Publisher Description

"[An] empathetic and imaginative biography, deeply researched."
—The New Yorker 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 Cézanne, 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

Author Biography

Rachel Corbett is the editor in chief 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.

Review

"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

Prizes

Winner of Marfield Prize for Arts Writing 2016

Review Quote

"This empathetic and imaginative biography, deeply researched, is anchored by the friendship between [Rilke and Rodin]."

Details