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Description
A book about finding a creative voice and becoming an artist via a startling rediscovery in Edmund de Waal’s family archives – letters between his grandmother and the charismatic poet Rainer Maria Rilke. With letters translated from the German by prizewinning translator, Karen Leeder.
This is a story about how to begin. In 1921, Elisabeth Ephrussi writes a letter to the great poet Rainer Maria Rilke. She too is a poet, or an aspiring one – a young law student in Vienna just beginning her creative life.
To her surprise, Rilke writes back with advice. A five-year correspondence follows, an exchange of lyrical and exhortatory letters alongside books, translations, poems in manuscript. They never meet.
Fifty years later, Elisabeth’s grandson, Edmund de Waal, wants to be a poet and a potter. He sends her his own poetry, and she responds with guidance and Rilke’s Duino Elegies.
It is a moving, intergenerational story about the traces of memory within a family, and a deeply personal reflection on how we learn resilience with the support of others. It is for any reader starting out, seeking the permission to begin.
