In the two excerpts from, Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke and Black Swan Green by David Mitchell, these excerpts have similar central ideas, about beauty and individual versus group identity. However the bigger idea is beauty within poetry. In Letters to a Young Poet, Rilke is writing a letter to a young poet who had originally wrote to him about getting some advice or help on his work. Rilke had tried to explain to the young writer how criticism barely affects his work, or any piece of art for that matter, nor do the ideas out of others, they do nothing. He wanted the young poet to just take from his life, just sticking to his thoughts, such as using images he has seen before, dreams he has had, or even fond memories of his. …show more content…
Now in Black Swan Green, Madame Crommelynck was talking to a young writer by the name of Jason Taylor. Her discussion with him is rather similar to the one between Rilke and the poet who wrote to him. Madame Crommelynck is an elder woman who has been reading a bunch of Jason’s poetry in exchange for her to take them to the vicar to publish in a magazine. She tries to explain to Jason how he could be a really good writer but he needs to try different approaches to it. How he uses beautiful words but too many of them to be good, it just ruins his work. He nor anyone can truly create beauty, it’s just something that is there. She compares things a lot, such as how too many beautiful words ruin a story or poem like salt does to a dish, or how a vase can be beautiful it wasn’t made that way it just is that way. She mentions to how he should write on his life more, like he did in hangman. Same as how Rilke told the poet he should. The similarities used to show the central ideas are better detailed though how the people talk to the poets and what they say on the subject, all on how there is so much beauty in self written …show more content…
They both agree on how the poets should write their poems based off how the poet sees life or what’s going on in his/her life. They both see different ways to make it, and make it perfect. The both of them tried to explain this but just expressed it differently. In Black Swan Green Madame Crommelynck is on the topic of beauty in poetry, such how she says “the master knows his words is just the vehicle in whom beauty sits.”(Mitchell, pg.147) This is in direct relation to how Madame Crommelynck doesn't believe you can create beauty. Another idea from her on how beauty is unable to be created is, how her view is “beauty is immune to definition” (Mitchell, pg.148). She says this to say no matter what an artist just can't create beauty in the different works they do. She also comes to the point of how his writing was best when it was about him, such as his poem “Hangman” which was directly written about Jason's speech impairment, or his stammer. Then there is Rilke who in Letters to a Young Poet he talks about how poetry can just have beauty in it. He's more sided to how the young poet should just focus on self-identity rather than group identity. He tells the young poet, “Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism.”(Rilke, pg.3-4) He's pretty much telling the young poet to ignore the outside opinions and remarks and stick his own of his work. Rilke really