Penguin Books Winter 2013 - Bookseller Services - Penguin Group

116
Letters to a Young Poet
Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated with an Afterword and Notes by Charlie Louth
Introduction by Lewis Hyde
At the start of the twentieth century, Rainer Maria Rilke
wrote a series of letters to a young officer cadet, advising
him on writing, love, sex, suffering, and the nature of
advice itself. These profound and lyrical letters have since
become hugely influential for generations of writers and
artists of all kinds, including Lady Gaga and Patti Smith.
With honesty, elegance, and a deep understanding of the
loneliness that often comes with being an artist, Rilke’s
letters are an endless source of inspiration and comfort.
Lewis Hyde’s new introduction explores the context in
which these letters were written and how the author
embraced his isolation as a creative force.
RAineR MARiA Rilke (1875–1926) studied literature, art history,
and philosophy in both Munich and Prague and is often considered one of the
German language’s greatest twentieth-century poets. His two most famous
verse sequences are the Sonnets to Orpheus and the Duino Elegies; his
two most famous prose works are Letters to a Young Poet and the semiautobiographical
The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge.
ChARlie louth is a fellow at Queen’s College, Oxford, where he
lectures in German. He is the author of Hölderlin and the Dynamics
of Translation.
lewis hyde is the author of the hundred-million-copy bestseller The Gift.
A MacArthur fellow and former director of undergraduate creative writing at
Harvard University, Hyde is a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet
and Society. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Gambier, Ohio.
“ I cannot think of a better book to put into
the hands of any young would-be poet, as
an inspirational guide to poetry and to
surviving as a poet in a hostile world.”
—Harry Fainlight, The Times (London)
“ I read Rilke’s Letters to a Young
Poet every day.” —Lady Gaga
Penguin Readers guide available online at penguin.com
Online Publicity
“Penguin Classics Presents” event