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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Rilke advise the young poet to take comfort in if he feels uneasy in his new profession?
(a) Reading.
(b) Prayer.
(c) Writing.
(d) Solitude.

2. In the third letter, Rilke requests that the young poet avoid something. What is it that he asks the poet to avoid?
(a) Drinking.
(b) Reading contemporary literature.
(c) Reading aesthetic criticism.
(d) Studying science.

3. How does Rilke say that humans should approach physical pleasure?
(a) As something to use for distraction from worry.
(b) As something to guard carefully.
(c) As something to rejoice in.
(d) As something to save for special occasions.

4. What is Rilke's salutation at the end of the first letter?
(a) "Warmest regards."
(b) "Yours faithfully and with all sympathy."
(c) "Yours faithfully."
(d) "With gratitude and happiness."

5. How does the young poet describe the writer and personal acquaintance Rilke mentions?
(a) "Living and writing among the living."
(b) "Living and writing with blood."
(c) "Living and writing in heat."
(d) "Living and writing with true passion."

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Rilke tell the young poet about irony?

2. What is Rilke's primary criticism of the young poet's writing in the first letter?

3. In what year is Rilke's second letter composed?

4. What does the young poet write about in his third letter to Rilke that Rilke mentions in his letter back to the young poet?

5. In what year is the first letter from Rilke to the young poet written?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Rilke mean when, in the fourth letter, he tells the young poet to "live" his unanswered questions?

2. Rilke advises the young poet to be cautious about the way sex can change behavior. In what way does he suggest that sex changes people?

3. What can we infer from the fact that in the first letter, Rilke's closing salutation is with "with sympathy?"

4. Rilke places emphasis on the importance of solitude. Why is solitude so important?

5. What does Rilke mean when in letter three he says his books "no longer belong to me"?

6. What does Rilke mean when he says in letter three that sex "is not sufficiently human, [but] is only male"?

7. What reason does Rilke give for advising the young poet against writing love poems?

8. Rilke says that artists remains unaware of their best qualities. Why is this?

9. What are Rilke's views on aesthetic criticism?

10. What can the reader infer about the content of the first letter the young poet wrote to Rilke from reading Rilke's response?

(see the answer keys)

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