🌹 DYK: Rainer Maria Rilke Was Killed by a Rose Thorn?
Did you know Rainer Maria Rilke, the great poet of solitude and transcendence, is said to have died from an infection caused by a rose thorn?
Rilke, known for Letters to a Young Poet and the haunting Duino Elegies, spent his final years in Switzerland. According to legend, while picking roses from his garden, he pricked his finger on a thorn. Already weakened by undiagnosed leukemia, the wound became infected—and days later, he was gone.
It was a strangely fitting end for a man who once wrote:
“Rose, oh pure contradiction, joy of being no one’s sleep under so many lids.”
But Rilke’s legacy lives on—not only in his verse, but in the letters he penned to a 19-year-old aspiring poet in 1903. Refusing to critique the young man’s work, Rilke instead offered meditations on loneliness, art, and the sacred stillness required to create.
“Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write.”
Letters to a Young Poet has since guided generations of writers, artists, and wanderers—becoming a quiet manifesto for those seeking meaning in the invisible realms.
