Rainer Maria Rilke Letter One Summary

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Letters to a Young Poet “Letter One”, written by Rainer Maria Rilke, is a letter written by Rilke which contains advice for the aforementioned poet in the title of the piece. The reason for Rilke writing this piece was that a young, inexperienced poet sent Rilke a letter along with the poet’s own poems, which were called “My Soul” and “To Leopardi.” Rilke informs the poet that he is not comfortable with giving criticism, saying that “Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism,” (p. 5). Instead of giving criticism, Rilke advises the poet on what first steps he should take in order to pursue a serious career in writing literature.

The tone of a piece of literature is directly dependent upon the word choice with which it is written. Word choice factors into the development of an important idea in the text and how that idea is developed throughout the text. The type of word choice used impacts the way with which both the tone and important ideas are developed in writing. The tone of a piece of literature changes with the word choice of the writer of the piece. If the word choice of the writer conveys a certain feeling or emotion, whether it is happy or sad, the tone will be directly impacted by this and changed accordingly. …show more content…

Rilke uses words like “unsayable...”, “mysterious existences…”, and “small, transitory life.” (p. 5). This word choice causes the tone of the first paragraph to become somewhat mysterious, bringing about feelings of something akin to the fear of the unknown. In the second paragraph

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