Blood-Remembering Summary

Mood prefaces the excerpt from Rilke entitled "Blood-Remembering" by explaining the frequency with which Rilke talked about the difficulty of writing verse, and his emphasis on the idea that one had to do a lot of living before one would even have any quality verse to offer. He points out Rilke's having mentioned the fact both in his poems on love and in his novel, "The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge" in which the main character speaks with Rilke's voice.

In the essay itself, Rilke opens by putting forth the idea that verse can't amount to anything before their writer has lived a long and full life. Before he has, it is more likely that they will be full of feelings only, when experiences are what make quality poetry. He says one must come to know the smallest nuances of life, its sounds...