the whole coincidence thing that comes with it, Everyday Zen, Channelling Auras, Tao Te Ching and Eckhart Tolle to name a few. I’ve dipped in and out of these books over the years finding what I’ve needed at that particular time and moved on. I am not the most disciplined or diligent seeker of truth but like everything else I do hope to find the time to do it properly someday.
Back to Rilke, it struck me last night, me being as ignorant as I am, that the words that he writes to this young poet are easily comparative to those of the now considered masters of spiritual enlightenment. There is nothing in this book that I haven’t read many times over the years and these letters are somewhat more eloquent than many others I have read, the man was a poet after all. His view on women and their contribution to society seem way ahead of their time and I can’t imagine these progressive, for the time, ideas having many fans in the polite society of that time. And it was his recognition that women would escape the confines of men that really fired me up. Was he a feminist? I don’t know. Before today I naively thought him a poet and a writer of letters.
Of course Google quickly informed me that he has long been considered a philosopher and Lady Gaga, someone I admire, even has a tattooed quote from one of his letters somewhere on her person.
'In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself, must I write?'
Some say it is pretentious. I don’t know if I agree or think that she wanted to pay homage to something that spoke to her. I think prefer to believe the latter. It certainly is a beautiful question and one I am trying to answer in the affirmative.
So I wasn’t the first person to realise the genius of the man but at least I learned something and it gives me another common interest with the Lady herself.
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