Rainer Maria Rilke oder Das offene Leben

To be open and to write, that was all Rilke wanted: a modest yet ambitious wish. As an author, he experienced life as if it flowed through him with all its possibilities. Yet, it also came with all its contradictions: Rilke fled from his muses and could not exist without them, lamented the consequences of man-made progress, and was fascinated by technology. He loved a simple life and had a pronounced preference for beautiful things and homes.

With the notes of Malte Laurids Brigge, he created one of the first modern novels and groundbreaking cycles of poetry, whose expressive power resonates to this day. Sandra Richter, a literary scholar and director of the German Literature Archive in Marbach, works with new sources that arrived in Marbach with the acquisition of the large Rilke archive in 2022. In her biography, the author appears in a new light: not as the world-averse hermit he liked to portray himself as, but rather robust, assertive, alert in society, cheerful and self-ironic, and more knowledgeable about financial matters than is commonly assumed. This biography makes it clear why it is particularly worthwhile to read Rilke again today: he lived in difficult times, and he processed them with a force that perhaps only seems credible in the face of existential threats.