The Only Question
You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are alarmed when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you—no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were denied the right to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple "I must," then build your life in accordance with this necessity.
, Letters to a Young Poet (1903)
The young poet Franz Kappus had sent Rilke his verses, hoping for an assessment. Was his work any good? Did it measure up? Rilke’s response refuses the question entirely. He doesn’t evaluate; he redirects. Stop comparing, he says. Stop looking outside. The only question that matters is one you must ask yourself, alone, in the quietest hours: must I write?
Not “can I write well?” or “will anyone want this?” but must I. Rilke isn’t interested in craft advice or career strategy. He’s asking about something deeper—whether the work rises from necessity or merely from desire for recognition.
The distinction feels newly urgent. When generation becomes easy—when a machine can produce competent verses, passable prose, serviceable images—the question of capability dissolves. Almost anyone can now have something made. What remains is the question Rilke posed over a century ago: what compels you to make it yourself?
There’s no judgment in the answer. Some work we do because we must; other work we do because it needs doing and we’re capable. Both have their place. But knowing the difference matters. The work that rises from necessity—from roots spreading “into the very depths of your heart”—carries something different. Perhaps something that cannot be prompted or generated, because it emerges only from that silent hour of self-reckoning. What would you have to die if you couldn’t do?