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In February 1903, in Paris, Rainer Maria Rilke answered a letter from Franz Xaver Kappus, a nineteen-year-old cadet at the Theresian Military Academy in Wiener Neustadt who had sent him some poems and asked whether they were any good. Rilke did not really answer that question. Over ten letters, the last dated December 1908, he told Kappus to look inward, to accept solitude, and to be patient with what was unresolved in him. Kappus published the letters in 1929, three years after Rilke's death, and Letters to a Young Poet became the book most readers meet him through. The poems go further. Rilke was born in Prague in 1875, worked for a time as Auguste Rodin's secretary in Paris, and learned from him to look at a thing until it gave something back — the method of the New Poems (1907). The Duino Elegies, begun in 1912, took him ten years; he finished them at the Château de Muzot in Switzerland on 11 February 1922, in the same month as the fifty-five Sonnets to Orpheus. He died of leukaemia at the Val-Mont sanatorium above Lake Geneva on 29 December 1926. Readers come to him for that combination: a demanding seriousness about the inner life, and a belief that close, patient attention is the way into it. The writers below share one or both.
By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Poetry · Solitude and attention · Updated October 2026
Quick answer
If you love Rilke, start with Hermann Hesse, whose Siddhartha is the novel of the inward search Rilke urged on Kappus. For the poems, Tomas Tranströmer and Louise Glück are the closest modern voices, and Mary Oliver turns his attention onto the natural world. For the spiritual side, read Simone Weil — and if it was the letters you loved, Franz Kafka, born in the same city eight years later.
10 authors like Rainer Maria Rilke
Where to start if you loved Rainer Maria Rilke
If you want the letters' advice as a story, read Hermann Hesse.
Siddhartha: a life spent learning exactly the patience Rilke recommends.
If you want the New Poems' way of seeing, read Tomas Tranströmer.
The Great Enigma: short poems, each built on one image that opens up.
If you want the Duino Elegies' gravity, read Louise Glück.
Averno — myth, death and the self, with nothing softened.
If you want the inner discipline itself, read Simone Weil.
Gravity and Grace: the philosophy of attention, in fragments.
Frequently asked questions about authors like Rainer Maria Rilke
Who should I read if I love Rainer Maria Rilke?
Hermann Hesse is the closest novelist, especially Siddhartha. Among poets, Tomas Tranströmer and Louise Glück are the nearest modern voices, and Mary Oliver shares his belief in close attention. Simone Weil writes the philosophy behind that attention, and Franz Kafka, born in Prague eight years after Rilke, is the other great German-language writer of the inner life.
What books are like Letters to a Young Poet?
Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet (1923) has the same calm, advising voice. Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha (1922) turns the same counsel — patience, solitude, finding your own way — into a story. David Whyte's Consolations applies it to everyday life, and Simone Weil's Gravity and Grace gives it a philosophical form.
Who was the young poet in Letters to a Young Poet?
Franz Xaver Kappus (1883–1966), a nineteen-year-old cadet at the Theresian Military Academy in Wiener Neustadt, who wrote to Rilke in 1902 with some of his poems. Rilke had attended the academy's lower school as a boy. Rilke's ten replies date from February 1903 to December 1908, and Kappus published them with Insel Verlag in 1929, three years after Rilke died.
What are the Duino Elegies?
A sequence of ten long poems about human limits, love, death and the task of praising the world. Rilke began them in 1912 at Duino Castle on the Adriatic coast, worked on them intermittently through the war, and finished them at the Château de Muzot in Switzerland on 11 February 1922. They were published in 1923, the same year as the Sonnets to Orpheus, which he wrote that same February.
Where should I start with Rilke's poetry?
Most readers start with Letters to a Young Poet and then move to the poems. Of the poetry, the New Poems (1907–08) are the most concrete — panthers, fountains, statues seen with Rodin's eye — and the Sonnets to Orpheus are shorter and more approachable than the Duino Elegies. A bilingual edition helps, because the translations differ widely.
How did Rilke die?
He died of leukaemia on 29 December 1926 at the Val-Mont sanatorium above Lake Geneva, having been diagnosed only weeks before. A popular story says he died from an infected rose-thorn prick; he did prick his hand on a rose, but the illness was the cause. He is buried at Raron in the Valais, under an epitaph he wrote about the rose.
Footnotes
- Letters to a Young Poet — Wikipedia
- Sonnets to Orpheus — Wikipedia
- Rainer Maria Rilke — Poets.org
- Rilke: a poet's death — Hektoen International
- Hermann Hesse — Nobel Prize in Literature 1946
- Tomas Tranströmer — Nobel Prize in Literature 2011
- Obituary: Mary Oliver — Publishers Weekly
- Jalal al-Din Rumi — Poets.org
List last reviewed 15 October 2026.
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