A poet’s correspondence ought to have a special interest, a superior quality—or so we tend to feel. And yet how often does great poetry go with great letter writing? One thinks of Byron, whose letters, for most of us, amount to something more than his poetry. But then Keats’s letters stay with us, lodge in the memory just as much as the best of his poetry. Goethe, I believe, is famous for his beautiful letters, unread and unreadable by me. But then, once German poets are mentioned, Rilke comes to mind as the most dedicated letter writer of them all. In his case, to an even greater degree than with Keats, whose passion and strength of feeling he cannot emulate, Rilke’s letters are a cocoon for his sensibilities. A typical letter of Rilke is meant to reward the recipient and to ward him off, in equal degrees—to secure distance and a certain carefully judged intimacy at the same time.

What is it that makes for, that creates, the starkness of contrast between the letters of such poets and those of Charles Baudelaire? A recent edition of Baudelaire’s letters, published by the University of Chicago Press, gives us some clues.¹ The differences are not of temperament or personality—or rather these count for very little compared with the material difference of circumstances. Rilke and Keats both had private incomes, modest enough in the case of the latter but sufficient or more than sufficient to remove any immediate cares about