YOU ARE THE FUTURE

Burrows and Dowrick tease out the timeless wisdom of a beloved poet in this nonfiction work.

For over a century, the writings of Rainer Maria Rilke—the Austrian poet who died in 1926—have encouraged readers to embrace life’s contradictions. “He himself saw language as a tool of inquiry,” write the authors in their introduction, “sent out like a ‘probe’ to the limits of human imagination and experience as ‘bees of the invisible,’ as he once famously put it. This adds up to a quite new way not just of seeing life, but of more fully embracing and valuing it.” With this book, Burrows and Dowrick use Rilke’s writings to explore topics like beginnings, questions, and mistakes. The chapters, which can be read in any order (the authors alternate writing duties), operate as self-contained essays, each inspired by a particular quote from one of Rilke’s poems or letters. The chapter titled “Where Do I Belong,” for example, begins with Rilke’s haunting poem “Entrance,” which Dowrick uses as a launching pad to consider the tensions of conformity and belonging. (Her close reading of the poem draws in ideas from Rumi and John O’Donovan as well as her husband’s work as a pediatrician among the First Nations of Australia’s Northern Territory.) Burrows and Dowrick are correct in their assertion that Rilke’s words have a surprisingly contemporary resonance. Though they sometimes consider Rilke’s words within the context of his own life and time, more often they look outward, which can occasionally lead to broad or slightly cliche insights like, “Finding a way to be curious, to be open to the unknown, to be ready to be surprised is not the goal of life’s journey. It is that journey itself.” Worse, they occasionally get caught in loops of abstracted self-help speak: “Such self-honoring may become a chance to discover the fertile wisdom already waiting in your own life, plus how to live into its depths.” More a book for readers of motivational nonfiction than for fans of literature, this work will undoubtedly bring new audiences to the great poet.

A thoughtful if imperfect primer on Rilke for the self-improvement minded.