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

Rachel Corbett

The word “empathy” only entered the modern lexicon in the early twentieth century, when it was used to describe the imaginative act of projecting oneself into a work of art in an effort to understand why art moves us. Here is a wonderful read on Rilke, Rodin, and the invention of empathy:

Letters to a Young Poet

Rainer Maria Rilke

“To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.”

Rilke on what real love asks of us, and what it gives:

Letters to a Young Woman

Rainer Maria Rilke

“What does living come down to but bringing about those changes in ourselves … which can free us to enjoy a richness and closeness with everyone?”

Rilke on winter and the tenacity of the human spirit—wisdom from his lesser-known but spectacular ‘Letters to a Young Woman’:

A Year with Rilke: Daily Readings from the Best of Rainer Maria Rilke

Anita Barrows

“Death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love.”

How Rilke can help us befriend our mortality and live more fully—sublimely rewarding read:

Letters on Cézanne

Rainer Maria Rilke

“All art is the result of one’s having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, to where no one can go any further.”

Rilke on how internal struggle fuels great art and external feedback poisons it – magnificent letters to his wife: