Master & Disciple: The Life of Rodin and Rilke with Rachel Corbett
“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
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This episode’s guest is Rachel Corbett, the author of a brilliant book called You Must Change Your Life, which tells the story of the brief and intense relationship between renowned sculptor Auguste Rodin and the poet Rainer Maria Rilke.
In 1902, Rainer Maria Rilke was a delicate young visitor from Prague in Paris, he was broke and suffering from writer’s block. He was commissioned to write a book on Rodin, who was already a renowned sculptor at the time, this is when everything changes
You Must Change Your Life reveals one of the great stories of modern art and literature:
Rodin and Rilke’s years together as master and disciple, their heartbreaking rift, and moving reconciliation.
In her vibrant debut, Rachel Corbett reveals how Rodin’s influence lead Rilke to write his most celebrated poems and inspired his beloved Letters to a Young Poet.
She captures the dawn of modernism with appearances by Paul Cezanne, Henri Matisse, Lou Andreas Salome, George Bernard Show and Jean Cocteau.
In this interview I also wanted to ask Rachel about how Rodin and Rilke changed HER life, how she discovered them, and what are her favourite poems by Rilke and her favourite sculptures by Rodin.
I know this migtht sound cliche, but When I was reading this book I was getting a strong feeling as if I am reading the script for the second part of Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel.
I hope you will enjoy listening to my interview with Rachel Corbett
Follow Rachel Corbett on:
TWO FAVOURITE POEMS OF RACHEL BY RILKE
Archaic Torso of Apollo
Rainer Maria Rilke
We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,
gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.
Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:
would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.
The Panther
Rainer Maria Rilke
His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.
As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.
Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly--. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.
RODIN’S WORKS
