“Read as little as possible of critical or aesthetic works. They are either products of a close-minded spirit, petrified and devoid of meaning in their lifeless hardening, or clever verbal games [...]. Works of art are of an infinite solitude; nothing is worse than criticism for approaching them. Only love can grasp them, keep them, be just toward them. Always give precedence to your own feeling against these analyses, these reviews, these introductions. [...] You must let every impression, every seed of feeling, ripen within you, in the dark, in the inexpressible, in the unconscious, those regions closed to understanding. Wait with humility and patience for the hour of the birth of a new clarity. Art demands of its faithful followers as much as of its creators.”
— RAINER-MARIA Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet (letter dated April 23, 1903).
