This book is an elegiac biography of the poet, in which Rilke speaks through his letters, handcrafted by the author. It is about a poet who sets out in search of his own voice, his self, in a bitter struggle with his own nature. Lou Andreas-Salomé shows the reverse side of the fabric of creation, the vital risk involved in finding the poet in each of us and, at the same time, the saving power it entails. In a world facing the danger—already predicted by Nietzsche—of feelings being crushed by reason, Rilke reveals himself here as the poet who accepted that challenge, who himself experienced it in a dramatic body-soul struggle.