You Must Change Your Life The Story of Rainer Maria Rilke and Auguste Rodin [Paperback]

In 1902, Rainer Maria Rilkethen a struggling poet in Germanywent 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 CorbettsThis empathetic and imaginative biography, deeply researched, is anchored by the friendship between [Rilke and Rodin].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.Rachel Corbett, as any fine artist, has produced a work of great effect, and leaves a lasting and indelible mark on the reader.In honeyed, knowing prose, Rachel Corbett twines two great serpents of art: the suppleness of Rodins malleable flesh and eroticism and Rilkes endless lyrical rivers. New portals of aesthetic intonations open; invisible elements come into sight.Spectacular. . . . A layered and lyrical inquiry into the personal, interpersonal, and cultural forces behind and around Rainer Maria Rilkes iconicTakes readers deep into the literary and art worlds of the beginning of the 20th century. . . . A must-read.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,A riveting narrative. . . . Corbett writes sharp prose that gets to the point.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.Winner of the 2016 Marfield Prize