You Must Change Your Life: The Story of Rainer Maria Rilke and Auguste Rodin

by Rachel Corbett

Overview

Winner of the 2016 Marfield Prize

In 1902, Rainer Maria Rilke—then a struggling poet in Germany—went to Paris to research and write a short book about the sculptor Auguste Rodin. The two were almost polar opposites: Rilke in his twenties, delicate and unknown; Rodin in his sixties, carnal and revered. Yet they fell into an instantaneous friendship. Transporting readers to early twentieth-century Paris, Rachel Corbett’s You Must Change Your Life is a vibrant portrait of Rilke and Rodin and their circle, revealing how deeply Rodin’s ideas about art and creativity influenced Rilke’s classic Letters to a Young Poet.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393245066
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	09/06/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Rachel Corbett is the author of You Must Change Your Life, which won the Marfield Prize, the National Award for Arts Writing. She is a features writer at New York magazine, her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, and Atlantic. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Editorial Reviews

This empathetic and imaginative biography, deeply researched, is anchored by the friendship between [Rilke and Rodin].— The New Yorker

Rachel Corbett has written an elegant and moving account of what was a cultural turning point, seen through the eyes of two very different artists.— Luke Barr, author of Provence, 1970

Rachel Corbett, as any fine artist, has produced a work of great effect, and leaves a lasting and indelible mark on the reader.— NPR

In honeyed, knowing prose, Rachel Corbett twines two great serpents of art: the suppleness of Rodin’s malleable flesh and eroticism and Rilke’s endless lyrical rivers. New portals of aesthetic intonations open; invisible elements come into sight.— Jerry Saltz, senior art critic, New York Magazine

Spectacular. . . . A layered and lyrical inquiry into the personal, interpersonal, and cultural forces behind and around Rainer Maria Rilke’s iconic Letters to a Young Poet.— Maria Popova - Brainpickings

Takes readers deep into the literary and art worlds of the beginning of the 20th century. . . . A must-read.— Alanna Martinez - Observer

Much more than the story of Rilke as a young man serving as the personal secretary and confidante to Rodin. Laced with first-and second-hand accounts of the artists and their milieu, You Must Change Your Life is an examination of the gritty how and why of artistic creation, as well as an acknowledgement of the costs of such a life.— Sarah Roffino - Brooklyn Rail

A riveting narrative. . . . Corbett writes sharp prose that gets to the point.— Daniel Larkin - Hyperallergic

Charming and funny, Rachel Corbett renders turn-of-the-twentieth-century Paris in all its gritty glory, illustrating how the same place that saw ‘Baudelaire charge through the streets waving a gun and Balzac nearly starve to death’ could foster a magical artistic relationship like this one.— Ada Calhoun. author of St. Marks Is Dead

From the Publisher

2016-06-22
An exploration of "two artists fumbling through the desultory streets of Paris, finding their paths to mastery."In 1902, living near the artist colony in Worpswede, Germany, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) and his wife, Clara Westhoff, had a new child when Rilke received a commission to write a monograph on Auguste Rodin (1840-1917). Rilke left his family and traveled to Paris to meet the man for whose art he had a near-religious devotion. In Rodin, he expected to find a muse, a master, and a savior. He asked, "how should one live?" When Rodin replied, "work, always work," Rilke took it as gospel, leading a mostly solitary life and devoting himself to his poetry. He sacrificed his family for his art; never mind that his wife was a talented sculptor. Rodin and Rilke established an immediate rapport, and the artist extended an open invitation to the poet. It was not an easy trek, but the monograph turned out to be a wonderful philosophy of creativity. Art Newspaper correspondent Corbett's deep knowledge of her subjects accessibly reveals the strong connections—and various differences—between the two men. Rodin never questioned why he was an artist, unlike the metaphysical Rilke. Rodin's influence on Rilke drove him to seek the maturity he was lacking for his craft. Rilke learned to empathize with inanimate objects and to appreciate abstractions, making his poetry sculpturally composed. Rilke also became Rodin's secretary, living in the artist's home until Rodin overreacted to what perhaps was only an overstep by Rilke in responding to a patron's letter. Rodin fired him on the spot, and the two didn't speak for months. That period was just what Rilke needed, as he realized that Rodin cast a diminishing shadow and that "art too is only a living." For lovers of poetry and art, an excellent look at two men of incredible talent—and how they handled it.

Kirkus Reviews