Manfred Koch: «Rilke. Dichter der Angst – Eine Biografie»

150 years of Rainer Maria Rilke!
Rainer Maria Rilke is considered one of the greatest poets of the 20th century. His art was "doing things out of fear," he wrote to his former lover Lou Andreas-Salomé in July 1903. In his new biography, which focuses equally on life and work, Manfred Koch shows Rilke as a highly sensitive echo sounder and the most gender-fluid poet of the emerging modern age. The result is the narrative of a radical life that wants to be entirely art and thus unfolds a perceptual sensitivity that comes frighteningly close to the abysses within himself and in his time.  Rainer Maria Rilke's life stations are always milestones in his work: Prague, Russia, Worpswede, Paris, Munich, Duino, Spain, Switzerland. Manfred Koch's biography follows these stations like the creative Way of the Cross of a physically and mentally threatened man and combines Rilke's life's wanderings with exemplary, understandable interpretations of his work. The poet of the "Duino Elegies" appears as a man who knows how to scrounge like no other, who captivates women and patrons and is mannered to the edge of what is bearable, but who at the same time rigorously turns all this as well as his own life into a mere foil for what is important to him: to create poetry for eternity and to turn life into "true" art. He succeeded, but the price was high, both for himself and for all those around him.