German Language and Literature Commons^™

How To Be An Artist: An Investigation In Dialogue With Rainer Maria Rilke And Virginia Woolf, Amber Nicole Junker

Senior Projects Spring 2020

In 1929, Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet was published, a text which quickly became one of his most renowned works. 1932 saw the publication of Virginia Woolf’s “A Letter to a Young Poet,” a text which is not held by critics as one of her best. Yet Woolf’s letter should not be ignored, as it allows for a comparison between herself and Rilke, two modernists who are rarely put into conversation. Though this comparison originates from the surface level—the curious similarity between the titles of these works—I have found that it is their nearness in content that …