June 2022 Edition
“The only genius that’s worth anything is the genius for hard work”
~Auguste Rodin
We all want to be heroes. But, if that’s not in us. We want at least to find heroes to follow. Heroes whose qualities we could imitate. Heroes on whose shoulders we could stand firmly and could see horizons we have never even dreamt before.
As Isaac Newton said himself:
“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”
When Rainer Maria Rilke arrived in Paris in 1902, he was poor and lost in life. He abandoned his wife and daughter. He wrote mediocre poetry.
His biggest fear was to return to his hometown of Prague, where his father wanted him to get ‘a real job’ of being a lawyer or an accountant.
A death sentence for someone like Rilke, who aspired to be a poet.
In Paris he got a job of writing a monograph on the great sculptor Auguste Rodin. It paid him little, but it allowed him to observe Rodin at work and write about it.
Just imagine the privilege to observe how someone like Leonardo da Vinci works, to witness his philosophy of work with your own eyes.
For Rilke, to be able to observe how Rodin worked was similar to us being able to observe how da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa.
He came to his workshop every day, at the same exact time, and worked. Rodin treated creation of his sculptures and art as work. He did not wait for inspiration to come, he believed that you get inspired while you work.
‘Travailler! Toujours travailler!’
‘Work! Always work’ was Rodin’s motto.
Until meeting Rodin, Rilke thought that you’re born a genius, that you’re touched by some divine gift. But Rodin made Rilke realise that the level of your genius is defined not by an inborn talent but by how much you work.
This is what I explore in my recent podcast interview with Rachel Corbett, author of the book you see on the photo above.
Rachel discovered Rilke in her teenage years.
‘I was lost. I was poor. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. And then my mom gave me Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet’.
Years later, Rachel - like Rilke a century before - moved to Paris to write her own book on the artistic relationship between Rodin and Rilke - the master and his disciple.
If you aspire to be an artist, but you feel lost. If you want to express something that lies deep within your heart, but you don’t know where and how to start.
This book is a wonderful place to begin your journey.
