This past September, I moved across an ocean to attend university in a city I had never seen before and a country I barely knew. For several days, my entire world felt in flux. It was as though I was watching my life back home happen through binoculars and my life here in the United Kingdom pass through foggy rose-colored glasses—a life I knew was distinctly mine but did not quite feel real.
I spent those days staggering through Oxford, dragging my body from one item on my never-ending to-do list to the next. I fought back tears as I stood in art museums by myself, trying to find some sense of familiarity in the faces of 18th- century portraiture, overly conscious of the fact that my family and friends were thousands of miles away. I walked through meadows and listened to the voices surrounding me, a cacophony of accents that reminded me over and over again, like waves pushing against land, this is not home, this is not home, this is not home.
One day, I stumbled into Blackwell’s, a famous bookshop in the center of the city. This particular store is apparently the largest academic bookseller in the U.K.,which I did not realize until the first time I entered. Immediately, I was drowning in shelves upon shelves of books. I tend to feel quite at home in bookstores, but on this specific day, I stood aimlessly in the middle of the store, feeling completely hopeless about where to look first.
I drifted to the non-fiction section in search of something vaguely truthful that would tell me what I was doing here and why I had come so far, something that would confirm my long days of travel were not all some huge mistake. And there Rilke stood. I had read Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet” once before—my mother recommended the book to me last December to help me through a difficult moment—but it had been a while, and many significant changes had occurred in my life since then.
“Letters to a Young Poet” was published in 1929 in Germany. The collection contains 10 letters that the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote to the young writer and cadet Franz Xaver Kappus. The letters offer wisdom to Kappus—and to us, the readers—on writing, loving, thinking, engaging with the world around us and finding what matters then holding fast to it.
Reading this book for the first time last December, I felt comforted by Rilke’s words on how to exist in a world that felt too big, too frightening and too overwhelming for me and all of my humanness. Reading this book for the second time, I landed on the following passage, which advises the reader on how to cope with distance from home and all that is familiar:
“For the people who are close to you, you tell me, are far away, and that shows that you are beginning to create a wider space around you. And if what is close is far, then the space around you is wide indeed and already among the stars; take pleasure in your growth, in which no one can accompany you, and be kind-hearted towards those you leave behind.”
Rilke continues, “Ask no advice of them and reckon with no understanding; but believe in a love which is stored up for you like an inheritance, and trust that in this love there is strength and a benediction out of whose sphere you do not need to issue even if your journey is a long one.”
These lines have been a great teacher to me over the past several weeks. When I read them, I think of the family I left in the United States and my friends back at Vassar. I sometimes worry that by spending my junior year abroad, I am missing out on crucial time with my communities at home. But Rilke reminds me to trust in the friendships I have made during my first two years in Poughkeepsie. Even though the time when I will be able to embrace my Vassar friends again seems so far away, the fact that I am conscious of this feeling of separation proves that there is something there to be missed—something that cannot be so easily deconstructed by distance.
When I remember this distance between me and my home, I repeat to myself the beginning of Rilke’s ninth letter. He writes, “[I]t is always what I have already said: always the wish that you may find patience enough in yourself to endure, and simplicity enough to believe; that you may acquire more and more confidence in that which is difficult, and in your solitude among others. And for the rest, let life happen to you. Believe me: life is right, in any case.”
Oftentimes, I find that books so frequently cited by self-help gurus, like Rilke’s collection, tend to be overhyped and valued more so for their inherently quotable nature than for any kind of deeply-rooted emotional wisdom. “Letters to a Young Poet” is an exception to the literary tradition of self-help quotability. The beauty and sagacity of this collection permeates through our 21st century instinct to highlight the first mentally-stimulating quote found on the page and instead forces the reader to reckon with a series of letters in which every single sentence is embedded with significance. In Rilke’s work, no word is too small for meaning.
Perhaps that is why this book has lasted as an emotional touchstone for many readers, even a century since its publication. As life courses onward, Rilke’s words stand with their feet in the sand, enduring the whip of the sea and the flood of time.
I am about a month into my life on the other side of the ocean, and there is a copy of Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet” sitting beside me in my dorm room. I am grateful to have found solid ground under my feet, that the people and wondrous sights around me are becoming familiar and that this far-away place is finally beginning to feel like home.