Ein

Things are not all so comprehensible and expressible 

as one would mostly have us believe; most events are inexpressible,

taking place in a realm which no word has ever entered, 

and more inexpressible than all else are works of art, 

mysterious existences, the life of which, while ours passes away, endures.

You compare verses with other poems, and you are disturbed when certain editors reject your efforts.

Now I bet you to give up all that. 

You are looking outward, and that above all you should not do now.

Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody.

There is only one single way.

Go into yourself.

Search for the reason that bids you write,

find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, 

acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write.

This above all--ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night:  must I write?

Delve into yourself for a deep answer.

And if this should be affirmative, 

if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple "I must,"

then build your life according to this necessity; 

your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and a testimony to it.

Then draw near to nature.

Then try, like some first human being, to say what you see and experience and love and lose.

Do not write love-poems; avoid at first those forms that are too facile and commonplace: 

 they are the most difficult, for it takes a great, 

fully matured power to give something of your own where good 

and even excellent traditions come to mind in quantity.

Therefore save yourself from these general themes 

and seek those which your own everyday life offers you; 

describe your sorrows and desires, passing thoughts and the belief in some sort of beauty--

describe all these with loving quiet, humble sincerity, and use,

 to express yourself, the things in your environment,

 the images from your dreams, and the objects of your memory.

If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, 

tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; 

for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.

And if out of this turning inward, but of this absorption into your own world verses come, 

then it will not occur to you to ask anyone whether they are good verses.  

Nor will you try to interest magazines in your poems: 

 for you will see in them your fond natural possession, a fragment and a voice of your life.

A work of art is good if it has sprung from necessity.

In this nature of its origin lies the judgment of it:  there is no other.

Therefore, my dear sir, I know no advice for you save this: 

to go into yourself and test the deeps in which your life takes rise; 

at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create.

To feel that one could live without writing:  then one must not attempt it at all.

Everything seems to me to have its just emphasis; 

and after all I do only want to advise you to keep growing quietly 

and seriously throughout your whole development; 

you cannot disturb it more rudely than by looking outward 

and expecting from outside replies to questions 

that only your inmost feeling in your most hushed hour can perhaps answer.