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You Must Change Your Life

The Story of Rainer Maria Rilke and Auguste Rodin

Rachel Corbett

$29.95

Paperback

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English
Norton
10 November 2017
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-and before long Rodin hired Rilke as his secretary.

With verve and great insight, Corbett transports readers to turn-of-the-twentieth-century Paris to explore this surprising friendship and the development of their influential ideas about art and creativity. She captures the dawn of modernism with appearances by such charismatic figures as Paul Cezanne, Henri Matisse, Isadora Duncan, George Bernard Shaw, and Jean Cocteau, as well as the rise of the concept of "empathy" amid the pioneering work of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Georg Simmel. Corbett also introduces the women in these men’s lives, many of them esteemed writers and artists in their own right: Rodin’s muse Camille Claudel, Rilke’s wife and fellow artist Clara Westhoff, and the remarkable Lou Andreas-Salome, who was Nietzsche’s lover and Rilke’s lifelong friend.

You Must Change Your Life is a vibrant portrait of Rilke and Rodin’s singular friendship, heartbreaking rift, and moving reconciliation, and it is a testament to the ways their work continues to reverberate to this day. 16 illustrations.

By:  
Imprint:   Norton
Country of Publication:   United States
Dimensions:   Height: 211mm,  Width: 142mm,  Spine: 20mm
Weight:   261g
ISBN:   9780393354928
ISBN 10:   039335492X
Pages:   320
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Rachel Corbett is the executive editor of Modern Painters. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times, the Art Newspaper, New York magazine, and others. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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

"""Corbett’s narrative is pacy and vivid…"" -- Financial Times ""...splendid new book...Corbett looks into life as deeply as is possible for answers, but she knows when to stop. This is the hallmark of her moral intelligence."" -- The Art Newspaper ""... she [Rachel Corbett] evokes the interaction between Rodin's and Rilke's circumstances and mental states in vivid detail... The result of her efforts is a beautiful exercise in compact, interwoven double biography."" -- Times Literary Supplement ""... the moving story of Rilke and Rodin is worth as much as the best self-help books and manuals, and one could definitely learn a lot from their relationship... Corbett’s original book stands as an urgent invitation to revisit both Rilke’s poems and Rodin’s sculptures."" -- World Literature Today ""You Must Change Your Life is an enthralling exploration of the complex relationship between two creative giants of art and literature, drawn together in Paris at the birth of a new century... Corbett... sustains the reader’s interest through intellectual rigour, elegance, and above all empathy."" -- The London Magazine"


  • Winner of Marfield Prize for Arts Writing 2016

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