Why we write/create

I'm reading Nin's diary and re-reading Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet (among few others. Go team ADD and making it work!) Within days of one another I come to read both amazing writers speak about why one writes. No doubt Anais has read Rilke, in fact she describes a young man she meets with the said book tucked under his arms and comments on it in one of the diaries, though her writing on this subject at this particular time is definitely her own. What they both (and many others) speak of is a bit of a universal truth, I believe and hope for all artists, so the similarities certainly are not surprising but still feels damn good to read these passages every time, all the time.



Anais Nin from "Diaries of Anais Nin Volume 5"


Letter to a writer who asked: "Why does one write?"

Why one writes is a question I can answer easily, having so often asked it of myself. I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me: the world of my parents, the world of Henry Miller, the world of Gonzalo, or the world of wars. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and re-create myself when destroyed by living. That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art. The artist is the only one who knows the world is a subjective creation, that there is a choice to be made, a selection of elements. It is a materialization, an incarnation of his inner world. Then he hopes to attract others into it, he hopes to impose this particular vision and share it with others. When the second stage is not reached, the brave artist continues nevertheless. The few moments of communion with the world are worth the pain, for it is a world for others, an inheritance for others, a gift to others, in the end. When you make a world tolerable for yourself you make a world tolerable for others.
We also write to heighten our own awareness of life, we write to lure and enchant and console others, we write to serenade our lovers. We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection. We write, like Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is eternal. We write to be able to transcend life, to reach beyond it. We write to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth, we write to expand our world, when we feel strangled, constricted, lonely. We write as the birds sing. As the primitive dance their rituals. If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write. Because our culture has no use for any of that. When I don't write I feel my world shrinking, I feel I am in a prison. I feel I lose my fire, my color. It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave. I call it breathing.




Rainer Maria Rilke from "Letters to a Young Poet"


You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you- no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple "I must," then build your life in accordance with this necessity, your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse...
So, dear sir, I can't give you any advice but this: go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to the question os whether you must create. Accept the answer, just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it. Perhaps you will discover that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself, and bear it, its burden and its greatness without every asking what reward might come from outside. For the creator must be a world for himself and must find everything in himself and in Nature, to whom his whole life is devoted.